Brian Donaher honored by BC High

June 15, 2010--More than 300 alumni, friends, and faculty turned out to honor BC High's legendary Classical Language Teacher Brian Donaher '55. Now celebrating his 50th year of teaching - and showing no signs of slowing down - Donaher heard testimonials by many of his fellow teachers and generations of his students, several of whom are now classics teachers and professors in their own right.

Cited by his colleagues and students as a brilliant teacher and scholar, Donaher continues to guide BC High's students through advanced study of classical languages. A member of BC High's class of 1955, Donaher earned a four-year full scholarship to attend BC High as the highest scorer of some 1,800 students taking the scholarship exam in 1951. After graduating from Holy Cross in 1959, Brian returned to BC High as a classical language teacher, and has been a fixture at BC High ever since. He holds a master’s degree in classics from Boston College and a master’s degree in philology from Harvard.

Along with his classmate and former BC High Teacher Rev. Jack Howard, SJ '55, Donaher co-founded BC High's Homeric Academy in 1962, a small group of the school’s top Greek scholars. Over the course of each summer, the students read the entirety of Homer’s Odyssey in its original Greek text. The following school year, they recite passages of the Odyssey in Greek from memory and “defend” their work in public oral exams with classics professors from area colleges.

Though the outpouring of accolades and honors was not a surprise for BC High's senior teacher, what Donaher did not expect was that some 400 of his former students pooled their resources to donate more than $100,000 to establish the Brian Donaher '55 Scholarship at BC High, which will help students with financial need who take Latin and/or Greek at BC High. In addition, President William Kemeza announced that the school will dedicate a classroom in his honor as a testament to his years of selfless service to his alma mater.

*Press release from BCHigh.edu: http://www.bchigh.edu/podium/default.aspx?t=18756