John V. Kelleher, retired Harvard professor

John V. Kelleher, an influential catalyst in the development of Irish studies in America and an intellectual conduit between Boston and Dublin for almost half a century, died Jan. 1 of complications from pneumonia at a St. Louis hospital. He was 87.

From his post at that most Brahmin of institutions in the mid-20th century, Harvard University, Mr. Kelleher became one of the first in academia to view Ireland -- its literature, culture, history -- and Irish-Americans as a distinct field of study.

His legions of students spent much of the rest of his life establishing that view.

"He was the true giant of Irish studies," said Philip T. O'Leary, an author and professor of Irish studies at BC. O'Leary was a doctoral student of Mr. Kelleher's in the 1970s. "No one has been able to equal his range of knowledge."

Mr. Kelleher's exploration into things Irish was boundless, from unearthing clan genealogies and detailing the annals of Irish heritage at its infancy, through dissecting the poetry of Yeats and the prose of Joyce, to analyzing Irish immigrants' assimilation in America and the anguish of Protestants and Catholics in modern-day Northern Ireland. Many credit Mr. Kelleher with introducing American readers to such contemporary Irish writers as Sean O'Casey, Frank O'Connor, and Sean O'Faolain -- and introducing the writers to Boston.

In large part because of Mr. Kelleher's efforts, Irish studies departments now flourish at several US universities.

At Harvard, Mr. Kelleher was famous both for the rigor of his classroom and the congeniality of private meetings with students, who would usually walk out of his office with a witty anecdote or two in their memories and several books in their arms, gifts from the professor.

He began his career at Harvard in 1940 and was named to the prestigious Junior Fellows group, which grants members subsidized freedom to pursue their ideas. Harvard also created a chair for him, the only chair in Irish studies. He retired in 1986.

In that time, he influenced two generations of students.

"As soon as I began listening to him, I realized that I had stumbled upon the goods: the teacher who loses sleep over ideas," wrote one of his students, the esteemed essayist Roger Rosenblatt.

"He taught me that the world is full of subplots, mixed motives, deceits, heroics, all piled high in a generous puzzle . . . that if one stays alert to the motions of the world, it is possible to see a great deal, occasionally including things that no one else has seen before."

So profound was the influence, Rosenblatt said Friday, that he dedicated his book on Harvard, "Coming Apart," to him, despite Mr. Kelleher's protests. "Modesty does not quite describe him. He sees the world as existing entirely outside himself -- in Irish history, in Irish language, in American life, in religion, in anything other than what he would see as `small John Kelleher.'

"He meant more than anyone, not just to me, or to Harvard, but to all of university life, to what a university ought to be."

Another former student put his experience with the professor this way: "At a certain point, the trap door opens and you fall into the world of early Irish history, from material you never knew existed. And you never climb out."

The student, Gene C. Haley, intended to be a lawyer before attending his first class with Mr. Kelleher. "We were in awe of him. Awe and affection," said Haley, a professor of Irish history at Harvard. "A rather unusual combination."

Mr. Kelleher grew up in Lawrence, the son of John and Margaret, both born in the United States but culturally tethered to their ancestrial home of Ireland.

"The town I was born in probably had the heaviest concentration of Cork and Kerry Irish in America," Mr. Kelleher wrote in 1947. "From the outside it might have seemed a cosmopolitan city -- fifty-three languages were recorded there in the 1920 census -- but you know the Irish won't tolerate cosmopolitanism, and the Irish ran this place."

As a youth, he began tagging along with an Augustinian priest who was an Irish scholar. From the reverend -- and from his father -- the youngster started to speak and write Gaelic.

After graduating from Lawrence High School, Mr. Kelleher worked for his father, a carpenter, and put aside money for a college education. In 1935 he enrolled at Dartmouth College. There, his interests were varied -- boxing, hiking in the New Hampshire woods, writing plays for experimental theater, playing on the soccer team -- but his passions were concentrated on all matters Irish.

He described that passion as "a lifetime affair with early Irish history, a matter of mistaking a mountain for a good-sized molehill, due to the surrounding fog."

His voice deep and sonorous when reading, Mr. Kelleher battled a severe speech impediment at all other times of discourse. The disability created a certain shyness when the professor was before a large class or when he met people for the first time, his colleagues and students said. But in more intimate settings, the wonder and wit of his anecdotes and the depth of his insights were such that his former editor at the Atlantic Monthly called him "one of the best conversationalists I know."

During World War II, Mr. Kelleher served at the Pentagon, a member of an elite unit that focused on cracking the Axis code.

After returning to Harvard in 1946, Mr. Kelleher made his first trip to Ireland. He bicycled across the country and met O'Connor, O'Faolain and Samuel Beckett, as well as revolutionary figures Maud Gonne and Ernie O'Malley.

It was the beginning of lifelong friendships, kindled through hundreds of trans-Atlantic letters. In such correspondence, Mr. Kelleher was at times a sounding board, at other times a creative soul mate.

"He was a trusted critical voice for alot of these people," O'Leary said.

Mr. Kelleher was also a lifeline. Many parts of postwar Ireland were desolate, with few provisions. From his home in Westwood, Mr. Kelleher would procure and ship to his friends in Ireland books, food -- even once 5 tons of coal packed in 50-pound bags to heat their homes. For Eileen O'Faolain, the author's wife, he worked for months to secure and send a measure of civility she had longed for: a small can of olive oil and a set of nylons, size 39.

When their fortunes improved, the writers came to Boston, where Mr. Kelleher arranged lectures, public readings of their works, and, on occasion, teaching posts.

Mr. Kelleher was also close to several New England writers. "He loved to walk in the woods with Robert Frost," said Margaret Oates of St. Louis, one of Mr. Kelleher's four daughters. "They would discuss how walking could help a poem develop, the rhythm of their steps [shaping] the rhythm of the poem."

Toward the end of his career, Mr. Kelleher had a small part in the film version of Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake" and was a consultant to director John Huston's production of Joyce's "The Dead."

He was also a prodigious writer of essays, noted for their precision, colloquial directness, and wit. A collection of the essays, "Selected Writings of John V. Kelleher on Ireland and Irish America," was published in 2002.

Mr. Kelleher and his wife, Helen, moved to St. Louis after retiring to be near their daughters and grandchildren. Bedtimes were a treat when she was a child, Oates said. Her father would create stories, each night adding plot twists and characters around the adventures of a Pennacook Indian boy. "We called them his `make-up stories.' "

There was one constant in the storyline. The boy, Oates said, "always managed to outsmart the Iroquois, with the help of his father -- a brilliant man, of course."

Helen Kelleher died in 1991. In addition to Oates, Mr. Kelleher leaves his daughters, Brigid McCauley and Nora Stuhl, both of University City, Mo., and Anne Fisher of North Attleborough; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.