“John had a speech impediment. He had a terrible stutter, to the point where it was very difficult for him to speak sometimes, and difficult to lecture. But when he would start to tell a story, or a joke—the more risqué the better—he lost his stutter,” Bossert said.

According to his youngest daughter Nora Stuhl, Kelleher was most comfortable in small groups with friends and family.

“Anytime he was relaxed and was among friends or with his family, he would tell stories,” she said.

But at parties, the playful Kelleher was more reserved.

“He didn’t really like parties very much,” Stuhl said. “He once told me that he happened to meet Samuel Beckett at a party in Dublin, because they were both at a party and they were both hiding behind some furniture.”

Though he preferred interacting with small groups, Kelleher’s classes on Irish history and Irish literature—especially his class on Yeats and Joyce—drew a wide student audience.

“Students flocked to his classes because he was such an important scholar,” Bossert said.

He did not publish widely, but in 1979 Kelleher released a collection of his own poetry and translations entitled Too Small for Stove Wood, Too Big for Kindling. A compilation of his major academic work was released in 2002.

When he retired from Harvard in 1986, the energetic Kelleher did not slow down.

“He certainly continued with his scholarship, continued to take long walks in the woods, chop wood,” Stuhl said. “He was physically active until the day before he got sick.”

Stuhl also described her father as a man who remained determined and stubborn throughout his life.

“He graduated from high school in the middle of the Depression, and his father told him that the only way he would be able to go to college was to go to West Point, so he walked all the way to Boston—a 34-mile trip—to take the physical,” Stuhl said.

The doctor failed him on account of his flat feet, but Kelleher never stopped walking—right up until the day that he got sick.

Kelleher’s wife, Helen Caffrey, died in 1991. He is survived by Stuhl and his other daughters Brigid McCauley, Peggy Oates and Anne Fisher.

A memorial service will be held at Harvard in the spring.