We just updated the Web site with the July 8 issue. Be sure to read dotCommonweal regular Gene Palumbo's moving remembrance of Bill Ford, long-time friend of the magazine. Here's how it starts:

When William P. Ford died last month at the age of seventy-two, after a battle with esophageal cancer, the New York Times called him a rights advocate. That he was, having waged a decades-long legal struggle to achieve a measure of justice for victims of El Salvadors civil war. It was the same war that had claimed the life of his sister, Sr. Ita Ford of Maryknoll, in December 1980.

When Bills son eulogized him at St. Cassian Church in Montclair, New Jersey, he described his father as a man of faithfulness and integrity. He was also a generous benefactor. Among other things, he and Mary Anne, his remarkable wife of forty-seven years, provided gift subscriptions to Commonweal for generations of Fordham students.

I was one of those students, and it's a great regret of mine that, despite all that I had read and heard of him, I was never able to thank Bill in person.Gene Palumbo made the excellent suggestion of posting the fine eulogy delivered by Bill Ford Jr. Here it is in full:

(Reflection Given at Mass of Christian Burial for William P. Ford, 4/28/1936 6/1/2008)

Dad

June 4, 2008

You have been told, O Man, what is good,

And what the Lord requires of you:

Only to act justly and to love tenderly,

And to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6, v 8

I for my part am being poured out like a libation.

The time of my dissolution is near.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

From now on a merited crown awaits me;

on that day, the Lord, just judge that he is, will award it to me

and not only to me, but to all who have looked for his appearing with eager longing.

2 Timothy 4, vv 6-8

Do not let your hearts be troubled.

Have faith in God and faith in me.

In my fathers house there are many dwelling places

I am indeed going to prepare a place for you,

That where I am you also may be

I am the way, the truth and the life;

No one comes to the father but through me.

John 14, vv 1-6

I speak now for all six of the Ford children.

What to say? He was and is still son, big brother, husband, father, law partner, one who hungers for justice, dear friend, Pop-Pop, and, for Alex, the youngest grandchild, simply Pop.

And then I pictured him leaning across the table with the irrepressible smile and in his gentle manner run through with steel: Bill! Let me make a suggestion.

So I knew wed be talking about Bill Ford, teacher.

My fathers mother, Mildred, was hired in the early 1930s by the NYC public schools to teach first grade in Brooklyn. Hers was among the last appointments before a hiring freeze that lasted for the rest of the Great Depression. She went on to teach for 40 years and she wanted nothing more for her son than that he, too, would become a teacher, perhaps a principal, because of the dignity of the work and also, ever practical, because of the job security.

Like some other sons, at first my father wasnt so attentive to his mothers wishes he was a bond trader, then became a lawyer. But he became a teacher in the broadest sense.

He had clear principles to convey:

Briefer is better;

Use simple, declarative sentences;

And, as you heard my brother tell last night, alcohol and gasoline dont mix.

We even had words

Perseverance was the watchword for the first five children;

Johns word, for some mysterious reason, was teamwork.

His severest admonition was this: you have a short memory. By which he meant, be grateful, be generous; the gift you have received, give as a gift.

Very Ignatian, and rightly so. My father is a proud and grateful product of Jesuit education. He graduated from Brooklyn Prep in 1953, from Fordham College in 1960 and, to his great pride and joy, was the recipient of an honorary doctoral degree from Fordham University in 1990.

Just a few weeks ago, Dad and his best friend Andy Coll, who he met in September, 1949, when they each had gotten lost on the IRT while on their way home from the Prep to Bay Ridge, were talking at our kitchen table about what a Jesuit education is at its essence. Almost at one and the same time they answered, it taught us how to ask questions.

And my father, in turn, taught all six of us how to think. There is no problem, he insisted, that cannot be solved if only you apply clear thinking, develop logical arguments supported by evidence, and persist in making your point. Then he went out and offered us a decades-long case study in how its done.

But mostly he taught by his actions. Our word for him is FIDELITY.

Together my mother and father have made and kept, with fidelity, great friendshipsthrough Brooklyn Prep and St. Saviors, through Fordham, with fellow parishioners of St. Cassians and neighbors; with co-workers at Ford, Marrin, and Lacordaire; treasuring them all, holding especially dear Uncle Tom & Aunt Mary, Sr. Maddie and Maryknoll, the Colls and the Connollys, the OConnors and the Rudsers, the Kennys and the Sullivans (so many Sullivans!), with whom they have raised their children and shared the struggles and joys of a full life;

My father has shown a great fidelity to the truth. He is a man of great integrity who constantly taught the difficult virtue of honesty, that when one gives his word, he must keep his word. This became known to all who met him during his 22 year-long effort to bring those who killed Ita and Maura and Dorothy and Jean to justice. By his devotion to the truth and fidelity to his word, this effort became more than just righting a wrong done so horribly to his own sisterrather it became an impassioned campaign to end the repression being visited upon the Salvadoran people by its own military, with the support and at the direction of our government.

Our dear family friend Gene Palumbo emailed us last night from El Salvador to share some of his memories of my fathers many visits there, often with Mike Posner, Scott Greathead and others from The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. Gene wrote, As for me, one memory stands out. One day, during the war, Bill came with me to Sunday Mass at the Maryknoll parish in Zacamil. He was asked to say a few words at the end of the Mass. I translated for him. At one point, near the end, he said (more or less), never fear, we wont be walking away, well never forget you because (and these next were his exact words) there is a bond of blood between our family and you.

And through my father, and by the grace of working alongside Fr. Joe Parkes, our President, that is precisely the same bond I have now with the students and my dear colleagues at Cristo Rey New York High School.

Like every teacher, my father was human and he could be quite the irascible, stubborn Irishman. Each of my younger siblings has a similar story about being brought by my father to a street corner for a lesson, only to have some overly helpful passerby interrupt and immediately the riposte: Im glad you know what color the light is; Im trying to teach my daughter how to cross the street.

Upon receiving a general message from my fourth grade teacher telling parents not to allow their children to watch an excessive amount of TV, my father promptly scribbled a reply that this was gratuitous in our case. Once my teacher looked up the definition of the word, I was stripped of my position as editor of the class newspaper and banished to a corner seat.

And throughout the 1980s, when my father went down to Washington to meetings with members of Congress and the State Department to challenge US policy in Central America and push back against their stonewalling in the Churchwomens case, he would often bring one of his children, so that these representatives of our government might be ashamed.

But the final word is Love.

Dad loved his family and was happiest when we were all around him, in particular, Sam, Thomas, Billy, Lina, Maggie, Anna, Mary and Alex.

Married 47 years to my mother, even more in love with her now than when first they met, dad was aware that in so many ways my mother had the more important and challenging part of their partnership that would be the six of us - and did all he could to show his appreciation and lighten her load. My sisters and I have been blessed in the spouses and partners we have Jack and Diana and Martin and Christina and Richard, as John will also be blessed and we have been shown how to make of these commitments a life-long love.

Our brother John was born just a few days before Ita was killed. My father and mother had the great insight, despite the awfulness and pain of that time, to celebrate Johns birth as an unambiguous sign that life will always triumph over death. My father called John the prince (thus making of my mother a queen) and he and John made a fast friendship, a rascals pact, and drew him into the center of our family. Just like Dad, John has given us his own great gifts of humor and spirit and life. You, John, light up a room and bedevil Mom the minute you enterand we love you so much for all that.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

Bill Ford, teacher, gives us one more lesson about love. Early Saturday morning, after a phone call from Becca, all six of us and Mom and Christina gathered around as Fr. Paul came to anoint dad. We prayed together and each had a chance to tell our father how much we love him. Then he looked up and we leaned in to hear what he might have to say--and he put his arms around her and just drew my mother in to him.

Like every good teacher, he has stepped back now to allow us room to step up.

He left me a note four words: Watch over them all.

We love you Dad. Its your turn to rest now; we have work to do.

--WPF III