Maggie Flanigan was 5 weeks old on her first sail, strapped to her mother aboard her grandparents’ trimaran on the Magothy River. Her parents and grandparents sailed competitively, so boats and sails were written into her destiny.
If only that was all she wanted to do.
Daniel and Lynn Flanigan’s oldest child had other aptitudes that emerged as she took to sailing. Born in Baltimore and raised in Baltimore County, she had a voice that everyone noticed and was a natural on a stage. So she attended a performing arts magnet school and became a theater kid. By 14, she was doing dinner theater in Timonium. All while also teaching kids how to sail and helping her mother run the Special Olympics sailing program, which her parents helped start in the 1980s.
She was 18 when a fellow sailing instructor lost her balance, fell into the water off Rocky Point Park and became unconscious. Maggie pulled her into the boat and resuscitated her, likely saving her life.
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At Indiana University of Pennsylvania, she went in yet another direction, studying nursing while minoring in choral music, which she performed extensively. Then when working for Sheppard Pratt hospital, she acted and sang in community theater in Baltimore, and taught herself to sew costumes.
After the pandemic, she found another purpose for her sewing skills, making a career shift by going to work in the canvas shop of Quantum Sails in Annapolis, constructing sail bags, Biminis, dodgers, and co*ckpit enclosures of all kinds. She also moved to Annapolis and soon started racing as crew on J/105s. Her life circled back around.
On Saturday, Aug. 17, she collapsed while staying at her parents’ home in Towson. She was taken to the hospital, where she died the same day at age 34. Her family is waiting for autopsy results.
“She had a lot of chapters,” said Lynn of her daughter’s numerous interests, which earned her large overlapping circles of friends. “I always called her the connector. She always put people together.”
One of Maggie’s best friends, Lance Bankerd, who worked with her in many theater productions, said, “We can honor her by continuing to be the beautiful family that she chose.”
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Flanigan and another theater friend, Brad Norris, were in the wedding party of Bankerd and his wife Hannah Fogler, who married in June. Flanigan altered Fogler’s wedding dress Norris said, and was key to planning festivities around the wedding. She offered up her family’s beach home for the bachelorette party, and her parents’ house for the bridal shower.
“I’ve heard multiple people speak of how she would introduce herself and within moments you would feel like you knew this person your whole life,” Norris said. “She was a giver — of her time, energy, and, most of all, her friendship.”
Her sewing skills advanced from theater costumes to elaborate gowns, which she learned to make for a local dress shop. She also performed with Third Wall Productions and the Guerrilla Theatre Front, which she helped form. And every Sunday for years, she sang karaoke at the Firehouse Tavern in Parkville.
But lately it was her sailing life that filled most of her hours. She had spent many years running races and coaching other sailors, including Terrel Limerick, who in 2015 became the first American to compete at the solo level in the Special Olympics. Now, she was the one racing.
A few weeks ago, she competed in a wooden boat regatta in Maine. She also competed regularly this summer in the Wednesday Night Race series run by the Annapolis Yacht Club. On August 21, all the J/105s in the race paused for 34 seconds at the start before raising their spinnakers in unison to honor Maggie. At the final Wednesday Night Race this week, crews dropped flower petals into the water off Horn Point at the mouth of the Severn River.
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Maggie was to compete this weekend in the J/105 Women’s Regatta, hosted by the Sailing Club of the Chesapeake. Last year, Maggie dazzled everyone in the competition with uniforms she designed for her crew – white skirts and Hawaiian print shirts, each tailored for its wearer.
“Maggie was a talented seamstress and frequently helped me and other friends with projects, clothes or whatever needed mending,” said friend and sailor Jane Millman. “We last sailed together on a J/70 and shared some good laughs and a wonderful night sailing on Annapolis Harbor.”
This year’s women’s regatta will feature a permanent trophy for the best dressed crew in the regatta. It will be awarded every year in Flanigan’s honor.
“It’s a way to acknowledge her creativity, her joyful spirit, her skills as a seamstress, and her love of sailing,” said friend Molly Hughes Wilmer, an organizer of the women’s regatta. “Maggie is a special person, and she’s shared special moments with a lot of people. She cut across all barriers of age and cliques. She was one of those people who could be very lighthearted but also connect if someone wanted to go there.”
The family is hosting a celebration of her life Friday morning at 11 a.m. at the Kurtz’s Beach event space at 2070 Kurtz Avenue in Pasadena. They ask that no one bring flowers or wear black, dressing instead in bright floral colors as Maggie would have preferred. They request that contributions in her memory to be sent to Special Olympics Maryland, an organization she was part of most of her life.
