Thomas McCabe, father of 14 who traveled America

Thomas J. McCabe, 84, of Doylestown, a sales executive and the father of 14 children, died March 18 at Neshaminy Manor Nursing Home after a long struggle with Parkinson's disease.

While he enjoyed his work, family always came first with Mr. McCabe, said his son Mark, and whenever he wasn't on the road, he made it a point to be home in time to eat dinner at 6 p.m.

The children and their parents would sit together at two tables placed together in their 14-bedroom Victorian-era house and have a buffet-style supper. Punctuality was mandatory.

"If you were in the shower," Mark said, "he would turn the hot water off."

Mr. McCabe had a talent for organization, his son said, and planned the family's driving vacations. One year the entire clan traveled to Mexico City in a Ford Econoline Club Wagon. In other years it was Nova Scotia and Florida.

Mr. McCabe and his wife of 58 years, Alverna, were deeply religious, and through their contacts with friends in Roman Catholic religious orders were able to find places to stay along the road.

Mr. McCabe was the sixth child of Irish immigrants who came to the United States in 1905. He grew up in South Philadelphia and West Oak Lane, graduating from St. Joseph's Preparatory School in 1941.

He served in the Navy in Guam and Hawaii during World War II, and later graduated from what was then St. Joseph's College.

For more than 45 years he worked for Fischer & Porter and then Specialty Glass Products as a sales and marketing executive.

Mr. McCabe took frequent business trips all over the country and in Europe, and whenever he could, he took the family along.

The McCabes had lived in Warrington for 15 years before moving to an old English estate in Penllyn that they later dubbed "Irish Hill." It was so-named because Mr. McCabe had said that if all his children were stacked one atop the other, they would constitute an Irish hill. They would live there 20 years. The couple later moved to Doylestown.

Mr. McCabe was an avid reader whose favorite author was the Trappist monk Thomas Merton.

He and his wife also were skilled gardeners, and Mr. McCabe tagged more than 100 different species of plants on his property.

For all the time that they spent with their children, they made time for each other, Mark McCabe said.

"I remember many a Friday night," he recalled, "they would say, 'OK, kids, there's fish sticks in the oven. We're going out.' "

In addition to his wife and son, Mr. McCabe is survived by daughters Mary Clark, Teresa Wetmore, Monica Collins, Clare McCabe and Agnes Jones, and sons Philip, Gregory, Thomas A., Christopher, Paul, Gerard, Peter and Brendan; 28 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

A viewing is today from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, 235 E. State St., Doylestown. A Funeral Mass will follow at 11. Interment will be at St. John Neumann Cemetery, Chalfont.