DARIA DONNELLY ’81
It is with great sadness that we report the death of DARIA DONNELLY, Class of 1981. Daria died in Boston, Massachusetts on September 21, 2004, three years after her first symptoms of multiple myeloma, cancer of the bone marrow. She leaves her husband, Steven Weissburg, and two children, Leo and Josephine.
A native of Pittsburgh, she received her elementary and secondary education from Mercy nuns. After majoring in religion at Wesleyan University, Daria taught in an inner-city high school, cooked for a Catholic Worker house in Rochester, NY, and spent a year studying (Hebrew and religion), traveling, and dog-watching in Jerusalem. A love of literature and desire to integrate that with religious studies led Daria to a PhD in English and American Literature from Brandeis University. She studied nineteenth-century American poetry and theodicy under the MacArthur genius grantee Allen Grossman. Teaching (at Boston University), research, and writing followed. In 2000, she joined the staff of Commonwealth Magazine, an independent journal of opinion edited and managed by lay Catholics, as Associate Editor At Large and Poetry Editor.