Daniel Mahoney, Fallen World War II Hero, Honored on Memorial Day

Thanks in large part to senior Daniel Noyes’ Eagle Scout project, Fallen World War II veteran, Sergeant Daniel Henry Mahoney Jr., now has an official memorial placard on the street that bears his name, Mahoney Avenue.

For his Eagle Scout project Noyes, with the help of his troop, decided to build 70 garden boxes around veteran memorial markers throughout Stoughton. When he received a letter from Dorothy Sweet, Mahoney’s fiancée, making a donation to the project and asking that a garden box be built at Mahoney Ave, Noyes’ father, Greg, soon realized there wasn’t an official marker there.

So, Daniel and Greg Noyes helped Sweet and Mahoney’s sister, Edna Mahoney Lyons, with the dedication application. And on Monday, as part of the town’s Memorial Day festivities, Stoughton officially rededicated Mahoney Ave., unveiling a white Killed in Action marker with green writing, placed a top the street sign.

Mahoney was born in Stoughton on February 19, 1920, the youngest child of Daniel and Mary Mahoney. He died at the age of 23, on January 14, 1944 when friendly fire—a bomb dropped from another allied plane—fell on Mahoney’s plane and destroyed it over Yugoslavia.

Mahoney left behind his parents, four sisters, and his fiancée, Dorothy, who according to Stoughton veterans’ agent Mike Pazyra, never remarried.

Extended members of the Mahoney family, Dorothy Sweet and town and state officials were on hand at the rededication Monday afternoon. Daniel H. Cobb, named after his uncle Daniel H. Mahoney, Jr. helped to unveil the marker.

“He gave up his life for his country, but [is] not forgotten by his countrymen, still remembered by his friends and family and always in the heart of his true love, Dorothy Sweet,” Noyes said in his remarks at the dedication. Noyes called Mahoney a “true hero.”

Selectman Cynthia Walsh said Mahoney came from a family who has continually given back to the town. She said the right to “express an opinion and express it freely” is what “men like Daniel Mahoney gave their lives for.”

Mahoney grew up on Central Street in Stoughton. As a fourth grader he was accidently shot by a neighborhood boy, but survived the incident with the help of blood donated by the cab driver who rushed him to a hospital in Boston.

Mahoney graduated from Stoughton High and went to work as an auto mechanic. But with America’s entrance into WWII, Mahoney was drafted into the US Army Air Force in November of 1942.

After training as an aircraft mechanic stateside, he was sent to Europe in November of 1943, where he served as a tail gunner on a B-24 Liberator bomber.

After his plane was bombed in January of 1944, Mahoney was reported as missing in action, but officially declared dead a year later. Mahoney’s body was found on a mountainside in Yugoslavia in 1949 and he was returned home and buried at the on Central Street in Stoughton.

Dennis Lyons, son of Mahoney’s sister, Edna, thanked Daniel Noyes for his efforts in helping to secure a memorial marker for Mahoney.

Despite a large gathering of extended family at the rededication, Lyons said, “There is no relative here today with the last name Mahoney. That name [in the] family branch fell that day,” when Daniel Mahoney died.