It is told that, a few weeks ago, William Alfred received a visit from an old friend who had come from London. The friend approached Bill’s house, rang the doorbell, and waited in vain. Concerned,  he peered in the front window and saw Bill struggling to get out of his chair.  Another part of his struggle, the friend noticed, was with his pants pocket: Bill evidently was fumbling in the pocket to make sure that he had some dollars to give to the panhandler who, he presumed, was at the door.

Anecdotes like this one abounded two weeks ago at Bill Alfred’s funeral. Members of  his astonishingly large cast of friends vied with one another afterward on the sidewalk outside the church to share stories about this beloved man who had died at the age of 76. All those who knew him recalled their own encounters with someone not entirely like the rest of us.

Bill Alfred never refused money to anyone who asked. He was renowned among the street people of Harvard Square and environs for his readiness to give. That is why panhandlers often came to his door. Like an old-fashioned saint, he did not stop to question how the person arrived at such need but simply responded then and there. He did not mind being renowned as a soft touch.

Bill Alfred was a Harvard University English professor for more than forty years. During that time, he earned a reputation for being a charismatic teacher; he was also known as a gifted tutor who inspired many students with his love of literature and other learning. Even in retirement he continued to serve as a favorite mentor of those students who sought him out. Right to the end, he was advising a college senior who is an aspiring script writer.

Script writing was something Bill knew a lot about. Back in 1966 he scored a notable success off-Broadway with his play “Hogan’s Goat,” a drama in verse that centered on political ambition in Irish Catholic Brooklyn, the place where he had grown up. That play marked the dramatic debut of Faye Dunaway, who later became Bill’s close friend.

At Bill’s death, many people were surprised to discover that he was only 76 years old. The reason for their surprise may have been Bill Alfred’s longtime cultivation of an “old” look. For a generation he had seemed aged, always walking around the university and Harvard Square wearing an experienced hat, and dressed formally in a vested rumpled suit. In the manner of older people, he always seemed to have time for greetings and conversation on the sidewalk or in a favorite bookstore.

Giving money away was by no means the only way Bill Alfred reached out to others in need, whether they were literary lights or more humble folk. He took people into his home where he lived alone, notably his friend, the poet Robert Lowell, and others down on their luck. As one of the preachers at his funeral observed, no human being but only God knows the number of such actions Bill took on behalf of needy people.

Speakers also pointed out that nothing was as important to Bill as service to God and his church. Every morning he could be seen at the eight o’clock Mass at St. Paul’s where his piety and devotion inspired other parishioners. One of his former pastors recalled Bill getting to church one morning during a blizzard by climbing out a window at the level where the snow had reached.

For the thirty years that I knew him, Bill Alfred always struck me as a person of altogether unusual virtue in the great tradition of the saints. For that reason, I feel tempted to step forward and propose him for canonization, official recognition of sanctity by the Roman Catholic Church.

But isn’t getting him canonized an awful thing to do to a friend? Bill himself would undoubtedly have been aghast at anyone thinking he was deserving of the honor. Though we are not suffering any surfeit of Harvard professors who demonstrate heroic charity, Bill would never have thought himself as any better than his colleagues.

Even without initiative from me, Bill Alfred might still be proposed by others and have a good shot at it. No longer does a candidate have to face an advocatus diaboli, a devil’s advocate. The Roman church has dropped this office as outdated; even were the position still open, any advocate for the devil’s side would have had a thoroughly unenviable task in trying to find Bill’s faults and make anything of them.

But without any official action, Bill Alfred will remain sufficiently a saint for me. This beloved anachronism with his old-fashioned amiable ways satisfies my cravings for someone who shows what it means to love both God and neighbor and to regard the two loves as intimately related.

Richard Griffin