As we age we think about the people who shaped our lives. As a 19 year old at Siena College, I was like most students, searching for identity and a path in life.
I loved writing and public speaking, and although these skills would mature much later in life when running campaigns for County Sheriff and District Attorney and my own campaign for County Executive, I nonetheless received a good foundation in college.
At Siena I took a creative writing class and met a young fellow by the name of Brian Quigley.The professor was reading essays submitted by the students from an assignment. He read Brian’s and I could not believe what I was hearing. He had a way of bringing to life the things that you might have experienced growing up. “When nuns were nuns” was one of his lines which appealed to anyone who went to a parochial school. But he lavished his words with humor comparing the habit of the good Sisters of St. Joseph to penguins. Suddenly I was back in grammar school. I wish I could remember the names he gave the nuns. So many years have passed and memory has failed.
Brian was eccentric, he marched to a different drummer. He was infatuated with celebrities especially the Kennedy family. I can remember being at Saratoga Performing Arts Center at an outdoor concert hearing a crowd cheering and clapping behind the trees next to me. I walked over and there was Brian giving a speech in a perfect Kennedy dialogue taking questions from the audience as if it were a press conference with JFK running the show.
It took a few beers to make this happen, but that was Brian, different and special. He went on to do some amazing things that had nothing to do with his Siena degree which was English and a perfect 4.0.He was clearly a genius, but he was so down to earth and so unusual that you would never guess how smart he really was.
Brian went on to become a photographer, searching for celebrities especially the Kennedy family and selling the photographs to International magazines. I can remember the front cover of People Magazine, the two Kennedy children with Jacqueline Kennedy on the front cover. What an incredible picture and it was Brian, the kid who sat next to me in an English class at Siena College who took the picture.
He developed quite a professional career making a living taking pictures. When he came home from Boston where he lived, it was great to get together and talk about his life and the memories of past times.
When Brian died, I like all of his friends was crushed. He was in his 30s and I’m sorry to say I could not research this more to give you the dates as a good writer would have wanted you to see. I assure you though, had he lived the blessing of a long life, he would have made the world a better place.
At his funeral in a church in Watervliet New York, I gave his mother a letter telling her how special Brian was. His brother Kevin came to me the morning of the funeral and asked if he could read the letter at the service.
Little did I know the effect that letter would have on everyone present. Tears were everywhere. I wish I had it today, but in the world of computers which often fail, precious things are lost.
Suffice to say the letter captured Brian and his life and what he meant to so many people including me. You may not find him on the internet, in fact I could not find his obituary. But I remember the final words of that letter. “And that’s the way he would have wanted it, someone to special to forget”.
I have wanted to write this for a long time to keep his memory alive in a place where anyone could appreciate his gift of humanity. Hopefully this short essay will serve to preserve the memory of someone who was very special, a great friend, someone too special to forget.
