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Retired English teacher J. Desmond "Des" Corcoran passed away this morning after a fall. He was 74. His McDonogh career spanned 35 memorable years.

A colleague once described the beloved Irishman this way: "In the eyes of Des Corcoran, one sees the soul of a great teacher--twinkle, tears, unflinching, caring--it's there in those eyes--that tell his students of his understanding and his compassion and his faith. They are the eyes that have seen hardship and misery and that know well the strength of the human spirit."

John Desmond Corcoran was born on October 3, 1935, in "the original Dundalk," Ireland. He attended University College in Dublin, majoring in English/Irish literature and minoring in math and Latin. Des taught in Northern Ireland before traveling to Nigeria, where he met his beloved wife, Kathie. She was serving in the Peace Corps, and he was volunteering with Catholic Charities. Des volunteered and traveled in Africa for five years.

Emigrating to the U.S. in June 1966, Des followed Kathie to her native West Virginia. That fall, the newlyweds arrived at McDonogh, where Des had been hired to teach English and coach varsity soccer and track.

McDonogh was the beneficiary of a state law that prevented public schools from hiring an immigrant like Des Corcoran. Students came to treasure him. In addition to his delightful brogue, Des had a way about him that made his "lads" feel valued.

And the school community valued him in return. Des Corcoran received every major honor there was to be given. The alumni association bestowed its Alumni Service Award on Des in 1992 and made him an honorary alumnus in 2001. In 1998, he became the first recipient of the Howard C. "Dutch" Eyth Endowed Teaching Chair.

"My first priority in teaching is to make each student feel that he is an individual with dignity and self-worth," Des once reflected. "I still believe that the school exists for the child and strive to create in my classroom a friendly, tolerant, if at times demanding, atmosphere."

Before McDonogh had learning specialists, the school had Des. He subscribed to poet Yeats's view of education as "not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." While he taught McDonogh's top students with passion, he favored those who struggled. "This group of students is very special to me," he wrote. As a member of the Orton Dyslexia Society, he tried to be sensitive to their persistent frustrations and sought to help them learn in different ways, giving them plenty of encouragement in the process.

A colleague once called Des Corcoran "a human appliance repairman, sharing with his wife Kathie an abiding faith in basic human goodness and searching to affirm that belief through their direct, sensitive, common-sense guidance."

Des appreciated his colleagues as much as he loved his students. "Working on a dedicated, demanding, and self-sacrificing faculty is inspirational and has prevented me from becoming blase. Over the years I have seen how my three children have benefited from the efforts of this faculty wearing its many hats of teacher, adviser, coach, counselor, mentor, and friend."

His best friend was wife and colleague Kathie, and theirs was a partnership for the ages. A former staff member described the couple as "the perfect example of the sum being greater than its parts." Their personal and professional lives often blended, particularly when Des sought ways to enliven inherently boring material. He wrote, "Kathie has such stimulating ideas that I found myself singing an 18th century Dublin ballad to my AP students recently--and in a Dublin accent!"

The Corcorans loved to travel and both specialized in literature from other cultures. Des, of course, loved the work of Joyce, Yeats, Heaney, and others from his native country. Like any true scholar, however, he found joy in uncovering new literary treasures, particularly if they revealed an unfamiliar way of life or a pivotal time in a country's history.

One of his pet peeves was having to assign grades. "I have never been comfortable with the fact that the grades I give students' work will have some bearing on the students' college prospects. I prefer the British system where student and teacher are on the same side, and some anonymous, back-room ogre sits in final judgment."

Coaching gave Des freedom from the subjective evaluations he so loathed. For 25 years, he oversaw the track and field program, keeping detailed records of performances. "By dangling these marks before the student athletes," Des wrote, "I have always promoted the ideal of achieving a personal best in each competition. ...I have never sought victory at the expense of individual commitment, team spirit, or sportsmanship."

Before he retired, Des delighted in the opportunity to teach students in the Foundations Program and to ready them for the rigors of upper school. "Now with my Foundations students," he wrote, "I feel like a coach again--teaching, encouraging, preparing, even mentoring, but not grading!"

Des and Kathie Corcoran also forged relationships with students in the boarding community, which deepened when they became parents to Brendan '85, Sean '91, and Niamh '93. The family moved into the yellow farmhouse at #1 Farm Road in 1977 and lived there until 1999.

"Visitors described the yellow farmhouse as 'quaint' and 'charming,' but I always felt its magic and knew that its front walk had to be made into a yellow brick road. I found the yellow bricks dumped down at the dam and laid my new walkway ... Kathie and I shelled peas together on the front porch and visited with alumni, who, driving past, would stop and sit. But on campus parents' nights or on snow days, the kitchen bulged with energy and happy laughter," Des wrote in McDonogh magazine, after the house was demolished in 2000.

Des retired in 2001, but he remained close to the place where he spent most of his life. He and Kathie nurtured a plot in the Roots garden in 2009 and 2010, even though Des had to leave the more vigorous chores to others.

In the 2009 "Roots" issue of the school magazine, Des revealed in print his incomparable ability for storytelling one last time. His tales of the competitive, pre-Roots faculty gardens left readers chuckling.

Des's knowledge of gardening and literature was legendary, but he was a self-proclaimed "dodo bird" when it came to laptop technology. He cheerfully admitted that he flunked the laptop instruction class for faculty and had to attend tutoring sessions. He feared he might have to learn to email his attendance and did not want to incur the secretary's wrath.

Des Corcoran remained a grateful member of the McDonogh commmunity. "Over the years McDonogh School has been very good to me and to my family. I have never been cynical about the concept of the McDonogh Family and am proud to be a member of it."