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Elizabeth Shannon, director of BU's International Visitors Program and the Trustee Scholars Program
Photo by Fred Sway |
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Ten years ago, Elizabeth Shannon received a telephone call that would eventually bring a surprising bit of Irish luck to Boston University. The caller introduced herself as Muriel Hagerty and explained that her late husband had been a native of Ireland and a BU alumnus.
Through ties at the University, Hagerty had learned that Shannon, director of BU’s Trustee Scholars Program and International Visitors Program, is an Irish scholar and author of I Am of Ireland: Women of the North Speak Out and Up in the Park, a memoir. Her husband, the late William V. Shannon (Hon.’76), was U.S. ambassador to Ireland from 1977 to 1981. During those years, the Shannons lived and raised their children in Dublin, where she collected much of the information that would later appear in her books.
“I think she was lonely,” Shannon says, recalling the phone call. “By this time, she was living in a nursing home, and I think she just wanted to talk to someone about her husband and their love of Ireland.”
Shannon, who had lost her own husband a few years earlier, was happy to talk, and during the decade that followed, the two women forged a friendship through letters and telephone calls. Over thousands of miles, affection for the Emerald Isle and its people remained a bond. “I sent her copies of my books, which she read and we discussed,” Shannon remembers. “I guess I called her every three or four months, and we’d chat for about an hour.”
During one leisurely conversation, she told Hagerty about the William V. Shannon Fellowship, which she established in 1988 in memory of her husband, a BU professor. The fellowship, for nationals of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland wishing to pursue graduate studies at BU, provides tuition and a stipend for room and board.
“I’d always send Mrs. Hagerty invitations to our [fundraising] dinners,” Shannon says. “Of course, she could never come, but I knew she enjoyed getting the invitations. And then a long time went by, and I didn’t hear from her….”
Early this year, Shannon received a notice in the mail from Hagerty’s lawyer. Hagerty had died, leaving the fellowship a gift of $100,000. Shannon was stunned.
“It was like having a fairy godmother who you never knew existed,” Shannon says. “She obviously wanted no credit for it. I mean, she didn’t even tell me she was going to do it. I think she simply wanted to do this in memory of her husband and his love for Ireland. It was a selfless, generous gesture.”
—Vicky Waltz
Three Irish Fellows |
