-
-
Reverend Dom Damian Kearney of the Order of St. Benedict, who died September 8, 2016, was born Allan Peter Kearney on November 28, 1928, in Rockville Center, Long Island, N.Y, the son of Edward and Louise Keefe Kearney. Fr. Damian had five brothers and a sister, of whom his brothers David and Andrew survive him, along with many nephews and nieces.
Father Damian entered Portsmouth Priory School in the First Form in 1940, graduating early as a Fifth Former in 1945 because of the war. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University in 1949 before entering the monastery in 1950. Fr. Damian was ordained to the priesthood sixty years ago on May 26, 1956.
A much beloved and dedicated educator, Fr. Damian taught in the English Department for over fifty years, serving as Chairman from 1974 to 1988. In addition, he was the House Master of the largest boys' dormitory, St. Benet's House from 1960 to 1974.
Fr. Damian's services to the monastery were significant and varied. He was Prior of the monastery and thus acting Superior whenever the Abbot was away from 1974 to 1990. He has been nearly a permanent member of the Abbot's advisory Council since 1964. He has directed the monastic education of the Novices and Junior monks, and most recently has been Director of Oblates.
Throughout all he has been our monastic Historian and Archivist. He was interested in everything and everyone and was a man of great loyalty and devotion to the School and Abbey, to his beloved Yale University and to all things beautiful, such as fine art, literature (especially Shakespeare), and his gardens. He gave himself unstintingly to all that he did. This quotation from his ordination card has informed his entire life, "One thing have I asked the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life."
-
-
-
Excerpts from Christopher Buckley’s ’70 tribute to Father Damian at the Yale Club in New York – May 2006
During my time at Portsmouth, I came to know various Fathers Damian.
The first, of course, was the figure of Ultimate Authority – God’s warden here on earth. His opening line, at least in my case, generally consisted of, “Buckley, this room is a dis-grace.” Another of Fr. Damian’s talents was that he could stretch out the word ‘disgrace’ to five, sometimes six syllables. He is not a physically towering person, but he seemed pretty towering even to the tallest of us.
The second Fr. Damian I came to know was in the classroom. I knew that I was being taught by, as it were, an homme serieux.
I recall it all vividly: Fr. Damian standing at the blackboard, the sleeves of his black cassock frosted with chalk dust, scrawling furiously about some finer point of Tom Jones, then wheeling like a Benedictine dervish and barking, “Buckley, what three aspects distinguish the 18th century English novel?”
I would venture an answer, usually pitiful. He would stare with a sort of half-smile – at least, on a good day – and say, “Put a big X through that answer.”
The third Fr. Damian I came to know was a sort of mentor, even friend, who took a kind interest in my jejune efforts at fiction writing. I’d submitted a short story to the Raven. It didn’t win a Pulitzer, but it did appear in the Raven. A few days later, there was a knock-open of my door and in swept Fr. Damian, holding a copy of that month’s Raven. I braced.
But he was grinning. “Ah, Buckley,” he said, “I’ve read your story. It’s not bad. But let me show you a few things.” We sat down, and he showed me: an infelicity of phrase here, a too-long sentence there, the word “very” – one of his signature vexations, along with the word “nice.” How he hated those two words. If you wanted to get Fr. Damian’s goat, all you had to do was tell him you thought something was “Very nice.”
To many of us, Fr. Damian is Portsmouth Abbey.
Transcribed from an article in Portsmouth Abbey School: Summer Bulletin 2007.
-