Monan, at a May 1996 event in Conte Forum marking his retirement.
The children were raised within a close extended family. Edward Monan Sr. was one of nine children whose parents had emigrated from the rural Ards Peninsula, in Northern Ireland’s County Down, in 1870, prospering as grocers in Buffalo’s Irish First Ward. Monan recalled in a 2009 interview that his American family was fond of singing—Monan himself was a deft tenor—and of storytelling, and often talked about life in “Portaferry.” Monan later came to know and cherish Portaferry and its environs, which he visited following completion of doctoral studies in Europe in the late 1950s. “One of the most moving experiences of my life,” he said of his first glimpse of the Monan family farm on a spit of green land overlooking the Irish Sea. He developed and for all his life maintained friendships with relatives who remained in Ireland. Don Monan was first educated in Our Mother of Good image: Pat Greenhouse / Boston Globe
Counsel parish school, in Blasdell, staffed by the Sisters of St. Joseph. He recalled that there were fewer than half a dozen students in his grade, and that three rooms sufficed to house eight classes. But, he said, “We were wonderfully trained.” As with other promising Catholic boys of his generation (and of generations ranging back to the late 16th century), Monan was ushered into a world far wider than his birthplace courtesy of the Society of Jesus, first via a scholarship proffered by Canisius High School, in Buffalo. Fond of sports all his life, Monan played goalie on Canisius’s ice hockey team or, as he termed it, “Canisius’s championship ice hockey team.” In the summer of 1942, at age 17, shortly after graduating from high school, he determined to enter the Society of Jesus. He had been offered a college scholarship and was considering becoming a teacher or doctor. He joined the Society, he once said, because “I was so impressed spr i ng 20 1 7 v bcm
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