Wendy Elizabeth Flanagan “could often be heard saying, ‘I love my life!’ ” her husband, Jay Flanagan, wrote.
A Montauk prekindergarten teacher, mother, and wife, and more recently a Pierson High School volleyball coach, she brought “boundless love and energy” to everything she did.
For her children, Conor Jack, 19, and Grace Elizabeth, 16, Mrs. Flanagan “left a precise roadmap for a wonderful life,” her husband wrote. “She taught them everything they need to know through example. Wendy never talked about, she just did it, whatever needed doing. Conor and Grace will always know the difference between right and wrong, and the correct decisions to make simply from the years observing their mom.”
Mrs. Flanagan, 51, who was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma two years ago, “fought like hell,” her husband said. She died at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital on May 18.
After working in the fashion industry in New York City for several years in the early 1990s, Mrs. Flanagan returned home to Montauk to pursue a teaching career, earning a master’s degree in elementary education at Dowling College. Not only was it a “practical and rewarding choice,” but teaching also proved to be “her life’s calling,” her husband wrote.
Mrs. Flanagan grew up in Montauk and graduated from the Montauk School, where a plaque on the wall commemorates her grandmother’s years of employment there, so it “was a source of great pride for her” to return to the school as a teacher herself in 1999.
She excelled as an educator, “her eye for detail, her quest for perfection, and her endless amount of patience” pairing well with “her love of children and her eagerness to help them become their best selves,” Mr. Flanagan wrote. She helped start the school’s prekindergarten program and continued to teach prekindergartners there until this school year.
“Her family never required a calendar to know what time of year it was: The arts and crafts projects for her class that would litter the dining room table ex
plained everything (glitter everywhere!),” her husband recalled.
She was born on Dec. 10, 1970, in Palm Beach, Fla., to Barry Kohlus and the late Faith Nicoletti Kohlus. She graduated from East Hampton High School and from Towson University in Maryland before going on to graduate school at Dowling in Oakdale.
She and Mr. Flanagan were married on June 23, 2001, and lived in Sag Harbor. She was his “best friend,” he said, and he “respected her, and everything she did, immensely.” Their greatest accomplishment was raising their two children together. She kept him ever on his toes. “She never stopped moving: baking this, cooking that, wrapping holiday presents that to this day will go unmatched in their artistry and care.” She was up before sunrise and often asleep on the couch just before sunset.
In the last few years, she began coaching Pierson High School’s junior varsity volleyball team. “It reignited a passion she held in her own high school days and one that she was able to share with her daughter, Grace, who is also part of the program,” her husband said. She twice filled in as a substitute for the varsity team. “We believe she would like it to be known her record was 2-0!”
Mrs. Flanagan had a serious, competitive spirit, and found a perfect outlet to balance that with fun and exercise in weekly league tennis matches, first in singles and eventually in doubles, and she enjoyed the friends she made in the league and in casual weekly groups in which she played.
She loved to travel, and “if you were on a trip with her, you were seeing everything,” her husband wrote. “She didn’t waste a moment, and a vacation for her did not include the word ‘relaxation.’ It was about seizing the opportunity and maximizing the experience. When you left a destination with Wendy, there was nothing more to see, no regrets or a need to return because something was missed. The rest of us needed a vacation after those vacations with her.”
In addition to her husband and children, Mrs. Flanagan is survived by her father, Barry Kohlus, and stepmother, Janet Kohlus, who live in Montauk, and a brother, Barry Michael Kohlus of Houston.
A celebration of her life will be announced as soon as arrangements can be confirmed. Information about donations in her memory can be found by clicking here.
