Neil Was...A Passionate Teacher
I wanted to list this quality first. I recognize that many things mattered to him - family, cultural identity, politics, religion, poetry, and all the rest - and that, at a given moment he might have said that any one of them was the most important part of his life. But as far as I saw, day after day, around the clock, he was consistently passionate about teaching young people, and shepherding them in whatever way he could. Many people I knew, including other gifted teachers, cared, but for Neil, caring about those whom he taught was a vocation.
His teaching (some may have thought of it more as coaching) was not limited to classrooms. I first experienced it over pizza in the Alibi, after watching a dreadful basketball game go the wrong way. I experienced it on a weekend afternoon as I helped wash his '63 Ambassador sedan. I can imagine that others experienced it playing half-court basketball sessions in a sun-baked schoolyard. I doubt that I ever knew another teacher who sought out and pursued so many out-of-classroom opportunities to teach.
*
Irish (duh)
Yes, believe it or not, Neil O'Doherty was Irish. He was not once-a-year "Hey, look at my green hair!" Irish; he was Irish at his core, and he bled green.
I think that the family into which he was born differed fundamentally from many Irish-American families, who were too far removed from the Old Sod to feel the old wounds keenly. The O'Doherty ancestors had weathered the Famine of the nineteenth century without emigrating. His parents left their homeland for America only after first living through the grim times of the 1916 Easter Rebellion. Judging by Neil, I suspect that his siblings all felt the scars of Ireland's history.
In the 1960s, typical Irish-Americans his age might grow vaguely sentimental when listening to Bing Crosby's de-politicized version of the ballad Galway Bay. Neil, in contrast, would let loose his tenor vocal chords with God Bless Ireland, an in-your-face anthem from the Easter Rebellion era that dangles in front of its listeners the vision of a British noose - as bait, daring them to rise up and risk martyrdom. The Irish pain which he felt went back past the Rebellion, even past the Famine. I recall his voice's quivering as he spoke of the torture inflicted upon Irish patriots by Cromwell's forces, during the seventeenth-century Conquest of Ireland.
Neil's being Irish was not always about suffering and grief. He could demonstrate pride, as when he compared the respective abilities of contemporary world-stage tenors Enrico Caruso and John McCormack, or while objectively praising a poem by William Butler Yeats.
Although a devout Catholic, at times Neil showed little respect for the Irish-blooded Americans (most of them descended from Famine immigrants) who had risen to the upper tier of the country's Roman Catholic clergy. For example, he invariably referred to Francis J. Spellman, then Cardinal and Archbishop of New York, simply as Fat Frank.
*
Conservative
Mugging for the 1972 Comet Yearbook
Editorial, New York Daily News
February 26, 1962
In 1962, four New Yorkers met in the Queens home of Neil's parents, and established the Conservative Party of New York. Among the four were Neil's brother Kieran O'Doherty (eldest of Neil's generation), their sister Kathleen, and her husband, J. Daniel Mahoney. The party they founded that day went on to impressive and swift success. It soon garnered more votes than the once-powerful Liberal Party, relegating the latter to a lower position on the ballot. In 1970, James Buckley, a Conservative Party candidate, would win a seat in the U.S. Senate.
New York Daily News
December 6, 1982
*
Catholic
As the earlier reference to Fat Frank suggests, Neil's attitude towards Catholicism could be quirky.
He was a traditionalist. His unshakeable faith was bolstered by his studies, specifically the theological roots that took hold in the Early Christian era and grew stronger during the medieval period. He subscribed without question to the teachings embodied in formal Papal Encyclicals (a series of Popes' open letters, begun in 1740, which elaborate upon the Church's teaching in the light of contemporary issues).
I suppose that his faith was what led him to philosophy. He took great joy from reading and discussing the writings of Thomas Aquinas - medieval philosopher, theologian, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, and Saint - specifically the arguments based on the Metaphysics of Aristotle.
The 1960s brought new ideas and external changes to Roman Catholicism. Neil was uncomfortable, critical, and skeptical. He was certain that the core of his belief would not change, but he understood humanity well enough to know that changes can lead to fads, and that fads distract people. Instead of trying to better understand church doctrine, and figuring out how to meet people's needs in the 1960s, people might get caught up in worrying about rotating an altar 180 degrees, or how to fit a "church-in-the-round" arrangement of altar and pews into an old boxy church building. I often heard Neil dismiss such concerns as Pollyanna-Kiss-Your-Neighbor Catholicism.
*
Ready to Laugh
I was surprised by some of the things which he found funny. Neil would reminisce about practical jokes from his Army days, some of which seemed as feeble as short-sheeting someone's bed at summer camp. On the other hand, I recall two people whom he and I both found genuinely funny.
The first was Hillaire Belloc, a prolific writer, member of British Parliament, brilliant debater, and man of great stamina (e.g., Belloc once walked all the way from the U.S. Midwest to northern California, earning his room and board along the way by drawing portraits of his farmer hosts, and by reciting poetry).
Among Belloc's many, many witty verses are
Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.
and
Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.
The second person whose work we both enjoyed was a performer known as Lou Carter. He was the creation of someone in the music business, at the time rumored to be an arranger or a jazz musician. Onstage or on television, he would dress as a 1940s cab driver, and perform the songs he supposedly had written between his shifts in the cab.
amazon.com
What mattered most about the songs were the lyrics, which exhibited an exceptional flair for the use and abuse of language. Neil's favorites included If I had a Nose Full of Nickels and the incomparable Lost Elbows. The latter builds in a crescendo, and concludes with the haunting words "until my elbows... are back... in my arrrrrrmms."
*
A Debater
If people believe in absolute truth, and believe that they know some piece of it, they will ardently defend their belief against anyone who does not share it. That was Neil.
Adept in debate, he was not above showboating, and could get carried away in the heat of however long a moment a debate gave him. He took perhaps too much pleasure in (to use one of his favorite words) decimating opponents. Woe unto the foes who debated Neil unprepared, or were not nimble enough defend their own positions as Neil changed tactics. Among Neil's supporters, such people might become known as "intellectual lightweights" or "peanut pushers" (i.e., people whose minds lacked the fitness to deploy weighty arguments).
I've always wondered why such debates seem significant. After all, to be a great debater does not make one a great thinker, anymore than being a great actor makes one a great playwright. Thomas Aquinas did not earn Neil's respect for coming up with, say, a five-minute metaphysical argument on the spot - he spent years in research and thought. Aquinas is known for constructing arguments that could persuade those who held opposing viewpoints, not for trouncing them in debates, and leaving them flattened like Wiley Coyote under an anvil.
***
