Poet, author, and professor James Finn Cotter, the longest-serving faculty member the Mount has ever known, passed away on January 8, 2022. He was 92 years old.
Family, friends, coworkers, and former students recently gathered in the Chapel of the Most Holy Rosary to celebrate his life and achievements.
“Jim Cotter was a good man,” said Dr. Jason N. Adsit, Mount president. “He loved his family, he loved his students, he loved his colleagues, and he loved pursuing new knowledge for its own sake. He will be deeply missed, but never forgotten.”
While his colleagues remembered Cotter for his academic triumphs, his children – Anne, Jim, and John – also knew him as a dedicated father.
“He was an educator, a scholar, a writer, a poet, a lover of art and nature, a devout Catholic, and a devoted friend and family man,” stated Anne. Added John, “He taught through examples, and he lived a life that was an example to all of us on a life well lived.”
For nearly 60 years, Cotter shared his knowledge and talent with the Mount campus. A distinguished author and educator, his commitment to the growth of the college and its students was unwavering. He impacted the lives of thousands of students before his retirement in the summer of 2020.
When he wasn’t teaching or aiding with administrative tasks for the college, Cotter delved into his own scholarly work. He was a celebrated translator of Dante’s Commedia, which he began writing on the backs of envelopes and scrap papers early one Christmas morning in the 1980s before his children woke up. Among a great many other publications, Cotter authored Beginnings: The First Twenty-Five Years of Mount Saint Mary College and A New Life: Learning the Way of Omega.
A few years ago, while seated in the campus library named in his honor, Cotter was recorded reading some of his poetry. He ended the session with his poem “The Day I Die.” It reads, in part: “The day I die can be part of a journey, into the bright, starry, heavenly harmony of this great galaxy: another odyssey across an unknown sea. The day I die shall be the moment of unity, when my humanity and His divinity meet at last, lovingly, to end my short story in unending glory.”