Paying Attention

This column originally appeared on Sunday, May 10, 2009

There are people in any community who go about their lives in a quiet fashion, ruffling no feathers and roiling no waters. They fly mostly under the radar, out of either conscious choice on their part or studied indifference on ours. They make a difference in the world, surely, but in a low-key, self-conscious manner. Like the fictional Willie Lowman in “Death of a Salesman,” when they are gone, perhaps we look about and wonder why we didn’t notice them before, and kick ourselves for not paying attention to their quiet contributions.

This isn’t about one of those people. It’ s about John J. Duffy.

I have not known John J. Duffy all my life, but there are times it feels like it. He is as much a part of the landscape of the Chester County I have come to know and appreciate, if not adore, as the clock tower on tip of his beloved courthouse or the waters of the Brandywine Creek. He is as noticeable and brash as the neckties he favors. Among the legal circle I associate myself with on a professional basis, there are few who do not, when you ask them, have a ready, distinct, certain opinion of John J. Duffy – good or not so good, affectionate or antagonistic.

That is to say, you may not like John J. Duffy, but you must acknowledge him. He is no shrinking violet, no silent witness, no unseen face. He is a criminal defense attorney and a proud, accomplished one, who has battled his way through countless trials and rubbed those across the aisle from him more than one wrong way over the years.

So the very fact that this coming week John J. Duffy will be called to stand and be honored by those people he has battled – judges and prosecutors, for starters – is remarkable. On Friday, the Chester County Drug Court will present John J. Duffy with its Osceola Wesley Award, given to a person who has aided in the recovery of people gripped by addictive demons. He does not want the award –there are between 11 and five other people, depending on who he’s telling, who deserve it more – but he’s getting it anyway and that’s a hell of a thing.

John J. Duffy is perhaps as well known for his battle against, and continuing triumph over, alcoholism, as for his courtroom skills. Years ago, researching his back-story for a piece I was putting together before one of his trials, I read all about it: the angry, booze-tinged fall from grace, much of it in the public eye, and then the eventual redemption. It made fascinating reading. Most of all, the tale demands wonder at what became of the John J. Duffy who was. Not content to keep his sobriety to himself, John J. Duffy has since his recovery gone on to share it with as many people as he can fit into a 24 hour day -- without ticking off the missus.

“John wears his recovery on his sleeve,” a woman who knows him well told me while we stood in a hallway of the Justice Center last week. If a ride to a meeting is needed, or a referral to his treasured Caron Foundation is required, or simply a person to stand by while the addiction is still holding sway is necessary, John J. Duffy has been available for countless lost souls, she said.

Judge William P. Mahon, the county’s recovery court champion, told me that John J. Duffy’s life and work in helping people regain their lives was nothing more than “extraordinary.” He said that John J. Duffy had gone out of his way to provide assistance for those in recovery, with no thought for himself.

Except once, the judge remembered.

When still in private practice, a client of Mahon's was facing his fourth DUI charge. Or was it his fifth? No matter, the man’s life was a wreck, careering out of control like the drunk driver he was. Sitting in court while Mahon asked a judge to continue the case so that everything could be tied together, John J. Duffy heard the story and approached. “I’m not trying to steal your client,” he told Mahon, “but tell him to call me.”

A year later Mahon attended his client’s 12-month sobriety anniversary. John J. Duffy had shepherded the man through the recovery process and helped negotiate his life back to a clean and straight course. In return, however, the client, a professional fitness trainer, helped John J. Duffy lose weight. And for a time, at least, John J. Duffy approached being svelte.

Osceola Wesley, the Coatesville man and recovered drug abuser for whom the award he will receive was named, came from a world different than John J. Duffy’s. North Philly versus West Philly; Army service in Korea versus law school at Villanova; African-American versus Irish American. But, as Mahon pointed out to me last week, their worlds converged around how they dealt with their addictions. “Both came out of those experiences determined to contribute back to the recovery of others,” he said.

Attention must be paid, someone once said. And so now it will be.