Submitted by: Mary Jo Koran

GRIFFIN

SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE – October 23, 1999

Rev. Robert Griffin

Oct. 7, 1925 -Oct. 20, 1999

Rev. Robert Griffin, C.S.C., died at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 20, in Holy Cross House at the University of Notre Dame. He was 74 years old and had been in ill health for some time.

One of Notre Dame's most affectionate and affectionately regarded characters, the chain-smoking Father Griffin, invariably accompanied by a golden cocker spaniel name Darby O'Gill, was a ubiquitous campus presence for three decades.

A native of Portland, Maine, Father Griffin graduated from Notre Dame in 1949 and was ordained a priest in the Eastern Province of the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1954. He received a master's degree in English from Notre Dame in 1957 and did graduate work at Boston University before joining the faculty at Stonehill College, North Easton, Mass.

He returned to Notre Dame to serve as assistant rector of Keenan Hall in 1967 and became rector of Keenan in 1969. He was appointed in 1974 to the newly created post of University chaplain, serving until health problems forced his retirement.

During his Notre Dame career, Father Griffin became famous for presiding at a popular "Urchin Mass" for children and their parents on campus. He also hosted a Saturday morning children's radio program on WSND-FM entitled "The Children's Hour." In 1973 he was elected Notre Dame's Senior Class Fellow, an honor which had until then been reserved for nationally prominent people.

He founded and presided at a late-night, free café, Darby's Place, in the basement of Notre Dame's LaFortune Student Center. During the 1970s, this sanctuary for insomniac, troubled, lonely, or simply curious students was open every night from midnight until 4 a.m. "It is very simple," Father Griffin explained to a Notre Dame alumni group. "There are just tables and chairs, and they can get coffee and donuts, or something to eat. They come by to talk, they come by to study, they come by to play the piano. For them it is a place where they can come to. For me it is a locus of ministry."

In addition to his ministry at Notre Dame, Father Griffin assisted in St. Joseph's Church in New York's Greenwich Village during vacation periods and spent countless late-night hours befriending, counseling and accompanying the alcoholics, drug addicts, runaways, prostitutes and panhandlers of Times Square. He also wrote a widely read newspaper column, in Our Sunday Visitor, entitled "Everyday Spirituality" and published two collections of essays, "In the Kingdom of the Lonely God" and "I never Said I Didn't Love You." In a review of "In the Kingdom of the Lonely God," the novelist James Carroll wrote that, "Griffin's honest perceptions break down the categories we usually use to keep away from each other. He is priestly, but not clerical; funny, but not mocking; holy, but not pious. Though he avoids radical rhetoric, he is a man of the people. He remembers, one might even say, the forgotten people. When I forget or am forgotten myself, I hope a Robert Griffin is there."

Visitation will be held at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 24, in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame, followed by a memorial Mass of thanksgiving for the life and gifts of Father Griffin at 4:30 p.m. A wake and a vigil service will take place at 7 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 25, in the Chapel of Mary at Stonehill College in North Easton, Mass, where the Mass of the Resurrection will be offered at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 26. Kaniewski Funeral Home is handling arrangements.