Dorchester’s own Jack Flanagan will be inducted into Boston College’s Hall of Fame this September, 52 years after he last put on a football uniform for the university. Now, at age 73, the award-winning offensive end recalls his time living in Dorchester as having shaped his career on the football field and, later, in the professional world.

During his time at Boston College, the Savin Hill native played as the team’s star offensive end, leading the team in scoring in 1958, the same year that he won the Scanlan Award - the university’s top scholar-athlete honor. Following a brief career with the Chicago (now Arizona) Cardinals, he went on to become a teacher at his alma mater, BC High, and then a salesperson – a job he held until his retirement in 1991.

Flanagan’s athletic career started not in Chestnut Hill, but rather in the parks and school grounds of Dorchester, where pick-up games were a part of life because “that’s just what kids in Dorchester did.”

Flanagan began playing basketball, baseball, and football with his neighborhood friends growing up, during which time he lived a “transient lifestyle,” moving from Park Street to Fields Corner before settling on Savin Hill Ave., where he lived throughout high school. That whole time, his single mother worked at a local pub in Savin Hill, collecting tips that would help her son graduate from a private high school.

When the parks were inaccessible – the local kids formed stickball teams, or erected basketball nets in the local grammar school parking lot. Sports were a way of forming bonds and building communities; Flanagan fondly recalls some of his lifelong friends as being part of his “gang” of kids on Savin Hill.

It was at BC High where his skills – honed in the local parks and playgrounds – were put on display. Flanagan began playing his junior year of high school, when he described himself as a kid “from the corner” with the Marines on his mind. “My junior year … I remember a friend of mine saying ‘take the leather jacket off and come on,’” he recalls.

Following a brief playing career in high school (he can count the number of games he played on one hand), Flanagan went on to Fordham University, then Boston College after Fordham dismantled its football program in 1964 (only to be reinstated in 1970).

“I think it might have had something to do with me going there,” Flanagan said jokingly.

After a successful run at BC (he missed only one game), Flanagan had a career in the NFL that lasted 11 minutes, by his estimate. His time with the Cardinals was cut short when he re-fractured a vertebra during a preseason scrimmage game, bringing his football career to an end.

After playing with the Cardinals, Flanagan worked as a teacher and coach at BC High, then as a salesperson for National Gypsum Company and, later, with Stores Technology Corp. - a Colorado data storage company. He retired in 1991 and currently lives in Concord.

Flanagan currently supports a scholarship fund that awards Dorchester natives tuition to attend BC High.

He will be inducted in the BC Hall of Fame on Sept. 16 and will be honored alongside his fellow inductees at halftime during the BC-Duke football game the following day.