Edmund C. Flynn

Realtor, Volunteer for Many Causes

Washington Post Staff Writer;  Joe Holley    Saturday, June 21, 2008

Edmund Clohan Flynn, 84, a Washington area Realtor whose company was instrumental in introducing cooperative apartments to the area, died June 10, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. He    was a Rockville resident.The first U.S. cooperative was organized in New York City in the 1880s. Mr. Flynn's father, Edmund J. Flynn, introduced cooperative ownership to the Washington area in 1920, and Mr. Flynn joined the company after World War II.

The company's projects over the years included Hampshire Gardens (now a historic landmark), the Broadmoor, Harbour Square, Sudbury Place, Kenwood House, Potomac Plaza, Hamlet Place and Woodley Gardens.

Edmund Flynn's company helped introduce cooperative apartments in the area, including Hampshire Gardens, now designated a landmark.                                             (Family Photo)

Mr. Flynn was born in Washington and graduated from  Roosevelt High School in 1941. He attended Georgetown University for two years until the Army drafted him and sent him to Harvard University to study Chinese.

He served first as a military policeman and then as an interpreter in China with the China Theater Search Detachment, an effort to find missing American airmen.

He remained interested in China for the rest of his life -- working to perfect writing Chinese characters, visiting the country in 1985 and      persuading his granddaughter to major in Chinese in college.

After his discharge from the military, he attended the University of Chicago for two years and then joined the family business. He took over the company in the early 1960s and remained as president until retiring in 1985.

A master gardener trainer, he volunteered for the University of Maryland Cooperative Extension Service. He received awards and citations from Montgomery County, the Men's Garden Club and the Agriculture Extension Service.

Mr. Flynn also enjoyed shooting crows and fowl on the Eastern Shore. He was an inveterate writer of letters to the editor, once describing in explicit terms his love of hunting birds.

He was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s and in the antiwar movement until the Vietnam War ended in 1975. He also worked with Laubach Literacy Action as a tutor and with Amnesty International as a volunteer. He was a founding member of the North Bethesda Camera Club and a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Survivors include his wife of 52 years, Una E. Flynn of Rockville; two children, Dennis C. Flynn of Rockville and Sharon Tobing of Beltsville; and four grandchildren.