Paul Flynn, 78, salesman, Quincy probation officer

Paul Flynn, 78, was a born salesman and an essential participant at any successful family yard sale, family members said.

"He could sell you your shirt off your own back," Lori M. Malloy of Whitman said of her father, who died March 3 at Sherman Village Health Care Center in North Hollywood, Calif., where he was on vacation.

Mr. Flynn, a salesman and former Quincy probation officer, moved from Quincy to Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., with his wife, Marilyn (Mich), in 1994.

Born in Boston, Mr. Flynn grew up in Dorchester and attended Commerce High School and Newman Preparatory School. He served in Italy with the Army's Tenth Mountain Division from 1943 to 1946 and graduated from Boston College in 1953 with a BA in business.

In 1953, he began a 30-year career in the sales business. He married in 1954, and stayed with his first employer, O'Brien Distributing Company in Charlestown, a distributor of Carlings brewery products, for 12 years. For eight years beginning in 1965, he worked at Knickerbocker Beer Co. in Framingham, and then spent several years working at other distributors. He retired from the C. Pappas Company in Boston and later went to work as a probation officer for five years before retiring a second time.

Mr. Flynn was also a great talker, family members said.

"He was a jokester," said Malloy. "He was very playful."

Mr. Flynn, who loved to dance the jitterbug at social functions, could make his grandchildren laugh for hours, she said.

He was very involved with his grandchildren's lives, his daughter said. He took them on day trips to swim and boat in Quincy Bay and hike at Blue Hills in Canton and Milton.

Mr. Flynn and his wife loved to take cruises and vacation. They traveled to the Caribbean several times and in 2002 they went to Italy.

In May they fulfilled a lifelong dream and visited Hawaii.

In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Flynn leaves five sons; Paul Jr.and Mark T. of Quincy, and David M., Peter A., and Kevin J., all of Burbank, Calif.; two more daughters, Theresa A. of Indiana and Kathryn M. Malloy of Burbank; two sisters, Mary L. Henderson of Dorchester and Rita Newell of Garden Grove, Calif., and several grandchildren.

A funeral Mass will be said today at 10 a.m. at the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish of our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Quincy. Burial will follow at St. Joseph's Cemetery in West Roxbury.