For most of his career, Mark Flanagan came at politics with a mix of hard experience and a healthy dose of counterculture influence.

Flanagan, who is remembered for his signature shorts and flowered Hawaiian shirts, died Wednesday, June 15, ending a career that included involvement in the local Democratic Party’s executive committee as well as an organizer of the Midtown St. Patrick’s Day Pub Crawl and as founder of the Irish Eyes of Memphis.

He was 79 years old.

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“Mark was a friend of thousands with a heart as big as the outdoors and a personality that was even bigger,” U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen said in a statement Monday, June 20. “He was a great friend and advisor. His was a life well-lived, and he will be well-remembered, and I will miss him.”

Cohen, who referred to Flanagan as the “mayor of Midtown,” said Flanagan’s family is planning a memorial service for later this summer. Here is the obituary.

Flanagan’s counterculture influences were balanced by being the son of a Washington lobbyist and a lot of time spent in the political culture of the nation’s capital.

In that upbringing, Flanagan was always a Democrat who defended his party but was aware of and talked to Republicans — even if the discussions emphasized fundamental differences in the parties.

He owned Plywood Paneling in the 1960s and mixed that direct business ownership with investment and advice to the owners of restaurant ventures that changed Midtown.

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Flanagan was a key behind-the-scenes figure as a new generation of younger Democrats including Cohen began running for seats in the state Legislature in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal of the mid-1970s.

The generation that protested for civil rights and against the Vietnam War began winning elections and making inroads in the Democratic Party from a base of younger voters in a Midtown.

Sometimes the lines between culture and politics were blurred, as was the case with the pub crawl that by the early 1980s had become a mammoth gathering.

It grew in just a few years after Flanagan and less than a dozen others decided to walk through Midtown with stops at bars around and in Overton Square that had recently blossomed in the wake of liquor by the drink approval in the late-1960s.

Flanagan was also an early backer of developing the Cooper-Young area, which he called “Coopertown” in his plans for it.

He owned some key parcels at Cooper and Young, and later sold the properties to Charlie Ryan, who developed it into the entertainment district.

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In Flanagan’s circle, some were more political than others in the closely knit group.

He was on the state Democratic executive committee in the 1980s following his involvement drafting Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy to challenge Democratic President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 elections.

One of Flanagan’s closest friend, the late Thomas “Silky” Sullivan, was the face of the pub crawl with Flanagan often introducing him ahead of Sullivan’s talk of such stunts as letting a wild pig loose in Midtown to mark the occasion and introducing various Irish dignitaries Sullivan brought to the city.

For most of Harold Ford Sr.’s 22-year tenure as the city’s Congressman, Flanagan ran against Ford in the Democratic primary — more as a reflection of the local party’s lively mix of factions than as opposition to Ford.

Ford never took offense at Flanagan’s challenges, often belittling other challengers by noting that Flanagan got almost as many votes as they did.

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During one television debate, Flanagan made a then-rare appearance in a suit and tie. Just before the debate, though, he showed off his tie with a pattern spelling a profane two-word greeting that became readable the closer an observer got to it.

The camera never got close enough to reveal Flanagan’s secret.

It was the perfect indicator of what Flanagan considered the limits of politics when it came to getting things done or getting them started.

The connections Flanagan and Sullivan had to Ireland were very real despite the element of blarney in the undertaking.

In hindsight, it is often the blarney that got more attention — like the pub crawl stunt in the early 1980s of ridding Mud Island of its snakes as St. Patrick is fabled to have done for Ireland in the lore of the country.

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The Mud Island River Park was under construction at the time. The pub crawl effort involved hundreds of rubber snakes that were thrown around surprised construction workers to signify the snakes fleeing the island.

Mixed in with the irreverence were some very real skills.

Flanagan’s experience in construction and staging construction made him partners with Mid-South Concerts impresario Bob Kelley during Kelley’s famed concerts at Liberty Bowl Stadium in the 1970s and into the 1980s and 1990s.

Flanagan had the stages built as well as the electrical grid and organized the security as well as sanitation for the concerts in an outdoor venue not built for concerts.

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The first two years of the Beale Street Music Festival in the mid-1970s, Flanagan partnered with friend and neighbor Irvin Salky in a music festival that began with stages actually on Beale Street before it converted to an entertainment district.

Flanagan talked about the organization of the music festival with Salky and others in an archival interview in 2011 by Bill Shepherd for Rhodes College.

“It means to me that it just shows that you can get a bunch of people who don’t have a lot of money but want to get something done,” he said of the music festival’s example.

“And whether it’s a heritage group in the neighborhood or Greenpeace people doing something or any type of nongovernmental movements that are more closely related to what’s going on than governmental movements,” he said. “Because governmental movements, by the time it gets there, it’s all politics and money.”