Robert M. Fleming
Retired MBNA executive who earlier worked at Pan Am and was ‘Irish-Catholic to the core’ had an outsized personality
Robert M. Fleming, a retired MBNA executive who earlier worked for Pan American World Airways and loved celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in recognition of his Irish heritage, died Feb. 10 of sepsis at Mercy Ridge, a retirement community in Lutherville. The former longtime Towson resident was 85.
“You hear these clichés all the time but in Bob’s case they really do apply. He was a very, very special guy,” said Dan Durishan, a longtime friend and MBNA personal banking officer. Maryland Bank, N.A. was eventually acquired and merged into Bank of America.
“He was Irish-Catholic to the core and your prototypical Irish American. He kept everything light and fun,” Mr. Durishan said. “He was such a cheerful and likable guy.”
Mr. Fleming was gifted with an outsized personality and gregariousness.
“When people asked him his name or how he was feeling, he’d always answer, ‘I’m sassy,’ which became his nickname,” said his niece, Sharon Elizabeth Fleming. “It always made people laugh and showed them who he was. He was friendly and outgoing and wanted to share that with others.”
Robert Morris Fleming, son of Raymond T. Fleming Sr., a lawyer, and Phyllis W. Fleming,
a homemaker and volunteer, was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Baldwin, New York.
While attending St. Agnes Cathedral School in Rockville Center, New York, he met his future wife, the former Mary Ann “Nancy” Zolzer, who also was a student there.
Mr. Fleming earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1959 from Villanova University in Villanova, Pennsylvania. Initially planning to study for the priesthood, he entered the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, New York, after leaving Villanova.
During a visit to a fellow seminarian’s ex-girlfriend, Mr. Fleming was reintroduced to his future wife, then a first grade teacher.
“At that visit, he said he realized he wanted to be a father with a lowercase ‘f ’ rather than a father with an uppercase ‘F,’ ” according to a family biography. “He then went to the bishop of the diocese to request a leave of absence to which he never returned.”
The couple married in 1964.
In 1963, Mr. Fleming began his career with Pan American World Airways in New York City, and was transferred to Baltimore, where he was the airline’s senior passenger sales representative and in charge of its group sales program.
When Pan Am withdrew from the Baltimore market in the early 1970s and transferred his job from the old Friendship Airport, now BWI Marshall, to Chicago, Mr. Fleming, who had grown fond of Baltimore, decided to remain here.
He then joined Wide World of Travel, a Cockeysville travel agency, where he became partner and headed group sales.
In 1980, he left the agency, worked for a freight-forwarding company and later sold real estate before joining MBNA in 1986 at their Newark, Delaware, headquarters where he established Gold Passage, the company’s in-house travel agency.
Rather than move, Mr. Fleming commuted daily from his Towson home in the Hampton Gardens neighborhood.
“He had workplace challenges but you never knew it because he was so understated, but he kept things fun and upbeat through difficult times,” recalled Mr. Durishan. “Whenever it rained, he’d come into the office quacking like a duck, and you knew it was Bob.”
“One of his proudest achievements,” family members said, was establishing a chapter of the public speaking group Toastmasters International at MBNA.
“I joined right away and gave Bob a check, and stayed in the organization for the next 25 years,” Mr. Durishan said. “He kept all of the meetings educational and fun, and after I left MBNA and moved to Atlanta, I became president of a Toastmaster’s Club, and I tried to emulate Bob.”
Mr. Fleming retired in 1999 from MBNA. Mr. Fleming and his wife were longtime members of a gourmet social group and enjoyed hosting luaus, progressive dinners and were especially known for their annual St. Patrick’s Day party.
Because Mr. Fleming and his wife were both Irish and from New York, their St. Patrick’s Day gathering included a chorus line and Frank Sinatra’s signature “New York, New York.”
In 2004, his wife, who had taught at Stoneleigh
Elementary School in Baltimore before leaving to raise their three daughters, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Mr. Fleming joined Timonium Alzheimer Support where he became a leader in helping other families cope with the disease. He and his wife later joined a University of Maryland Alzheimer’s support group and were featured in the award-winning documentary “The 36 Hour Day: The Complete Journey.”
Mrs. Fleming died in 2011.
In 2013 he took courses from the University of Maryland extension program and volunteered at Cromwell Valley Park as part of their Trail Guide Program that worked with school groups and scouts.
He also was a bluebird box monitor and documented the breeding habits of birds within the confines of the park.
Mr. Fleming, and a daughter, Kathleen “Kelly” Paszkiewicz, of Lutherville, had season tickets to the Baltimore Symphony and the Hippodrome Theatre, which were a highlight each month.
Music was an important element in his life. He was a member of Amhranai Na Gaeilge — The Irishman’s Chorale — and performed in musicals staged by the Senior Showcase Singers at the Community College of Baltimore County.
A devout Roman Catholic, Mr. Fleming was a member of the Church of the Nativity in Timonium, where he was a Eucharistic minister and visited the sick at the Gilchrist Center in Towson.
Since 2018, he had resided at Mercy Ridge where he was known by residents as Sassy.
“He said he wanted to stay Sassy until the end,” family members said.
A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated last Saturday at the Church of the Nativity.
In addition to Kathleen “Kelly” Paszkiewicz, of Lutherville, he is survived by two other daughters, Michele Klesius of Landenberg, Pennsylvania, and Megan Elliott of New York City; and seven grandchildren