Francis John Moriarty

Mr. Moriarty was born in Fitchburg, Mass., on Feb. 24, 1937, to Eugene J. Moriarty of Winchendon, Mass., and Catherine F. Shea of Fitchburg, Mass.

He graduated from St. Bernard’s High School in 1954, where he was a class officer. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from American University and was president of the Class of 1958. During his four years of undergraduate study he worked in the House of Representatives, “where I learned as much in political science as I could have in any classroom.” He won a fellowship to the University of Wisconsin and received a master’s degree in history there in 1959. He then entered a doctoral program in Latin American history at American University, where he also won a Carnegie Student Exchange Grant to study in Mexico.

In 1962 he began teaching in Europe for the University of Maryland European Division Program. For most of the 1960s he taught history in France, Germany, Spain and Italy. In Spain he became a member of the Archives of the Indies (Seville), one of the leading European centers of historical research in Spanish and Latin American history. He also became a member of the Atenao de Madrid.

He returned to the States in 1968 and began teaching history at Franklin Pierce College (now University). He taught there for 30 years and during that time wrote on topics of Latin American history and society. Over those years, he led groups of Franklin Pierce students on many trips in the U.S. and abroad, including Washington D.C., Rome, Mexico City, Bogota and the Amazon. In the 1970s he studied and wrote on the Theology of Liberation in both Colombia and Venezuela. He was voted Outstanding Faculty Member by the Student Senate in 1976 and 1977, and received the Alumni Student Service Award in 1992.

When asked about his many years of teaching at Franklin Pierce, he said, “I have always been elated and rewarded when over the years I have received visits, letters and cards from former students. They attest to the fact that the work of a teacher has no boundaries and goes on in endless directions. That they have allowed me to enter their lives for even a brief moment is a reward and a challenge and an opportunity that no other profession could begin to offer. By touching their lives my own life has become more meaningful, and for that, and to them, I will always be grateful.”

He retired with the rank of Professor Emeritus in 1998, and then traveled widely to Europe, North Africa, Mexico and Central America. He moved to Keene in 1999, where he became an active citizen in various causes and the author of many sometimes-acerbic letters to the editor of The Keene Sentinel.

In 2022, Franklin Pierce honored him by the placement of a permanent inscription on the wall of Petrocelli Hall, a word of advice he wrote on the exam booklet of one of his students many years ago, “Don’t give in to the temptation to be average.”

Professor Moriarty died full of years and still questioning whether he had attained the wisdom to match them.