Rev. Joseph T. Durkin, S.J.
The Rev. Joseph T. Durkin, Professor Emeritus of History, died this summer shortly after his one-hundredth birthday. An extremely active community member even in old age, Durkin worked with prison inmates and Alzheimer’s patients, as well as Georgetown students.
According to his former students, Durkin helped them to think and want to learn, bringing the subject matter to life. According to the Washington Post, Durkin was forced to miss his one-hundredth birthday party, where friends had gathered to celebrate a special mass, to undergo colon surgery at Georgetown University Hospital. The party went on without Durkin but was videotaped so that he could later watch the festivities.
Durkin wrote more than two dozen books in his lifetime, and he was in the process of writing two more when he died. He played an integral part in the founding of the American Studies department. Although Durkin formally taught history at Georgetown from 1944 to 1972, he continued to meet with students long after 1972.
John Jackson
John Jackson (MSB ‘03) died less than two months after his graduation from Georgetown University when a porch collapsed at a Chicago party on June 29, making national news. Last Monday, a judge ordered structural engineering reports to investigate twelve other buildings owned by the same landlord who owned the building that housed the collapsed three-story porch.
Inspection of these properties revealed structural problems, including swaying and unstable porches. The Washington Post reported that the third level of the porch collapsed onto the lower levels, killing 13 people and injuring more than 50.
