T he B oston C ollege
Chronicle march 1, 2012
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A funeral Mass was celebrated last Friday at St. Ignatius Church for Rev. Edward M. O’Flaherty, SJ, who served the Society of Jesus, Boston College and the Archdiocese of Boston in a variety of leadership and teaching roles. Fr. O’Flaherty died of a brain tumor on Feb. 21 at Campion Center in Weston. He was 78. Fr. O’Flaherty joined BC in 1967 as a member of the Sociology Department, leaving in 1970 to become rector of the community at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif. He went on to serve as provincial of the New England Province from 1979 to 1985, and following a sabbatical in Paris, was president of Weston School of Theology from 1986 until 1992. At that time, the Archdiocese of Boston asked Fr. O’Flaherty to become director of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs and to head the Office of Pastoral Support of Priests, working especially with recently ordained clergy. He returned to residence at St. Mary’s
Lee Pellegrini
Fr. O’Flaherty, Former Trustee
Hall on the Boston College campus, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Fr. O’Flaherty served Boston College as a University trustee from 1986-94 and 1996 until 2004. He was a trustee associate in 1995-96 and again from 2004 until his death. He also served as assistant rector and community treasurer while living in the BC Jesuit community. —Reid Oslin
A memorial service will be held on campus later this spring for Professor Emeritus Andrew Buni, who taught courses in American history at Boston College for 38 years until his retirement in 2006. Dr. Buni died on Feb. 12 at age 80. Dr. Buni’s courses covered a wide range of the American experience and reflected his own life interests and concerns: immigration, AfricanAmericans, sports, and the city of Boston. His class on Boston’s neighborhoods was one of the University’s most popular courses. Dr. Buni earned a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of New Hampshire in 1958 after serving in the US Army, a master’s from UNH the following year and a doctorate from the University of Virginia in 1965. He joined the BC faculty as an assistant professor in 1968 and was promoted to full professor in 1975.
Lee Pellegrini
Andrew Buni, Historian
Former History chairman Professor Peter Weiler said Dr. Buni’s interest and concern extended to his colleagues in addition to his many students. “When I was chair, Andy would tell me every year that I should not increment his salary, but that I should give the money to the ‘kids,’ as he called the junior faculty. It was a remarkably generous action.” —Reid Oslin
Rita Mullen, CSOM Staff A funeral Mass was said in St. Ignatius Church on Feb. 22 for Rita S. (Donovan) Mullen, who worked as a full- and parttime staff assistant in the Carroll School of Management Business Law Department for more than 30 years. Mrs. Mullen died on Feb. 18. Mrs. Mullen was the fulltime secretary in the department from 1981 until her retirement in 1998, after which she worked
there as a part-time staff assistant until last June. Mrs. Mullen was succeeded in the position by her daughter, Kathy Kyratzoglou. In addition to her daughter Kathy, Mrs. Mullen is survived by daughters Susan Corcoran, Michelle Bloch, Regina Lavelle and son Joseph L. Mullen III, and eight grandchildren, including Ioannis Kyratzoglou, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. —Reid Oslin
Founder of ‘Pops on Heights’ Fundraiser Dies Continued from page 1 turing an on-campus concert by the Boston Pops Orchestra for students, families, alumni and friends of the school. The event has raised more than $19 million in financial aid assistance for deserving Boston College students since its start in 1993. “Jim was on the first majority lay Board of Trustees in 1972,” said Boston College Chancellor J. Donald Monan, SJ, who was University president when Mr. Cleary was appointed. “Forty years later, he remained a trustee associate. I really feel that he has been one of the most dedicated members of the board – dedicated to the University in so many ways. He was dedicated not only to the oversight of the activities by the board, but in a very special way in bringing a coherence and a sense of community to the entire board. He has been very important in that.” “Jim Cleary was the father of modern fund-raising at Boston College,” said John M. Connors Jr. ’63, Hon. ’07, former chairman of Boston College’s Board of Trustees, who served with Mr. Cleary on the board for many years. “He was just a prodigious fund-raiser. He loved life. “There are a lot of people who have achieved success, but then pulled the ladder up after them,” Connors added. “But Jim loved helping other people. He loved young people and he loved being an advisor or mentor to them. He loved BC and created ‘Pops on the Heights’ in a way that allowed the money to go to scholarships. He was very proud of the success of that.” More than 700 Boston
Lee Pellegrini
o b i t u a r ies
James F. Cleary was “the father of modern fund-raising at Boston College,” said John M. Connors Jr., who served with him on the Board of Trustees for many years.
College undergraduate scholarships have been generated by the Pops event. Born in Boston in 1925, Mr. Cleary attended Boston Latin School before entering the Navy on his 17th birthday in 1942. After serving in the Pacific during World War II, Mr. Cleary returned home in 1946 and enrolled at Boston College under the GI Bill. After graduation in 1950 with a degree in business administration, Mr. Cleary went on to a successful career in corporate finance, becoming president of Blyth Eastman Dillon & Co. in New York and managing director of UBS in Boston. Mr. Cleary was appointed to the University Board of Trustees in 1972, and served in that role until 1996. He became a University trustee associate in 1997, a position he held until his
death. As a trustee, he chaired Boston College’s development committee and helped to incorporate a number of innovative fund-raising incentives, including the Fides and President’s Circle societies as well as the highly-acclaimed Pops event. He was chair of the University’s development committee for 22 years. Mr. Cleary also was a lifetime trustee of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and was active in a number of other charities, including the American Cancer Society, the Inner City Scholarship Fund, the American Ireland Fund and the Boston Public Library Foundation. Mr. Cleary and his wife Barbara made one of Boston College’s first million dollar commitments to establish the James F. Cleary Chair in Finance in the Carroll School of Management. In 2000, BC established the James F. Cleary “Masters” Award that is given annually to a fund-raising volunteer who best exemplified the creativity, dedication and leadership shown by Mr. Cleary over the years. In addition to his wife of 50 years, Mr. Cleary is survived by the couple’s three children, Kara Lyn Cleary, James F. Cleary Jr. and Kristin Welo, and four grandchildren. Mr. Cleary and his family also had homes in Palm Beach, Fla. and Osterville, Mass. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Massachusetts General Hospital Parkinson’s Care and Research Unit in Boston. —Reid Oslin
Forum to Discuss Turkey, Arab Spring The complex relationship between Turkey’s political and religious interests, and Turkey’s impact on the “Arab Spring,” will be among the issues in focus at a conference on March 16 at Boston College. “Islam and Democracy: A Closer Look at the Turkish Model,” which will be held in Gasson 112 and is free and open to the public, consists of three panel discussions: “Islam and Politics in Turkey,” “Turks Abroad: Political and Religious Interests” and “Turkey and the Arab Spring.” “A lot of eyes are on Turkey in the wake of the Arab Spring, and what it holds for the future of state-religion relationships in the Muslim world,” said conference co-organizer Associ-
ate Professor of Political Science Jonathan Laurence, who will be on the “Turks Abroad” panel. “Turkey has held itself up as a model for reconciling Islam and democracy, so it is a fascinating case study in and of itself. “At the same time, Turkey is undergoing social and political changes of its own,” explained Laurence, who praised the efforts of his co-organizers, Islamic Studies and Societies Program Associate Director Adjunct Associate Professor Kathleen Bailey and Erik Owens, associate director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. “Many observers wonder what direction Turkey will go, and how its long tradition of balancing Islam and democracy may be affected.”
Highlighting the event will be a keynote address by Scott Alexander, director of the Catholic-Muslim Studies Program at Catholic Theological Union. Alexander has authored articles on Islamic history and religion and Christian-Muslim Relations in scholarly journals, edited collections and encyclopedias. His most recent book project is on the contradiction between religious claims to universal truth and the religiously motivated desire to impose this truth on others as a means of political and cultural domination. For more information, and to register for the conference, go to www.bc.edu/boisi. —Sean Smith