1930s
Frederick J. Meagher ’36
Frederick J. Meagher ’36, who practiced law in his hometown of Binghamton, N.Y., for 70 years, was born on May 19, 1914, the son of Frederick J. Meagher, Class of 1899, and the former Jane B. O’Neil. A graduate of Binghamton Central High School, he headed north to Hamilton, where he played soccer and tennis and participated in the Choir and Debate Club. His nicknames on the Hill were “Ripper,” “Pierp” and the obvious, Fred, and he held the informal record for breaking the most dishes in his fraternity house, Delta Kappa Epsilon.
After Hamilton, Fred Meagher chose to continue a family tradition of becoming an attorney and enrolled at Albany Law School, graduating in 1939. His well-known father served as district attorney and president of the Broome County Bar Association, and the younger Meagher entered a practice with his brother, Jefferson Meagher ’31, until February 1942, when World War II interrupted. Fred Meagher joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation and worked as a special agent until August 1943. Throughout the years he would tell his family stories about working in the bureau with Director J. Edgar Hoover.
From September 1943 to June 1946, Fred Meagher served in the U.S. Army, working in the Judge Advocate General Corps. He was discharged as a first lieutenant and soon returned to Binghamton to practice law and raise his large family. In the midst of the war, on Aug. 12, 1942, Fred Meagher married Christine Kuhnen, whom he had met at a dance. They would have eight children, raising them on Binghamton’s west side, where he lived out his long life. Christine Meagher died in 2012, after 70 years of marriage.
Fred Meagher was active in the Broome County Bar Association and was proud when his son Joe became association president. A man of great religious faith, he sang for decades in the choir of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, putting to use, he said, his training from the Hamilton Choir. He served as a church trustee for more than half a century. An active member of the Rotary Club, he was honored with the organization’s Paul Harris Fellow award when he turned 100 years old. A history buff, Fred Meagher was proud of his family’s roots in Broome County and his paternal grandfather, who had served in the Civil War. He was a member of the YMCA for half a century, putting in daily workouts long before that became fashionable. When he was 75, an age when many people ease up on physical activities, the strong-willed, fiercely determined Fred Meagher took up golf, and the Meagher family spent many hours playing tennis, skiing, fishing and hiking.
Frederick J. Meagher, who served his alma mater as an Annual Fund volunteer and as a class correspondent for this publication, died at his home on Oct. 28, 2015, at age 101, after a brief illness. When asked how he achieved such longevity, he would attribute it to walking to work every day — and he made that trek a remarkable number of times. Among his survivors are his eight children, including William Meagher ’79; 20 grandchildren, including Anne Govern ’15; 18 great-grandchildren and a sister.
Return to Top
