Eulogy for JBD
One of my strongest memories is of Dad sitting in his chair in the living room with a biography of Grant, or Lincoln, or Churchill obscuring his face; his leg swung crosswise over the other knee, shaking his slipper. He’d come up for air now and then, but it was when he was reading that he was at his most relaxed. It was in books that the boy from the Valley first discovered himself. Reading, knowledge, education were the things that developed the mind that would go onto to help so many others throughout his remarkable life.
My brothers and sisters and I are happy to have this occasion to honor our father for the warm and generous guy that he was. I speak not only for myself here as I honor him, but also for Michael, Reenie, John, Robert and Emily, as well as for Helen our mother, who was so crucial to the extraordinary man JBD became.
It’s difficult to sum up a life like JBD’s, with its myriad accomplishments; how he pulled himself up through education to rise above the poverty of his childhood with determination, intelligence and grace. Knowing the limitations of his parents ─ his father John, an uneducated milkman and his mother, Mary, who emigrated from the West Coast of Ireland at 18 with nothing more than a sixth grade education ─ the struggle of the Irish in America became something very important to my father, something to overcome.
It’s fitting that he became a scholar on the subject of Irish Americans while a professor of history here at Seton Hall. He also was a great storyteller in the way that all the Irish are great storytellers, and it was clear that he wanted his children to know about Ireland, and about the importance of understanding one’s roots.
It was from our father that we first heard mention of County Clare, County Louth, and Galway Bay, all the places where he still had aunts and uncles and cousins. It was our father who told us about the great Irish writers like James Joyce, Oscar Wilde and Yeats, or about the Abbey Theater in Dublin; and also we heard about moments in history such as the Irish Rebellion, the Irish Potato Famine, and the Easter Rising. He would often recite lines from poems or suddenly break into “Danny Boy,” in his famously painful yet endearing, tone-deaf voice. Even when we were very young, it was clear to all of us how much Ireland meant to my father. Likewise his relatives back in Galway thought much of our Dad’s success as an educator and politico back in the states. Upon a visit to his Uncle Pat’s home in the early ’80’s my older sisters witnessed a whole wall of photographs featuring JBD with various political luminaries including John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey.
One of the highlights during his period as the President of the University of Lowell was the benefit of having celebrity guests dine at our house where our good friend at U Lowell Ernie Kagnas, may he rest in peace, presided with joy over the kitchen during these special functions. All the staff were happy to work for JBD because he was kind to everybody, no matter if you were on the food service staff or a guest of honor. Everybody liked to come to our house because of the graciousness of our parents and the sense of celebration and friendship that they generated.
On one occasion, we had the great Irish actor Milo O’Shea to dinner, and on another, the poet Seamus Heaney. Both Irish guests were an absolute delight for my father; a bit of the old country coming home to him. Dad was the kind of man who was able to bask in the glow of these kinds of privileges, to enjoy them thoroughly, and engage everybody around him to do the same. He appreciated his life and his appreciation was infectious.
After JBD graduated from Our Lady of the Valley high school here in South Orange and went off to Fordham University in 1949, a new life began for him. He served in the United States Army from 1953 to 1955. He must have picked up some marching songs there because whenever we went for a hike with him he would invariably break into:
“Don’t you listen to him Dan,
He’s a devil not a man,
And he fills the burning sands with water; cool, clear water…
Old Dan and I with throats burnt dry
And souls that cry for water,
Cool, clear water.”
We laughed every time he told us he was “a cook in the army,” because anybody who knew my father knows that cooking wasn’t in his repertoire. Later, he would become a gourmand, a lover of all varieties of food, taking pleasure in sampling the foods of the many countries to which he traveled. He was either cunning or just lucky to have married our Italian mother who, as it turned out, became one of the best cooks any of us or our friends has ever known. It was a coup for my Dad, considering the odd culinary scene at his childhood home in the Valley. I’ve gleaned that Wonder Bread, milk and canned goods were the mainstay at Central Place.
After he received his B.A. from Fordham, he received his masters from Seton Hall University followed by a PhD from Columbia University, all in history. By 1955, he had married and started a family with our mother. That’s where we came in.
It’s a tribute to my parents that the best memories of our family were formed around the dinner table. We all had a voice at the table. This is where our father asked us about what we were doing in school, and what we thought about certain things that were going on in the world. My parents discussed local and national politics here and we soaked up their views, their innate fairness and Democratic perspective, particularly during 1968 when my father ran for the NJ Congress on an anti-war platform; or during any of the Democratic campaigns that were important to my parents.
Inevitably the talk would turn to some family story. “Tell the one about Johnny and Robbie having the knockdown, drag-out fight at Sequoia National Forest,” somebody would say. “Or when John gave Gram-Dandy directions in the car at age 4; or that time the Country Squire broke down coming back from the Cape; or the one about Patty beating Toni Hope in the track meet; or when we found out Emily was born!”
We loved the family stories and my father was funny the way he told them. It was apparent he enjoyed all of it, as did my mother who, by the way, has a great laugh, which egged him on. At some point, after Emily was born, my father would stop everybody talking and say: “And now the Bay has something to say!” And Em would stand up in her high chair, hands on hips, and say something completely precocious and hilarious, and we all roared.
My father was the oldest of four brothers, Tommy, Joseph and Peter, may they all rest in peace, who were very much main characters in many of the family stories that we told. Christmas-time visits to our Uncle Tommy and Aunt Ginnie’s house in South Orange and the bedlam that ensued there, with our five Duff cousins leading the shenanigans, were always memorable. I remember Uncle Tommy reciting Shakespeare after a cocktail or two, and Joseph, who was mentally disabled and an insatiable pop music lover, listening to Cousin Brucie on his 200th transistor radio, and who shouted “Heal!” after we said grace or had a toast at dinner, a tradition that Reen has kept tried and true. And then there was Peter, the kind and boyish savant who kept detailed diaries of the Duff family genealogy, idolized his big brother John, and had a sweet place in his heart for all of us. This is all in the Duff canon.
My father was a Yankees fan and a Jets fan, but also rooted for the teams in the cities wherever he lived. Somewhere he is smiling about the Red Sox winning the World Series; he loved Boston and there are so many friends from Massachusetts that certainly loved him, too.
He coached his kids in youth leagues for baseball and football, and at track and field events, and showed obvious pride whenever any of his children excelled at a sport. He could recite the narrative poem “Casey at the Bat” from memory and was a casual connoisseur of fine wine. He loved Woody Allen movies and “Upstairs Downstairs” and “Sherlock Holmes.” He was an excellent poker player and had a long-running game with his fellow professors at Seton Hall and later at U Lowell. Later in life, he thoroughly enjoyed winning pretty regularly at the casinos near his Palm Desert digs.
JBD was always stylish and was the only man of his size that could pull off the favorite pink blazer in summer, bright red wool jacket at Christmas, and a variety of colorful argyle sweaters and socks.
He was a man who could remember everything he ever read, could beat all of us handily at Scrabble, and told us the pond near our Cape Cod house in Dennisport was “John B. Duff Lake,” and we sort of believed him.
He was affectionate toward all of us.
We often heard my father’s famous line: “The next time he tells you that, you tell him …” He never finished the line, of course. It was for us to finish. It was for us to follow his lead as a person of self-respect and resolute confidence. It was my father’s complete confidence in his abilities, along with his open-minded generosity toward all people, which made him special. My siblings and I have often remarked on the amazing audacity of JBD, who we sometimes fittingly called “The Big Guy.” He wasn’t afraid of anything. He had complete and utter certainty that he could become the first lay Provost of Seton Hall University, the first president of the University of Lowell, the first chancellor of higher education in Massachusetts and the first non-librarian to become Commissioner of the Chicago Public Library. Build the largest public library in the world in a major metropolitan city? Why not? Turn Columbia College Chicago from a small urban non-residential school to a major residential arts college? Sure, no problem.
But, beyond all these accomplishments is the singular aspect of my father’s personality that surprised those who met him, befriended him or became his colleagues. Mary Claire Mathews, a member of his staff at both Chicago Public Library and Columbia College Chicago, summed up this quality so well when she said, “His spirit of generosity was unmatched, he was always reaching back to pull others up, attending to those in need and providing support and assistance whenever he could. He connected with people, he cared and he made a difference. That's what made him exceptional.”
He loved those colleagues closest to him and often brought staff with him from one job to another, as he did Ms. Mathews, an African American whom he once had to defend against the racist behavior of some of his staff, whom he promptly fired.
There are so many friends and colleagues for whom he made a difference and who were important to my father; too many to mention here. But one colleague who must be mentioned is his faithful, right-hand man Roger Schinness, who passed away earlier this year, may he rest in peace, and who remained a close and dear friend to Dad and to the entire family from the early days at Seton Hall all the way through to Chicago and beyond.
Finally, my father was delighted and proud to be “Grandpa” to the eight children who will carry on his legacy. Claudia, Nicky, Henry, Casey, Charlotte, Madelaine, Emma and Kathryn have always been in his heart. He loved spending time with them all and showed each of them great affection in the time he knew them before he fell into the fog of Alzheimers.
JBD was a kind soul with a large heart and great sense of humor. We all loved him very much and will miss him forever.
Rest in peace, Dad.
Thank you all very much for coming to Seton Hall for this tribute and for helping us to honor John B. Duff. The Big Guy would have loved this.
