Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Legend and tradition say that St. Patrick used t
he image of the shamrock to illustrate and explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity to the Irish. It’s a wonderful image- three distinctive parts from one stem together forming something lovely. If the saint were alive today, he may have used the same image to describe three of my cousins, siblings from the same New York City Irish Catholic family who each lived beautiful but individual lives.
Stephen Vincent Duffy Jr. (1914-2005), Helen Marie Duffy (1915- 2002), and Edwin Joseph Duffy (1918-1998) were my second cousins. Their father, Stephen Vincent Duffy Sr., was first cousin to my grandmother Florence Duffy O’Brien. Born as children into relative wealth and privilege, the three Duffys lived simple but meaningful adult lives, collectively devoting over 150 years to the service and education of their fellow human beings.
Stephen was the oldest of the trinity, born in Brooklyn in 1914 just as World War I broke out in Europe. His sister Helen Marie followed a year later, and then their brother Edwin arrived in 1918, just as the Great War was ending. They also had four other sisters: Miriam, Florence, Jane, and Constance.
Following in the footsteps of hardworking immigrant Irish grandparents, their father ran a profitable building materials business called J.P. Duffy Company. Eventually, Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley would invest in it, and several of their father’s female cousins would marry prominent New York businessmen, one of whom was close friends with New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth.
Stephen joined the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and was ordained a priest in Brooklyn in 1943. Two years later, he joined the faculty of Regis High School, a prestigious and private boys-only Catholic institution located at 55 E 84th Street in New York City. He lived and taught there for the next 56 years.
Father Stephen taught theology, Latin, and Greek, and oversaw numerous extracurricular and administrative school activities. Yet, he is best remembered for his innovative life lessons. He nicknamed himself the “Bukidnon Bookie” and organized weekly NFL football game pools, with half the take going to the missions in the Bukidnon province in the Philippines. He challenged his students to live F.A.S.T lives, i.e. “Feel, Act, Speak, and Think as Christ would.”
The 1990 school yearbook, dedicated to the man many called “Father Regis,” described how he once introduced himself to a group of new freshmen: “A tall, lanky priest, dressed in black but wearing a golf cap and carrying a golf bag, placed a can in the middle of the auditorium, walked up to the stage, and bet the audience twenty-five cents a person that he could chip a golf ball into the can. The audience laughed and fell silent when he actually did it.” The quarters he collected were sent, of course, to the Philippines.
Stephen’s sister, Helen Marie Duffy, also devoted herself to education. She took final vows in 1938 with the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and spent the next 60 years teaching and ministering to the young women who attended Notre Dame Preparatory School in Towson, Maryland. Over the course of those six decades, she served as the school’s boarding mistress, biology teacher, assistant principal, and/or headmistress.
Under her leadership, the school was known for its academic rigor, focus on global social justice, and family-like community. Sister Helen Marie knew by name each and every student and alumnus of the school, calling them “God’s wonderful work of art.” She adapted the words of the prophet Micah into a personal mission statement, striving to “act justly, love tenderly, walk humbly with” God.
Ever the practical woman, she quadrupled the school’s endowment to well over $2 million, and was known for her uncanny, native New Yorker ability to hail a cab on Fifth Avenue during the school’s annual senior class trip to the Big Apple. Sister Helen Marie embraced the post-Vatican II relaxation of the traditional nun wardrobe, believing it removed an unnecessary barrier to closer friendships with her students. She once said, “When the sisters changed our habits, that made a world of difference. All of sudden you were human.”
Her brother, Edwin Duffy, took a different path than his two siblings. He graduated from Holy Cross College in Massachusetts and then entered the archdiocese’s St. Joseph seminary in Yonkers, New York (nicknamed “Dunwoodie”). Ordained in 1942, he served for three years as a U.S. Army chaplain in the Pacific Theatre during the waning but worst years of World War II.
During the next half century or so, Father Edwin worked in the Catholic trenches as pastor or assistant pastor at over a dozen parishes. He ministered to the basic temporal and spiritual needs of thousands of members of his communities. He helped the poor, educated the young, comforted the sick, married the faithful, and buried the dead. Given recent history, it also must be said that not once was he accused of any abusive behavior towards anyone.
Poor health (Parkinson’s disease) limited his activities during the last eight years of his life when he was confined to a skilled nursing hospital in Port Chester, New York. Eulogizing him during a mass celebrated by Cardinal John O’Conner, a fellow priest and friend noted Edwin’s quiet suffering and said, “He was a saint in our midst although he was not the kind to realize it….He was a wonderful person, very calm, a very spiritual man. He had strong convictions and principles.”
Today, you rarely hear news about the many good works of Catholic priests or nuns, let alone reports about three siblings from the same family devoting themselves to a religious life of service. I am lucky and proud to have my own personal shamrock, a trinity of Irish cousins about whom to tell such stories.
