A Family Legacy in Massachusetts Independent Agencies
Michael R. Quinn, who led Taunton’s Allan M. Walker Insurance Agency through the final chapter of more than six decades of Quinn family stewardship before its 2022 sale to World Insurance Associates, died on May 15 at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, after an eleven-year battle with multiple myeloma. He was 70.
Leadership Through Sale to World Insurance Associates
Founded in 1847, Allan M. Walker is among the oldest insurance agencies in southeastern Massachusetts. The Quinn family’s association with it began in 1958, when Michael’s father, Joseph I. Quinn, was hired to run the Taunton office and went on to build the agency into a fixture of the region’s independent-agency community. Michael followed his father into the business, working alongside Joseph and his brother Terry, and in time succeeded his father as president. Under his leadership, the agency continued as a full-service personal and commercial lines shop at its longtime 120 High Street office until June 2022, when Michael, as president, sold Allan M. Walker to World Insurance Associates. His brother Terry remained with the agency as vice president.
Legacy and Family
Born in Boston on April 12, 1956, Michael was the son of Joseph I. and Alice M. (Fernandes) Quinn and was raised in Taunton with his five siblings. He attended St. Mary’s grammar school and Coyle and Cassidy High School before earning his degree at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire, where a lifelong love of skiing and the outdoors took hold. Drawn to the coast, he and his wife later built their home in Pocasset, on Cape Cod, where they raised their family.
Like his father, Michael gave generously to his community. He was a longtime supporter of the Boys & Girls Club of Taunton, served as president of the Taunton Rotary, and—a former player himself—coached Coyle and Cassidy hockey alongside his father for more than twenty years. On the Cape, he volunteered with the Otis Civilian Advisory Council, served on the board of the Buzzards Bay Sailing School, and coached Bourne youth baseball. A seasoned sailor, he raced to Bermuda and cruised Buzzards Bay, content simply to be on the water.
Michael is survived by Deborah Lynn (Uitti) Quinn, his wife of 33 years; their three sons, Kristoffer, Dylan, and Patrick; and his siblings Kevin, Brian, Colleen, Terry, and Michelle, and their families. Through six clinical trials and years of complications, he met his illness with a perseverance and good humor that, by his family’s account, rarely left him without a smile. He lived by a few plain rules he was fond of repeating—among them, “Take care of your family; you only get one,” and “Just because you’re not blood doesn’t mean you’re not family.”
Those wishing to honor Michael may support the “Mighty Quinn” team through Miles for Moffitt, which raises funds for cancer research at the Moffitt Cancer Center.
