Al Maloney

Monday night my friend, mentor, co-worker, and boss died suddenly due to complications from a back injury he suffered about a month and a half ago. Al leaves behind a wife, Sylvia, three children Kate, John and Tom, his brother Tom and his sister Rita. Al touched the lives of many people he worked with and met, and spent the time to make everyone he encountered feel special. He was a very sincere and compassionate man.

I met Al though working with him at Top Producer Systems. He was a mentor for me and was an example of what a manager should be like. He started at Top Producer at the beginning of 2000 and brought a strong management background from his years with IBM and Nortel. Al took me under his wing and mentored me in many areas all improving my management skills.

Besides work he and I would talk about many things; food, sports, music and movies to name a few. Al loved to cook and was an excellent chief with a very good palette and we use to share recipes often. I will miss the chats we would have had on movies that we had seen and what we felt were the best Oscar choices. Al enjoyed music and always carried a guitar pick in his pocket and looked for opportunities to use it.

He was a real character and although he held post graduate degrees from Oxford and Strathclyde (in Glasgow), he also enjoyed going down to bars in the seeder parts of downtown with his brother as they reminded him of his humble beginnings in England. When Al was younger he was an avid athlete and played football (soccer), squash and ran marathons.

Al grew up in Liverpool, England and was a strong supporter of the Liverpool Football Club (LFC) so I will end this by quoting a song I know was dear to his heart.

You’ll Never Walk Alone

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone
You’ll never walk alone

Alan J. Maloney May 11, 1946 - August 7, 2006

You will be missed.