On behalf of my mother, my brother and sisters, the brothers and sisters of my parents, cousins, nieces and nephews, and especially his grandchildren, I want to thank all of you for your presence here and for your many prayers for the soul of my father over the past several days. I would also like to thank you for the many stories about my father through the years.
He usually gave me quite verbose advice on any and all subjects, except for his own eulogy. He simply said, “Tell those present to pray for my soul, and for all the souls in Purgatory.” And since good writers borrow and great writers steal, I went to the well and reread the eulogies he gave for his parents.
For his father’s eulogy he said, “I have noticed that it has become customary at funerals to tell funny stories about the deceased. It breaks up the sadness and the solemnity of the funeral and I have no objections to that.” But he did object to instant canonization, he worried that it robbed a soul of ongoing, needed prayers. So I won’t canonize him. Besides, I knew him too well.
As a man with many friends and connections Dad went to many funerals. He would often spend a good amount of time after a burial going to the graves of deceased friends and saying prayers for them. He also insisted upon the care of widows and orphans in the months and years after the emotions of a funeral had passed. Please, continue to remember our mother in the months and years to follow with your prayers, calls, and visits. Pray for him, pray for our mother, pray for our family.
Joseph McPherson was born on June 2, 1948 at St. Margaret’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts to Joseph and Mary McPherson. He was an immediate media sensation, featured at the age of 3 in the Boston Globe as the first customer at the newly opened South Boston Police Station, after he had wandered away. Wandering might be a theme. He enhanced his media brand by winning a quiz bowl competition broadcast on local television in the 8th grade. Public intellectual might be a theme.
Dad met Mom at Cardinal Spellman High School in Brockton, Mass., City of Champions. I recall our grandmother laughing when I asked about what they were like in high school. “Joe was too shy to ask her to prom!”
When I asked mom about it, she said, “I loved him at first sight.” For Christmas I got them a set of glasses. His said “Mr. Right”, hers said “Mrs. Always Right.” She said two days ago while looking at the glass, “He was my Mr. Right.”
Dad was all set to go to the U.S. Naval Academy when he received a generous scholarship to attend Harvard, where he rowed crew and studied political science. He rowed at Henley and was able to tour Europe, racing against various European Olympic teams. On one picture of him rowing is handwritten “Paddlin’ Madlyn home.” The lyrics of a song at the time.
After college Dad went to the Philippines to study economics at the Center for Research and Communications, now the University of Asia and the Pacific in Manila. The Philippines and the Filipino people have held a special place in his heart ever since. During this time our mother taught at a parochial school in Hawaii.
In 1972 Dad began teaching at The Heights under the first headmaster Dr. Bob Jackson. He had met Dr. Jackson at Harvard and they became dear friends. On September 8, 1973 our parents wed. I was born in June 1974, and my sister Liz soon after.
Dad began attending Georgetown Law School at night as The Heights was always on tenuous financial grounds and he and my mother had a growing family. By the time he had finished Law School, Catherine and Joe had joined us. Eschewing the practice of law, my father succeeded Dr. Jackson as headmaster after leading the development of The Heights’s Potomac campus and overseeing the integration of the lower and upper schools there.
Our mother was, and continued to be throughout their marriage, the essential foundation for his work as an educator. With the addition of Mary and Anne, our parents raised six children, and many more “guests” on a shoestring budget.
Mom always admired Dad as a teacher and as a leader, despite frustrations with the organizations he worked with and for. Once, when playing a game of “what if” with my sons, her answer to the question, “what if you won the Lottery?” was, “I would build Dominion Hall for your Opa.” (Dominion Hall was a recent dream of Dad’s for a Catholic Boarding school in Central Virginia.) There was such a sweet honesty to her answer, and it wasn’t the only time we had heard her wistful admiration for his vocation. She often said, “He is a great teacher.” As an outstanding teacher herself, firstly of us, her children, and secondly for hundreds of her own English literature students, hers was no faint praise. I think that she was the Platonic Ideal of our father’s insistence that parents are the primary educators.
Saint Pope John Paul II said that “The best gift a parent can give a child is a sibling.” The generative and generous love of our parents left me with an embarrassment of riches in this regard. What happens when Mr. Right and Mrs. Always Right have children? Siblings who are Intellectually Curious, Gregarious, Cheerful, Stubborn, dedicated to family, dedicated to service, dedicated to each other, and with great cheekbones.
Our parents cared about our success in this world, but more so they consciously sought to raise children who wanted to engage the world and make it a better place. And in this they have done well.
Dad was very proud of his children and grandchildren. G.K. Chesterton wrote, “There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.” He took great interest in our interests, our passions, our curiosity. He developed an innovative style of photojournalism for his progeny’s exploits that was a mix of the Dada Movement and Impressionism. We call it “Dada Blurryism.”
Because his vocation was teaching, that meant we had to share him. It wasn’t always easy, but it was an honor to be the first among thousands.
And to see that his favorite students were often his most difficult students, gave us some leeway.
If you know about his love of nature, of flowers and trees, of leaves and forests, rocks and rivers, you know that he insisted on identifying their genus and species, while in the context of the beauty of God’s Creation. I think this was a metaphor for how he educated and mentored, not only students, but other teachers.
Dad would want to know:
Who are you as an individual child of God?
What is the best soil for you to thrive?
How much light? How much rain?
Should I raise my voice and trigger adrenaline?
Should I joke? Should I tease?
Should I coax? Should I compel?
Apparently, many of us needed adrenaline.
He was grateful for God’s creation and for his vocation.
Again, to quote Chesterton,
“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought. And that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
Wonder and gratitude were evident in his avocation – which was poetry.
J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about the origin of poetry in a culture:
“But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while they still endure for eyes to see, are their own witness, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song.”
While alive our father was his own witness to bliss and glad life, he was a witness to the works and institutions, such as Avalon and Brookewood, fair and wonderful, that he was instrumental in developing and nurturing to endure for eyes to see.
Since his passing, his song, the poem of his life, has begun to emerge in streams of comments, posts, emails, calls and conversations. He has turned into a song, all these stories and anecdotes, weaving together into a chorus of his legend. As his song grows:
- Exaggeration will not be discouraged.
- And “fabulations” are allowed if they contain Poetic Truth.
One of his favorite quotes was from St. Iranaeus who said that “The Glory of God is a man Fully Alive.” Joseph McPherson was fully alive. His life and work gave glory to God. Keep him in your prayers, keep our mother in your prayers. He was well loved. We will miss him. We take solace in the fact that now he knows who really wrote Shakespeare.
James McPherson 