John McLaughlin 1939-2026

A problem with age is losing people that had influence in your life.

John McLaughlin was my Chaucer professor at Lowell, a lifetime ago. He gave me a fascination and love of anything medieval as much as if he put diamonds and rubies in a package and tied it with a ribbon. More so probably.

Because he didn't have a car, Dr. Burto, the department head, who had a car, gave him a ride from Cambridge to Lowell. 

I would give John a ride back to where I lived near the Reading train station. He would catch a train back to Cambridge. We had wonderful conversations on the 30 minute drive.

His reading of Chaucer sounded beautiful when his Glaswegian accent mixed with the middle English of the Canterbury Tales.

John was born in Glasgow, Scotland. We had trouble understanding his lectures. He never lost his accent. 

We met up a few years back in Washington, D.C. when I stayed with my daughter, who joined us along with John's lovely and talented wife for a meal. He recited part of Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida for us proving to my daughter I was right how beautiful Chaucer was spoken in Middle English mixed with Glaswegian. 

I still can recite the opening of the Canterbury Tales.                

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licóur

Of which vertú engendred is the flour 

 

One night when visiting John and his first wife in their Cambridge 

apartment, their guest Carolyn and he were talking about her upcoming orals, I realized the track my life was on wasn't where I wanted it to be. 

 

The academic life wasn't going to be possible for me, but I needed to follow my dreams. It happened slowly, but it happened sometimes by lucky accident.

 

John's life was an example. A boy born into Glasgow poverty one of nine boys he didn't follow the typical path that he should have followed. He was a boxer and later in the merchant navy. 

 

He found a guardian angel, a wealthy woman already supporting his family through Bundles of Britain. She pushed him to live up  to his potential ending with his Ph.D. from Harvard where he was both magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

 

John and I only touched bases periodically after I graduated, aided by e-mail. His eclectic interests in folk music that included his radio show Roots and Wings as well as teaching made me appreciate the indirect contributions to my life. That we agreed on political honesty gave me confirmation I wasn't crazy.

 

He was a lucky man, who reveled in his wife, children and grandchildren, his American nationality and his Scottish heritage. When he was born in 1939 no one could have predicted the roads he would walk. Maybe he did more than walk them. He experienced them in greater depth than most of us.  

 

Rest in Peace.