Reid began his job at Harvard in December 1987 and has worked 24 hours each week at the Widener gate until his death.

After serving as HUSPMGU secretary under McCombe, he became vice president last September.

Reid constantly threw himself into the midst of labor conflict, Meagher said, working assertively but graciously with all levels of Harvard labor management.

He was closely involved in September’s contract negotiations and the resulting increase in pay and benefits for Harvard’s security, museum and parking guards—both within HUSPMGU and without.

Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) Chief Francis D. “Bud” Riley said Reid was a person of “integrity and honesty.”

While at Harvard, Reid loved to learn. He took classes in management, working toward a degree at the Division for Continuing Education.

JOHN V. KELLEHER

John V. Kelleher, a vivid storyteller whose work defined the field of Irish studies in America, died Jan. 1 of pneumonia. He was 87.

Kelleher, an emeritus professor of Irish studies in the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures, first came to Harvard in 1940.

One of the world’s foremost Irish scholars, he specialized in modern Irish literature and the history of the early Irish annals, a project the fluent Irish speaker once said would take him “25 lifetimes” to complete.

Kelleher came to Harvard in 1939 as a member of the Society of Fellows, and during World War II served briefly in the Pentagon.

But it was on a bicycle trip through Ireland after the war that he forged friendships with some of the great modern Irish writers, including Frank O’Connor and Seán Ó Faoláin.

From 1947 to 1986, Kelleher was a professor in the English and history departments as well as the Department of Celtic Literature and Languages.

Colleagues remember Kelleher as a “giant in the field” who informed a generation of other Irish scholars.

“Just about everyone working in the field of Celtic studies—and especially in Irish studies—was either a student of his or was greatly influenced by his work,” said Robinson Professor of Celtic Languages and Literatures Patrick K. Ford.