Bill Finnegan

Remembering Bill Finnegan

Bill was an orig, meaning he had entered St. Joe’s right out of the eighth grade, so he’d already been there two years when I showed up in third high. He was a classy guy, with black curly hair and a square, dark-stubbled jaw.   The rule said your clothes had to be “conservative in style and color” and that you couldn’t have any “faddish haircuts,” but Bill’s hair formed a natural fishhook, or “dink,” over his forehead and he always wore his MacGregor jacket with the collar up, as if to say, “I can’t help it if I’m cool.”  He lived across the hall from me, and on Thursday mornings when we dutifully emptied our wastebaskets and shook out our rugs and dust-mops, I couldn’t help but notice that his room was a lot tidier than the rest.   

In Latin class, Bill seemed to be a favorite of Father Olivier, another classy fellow, who evidently appreciated Bill’s polish as well as his clear tenor choir voice and his translation skills. By the time I arrived, Bill had quite a bit of status in our class, mainly due to the fact that he had been kicked in the ass a year earlier by Father Larry Taylor, our brilliant but surly English professor.  Larry had a bad back and medicated it with a combination of pain pills, bourbon, and swimming. He was coming out of the pool one evening when he overheard Bill doing an imitation of him to a group of his friends.  Coming up behind him, he planted his size 12 shoe right in Bill’s posterior.  The story was recounted many times in our frequent BS sessions, and Bill would always just shake his head and laugh, “Yeah, the son-of-a-bitch scared the shit out of me.”  Years later he clarified one detail for us:  “Actually, I was totally innocent.  It was some other guy doing the imitation and Larry thought it was me.  When I told my confessor, Jack Olivier, about it and asked what I should do, he said, ‘Do nothing and pray.’”

Bill left the seminary right after high school and entered USF.  During his four years there he played soccer on their championship team.  A few years later he came back to St. Pat’s for a visit and told us about it. “I was one of the few local guys who’d ever played soccer before.  The rest of the team were all ringers recruited from Mexico and South America. It was a lot different from the seminary, because at St. Joe’s we had no offside rule, so we never learned how to dribble and pass, we just tried to kill each other.”  I asked him how you were supposed to kick a soccer ball and he demonstrated a couple of ways, snapping from the knee or extending the full leg, making contact with the ball on the arch of the foot instead of the toe.  That lesson saved me from hobbling around all the time with jammed toes.

Bill prided himself on being a realist, and to that end he loved to play the role of cynic and curmudgeon.  In hindsight, we gave him a lot to be cynical about during our seminary years. 

For the past seven years Bill has waged an uphill battle against a rare and complex protein disease.  He and partner Dena have inspired us all with their courage and fortitude.

Rest in peace, Bill.  And make sure Larry apologizes.