Speakers' Biographies

Daniel J. Kelly Lifelong Rye resident; attended Rye schools; graduate of Rye High School Holds an A. B. in Social Studies and a M.A. in American History from the State University of New York at Albany. Veteran of the Korean War, followed by a 35-year business career with IBM Corporation on education, personnel and finance staffs. Past Trustee and President of the Rye Historical Society and currently a member of the Society’s Museum Committee; volunteer at the Knapp House Library and Archives. Appointed Rye City Historian in 1967 and continues to serve in that capacity; member of the City of Rye Landmarks Advisory Committee; the 2004 Centennial Committee; and Church of the Resurrection History Committee in preparation of the Church’s 125th anniversary in 2005.

Eugene G. McGuire is an attorney in private practice in Rye, New York, since 2002. He earned his law degree (cum laude) from Columbia University in 1970. He served as an Associate with the law firm of Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & Roberts in New York City, 1970-1979, Vice-President, General Counsel and Secretary with Elf Aquitaine, Inc., in New York City, 1979-2002, and was on the Board of American Natural Soda Ash Corporation, 1991-1994, 1995-1998. His civic activities in Rye include Trustee, President, Rye Historical Society; Rye City Board of Architectural Review; Rye City Landmarks Preservation Advisory Committee; Secretary and Counsel, Sound Shore Sinfonietta, Inc.; and President, Vice-President, Treasurer, Secretary. He was active in the New York Monday Meeting, Religious Society of Friends from 1974-1976.

Richard Hourahan is the archivist of the Rye Historical Society. Mr. Hourahan received his Masters Degree in Information Systems from Baruch College and has published numerous articles in the fields of 19th century cultural and social history. Currently he is writing a biography of the 19th century Quaker abolitionist, Barney Corse.

Mother Placid Dempsey is a Benedictine nun of the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut. A sculptor and painter, she was born in Brooklyn, New York into a family, which was a lively mix of lawyers and artists. It was an environment that encouraged creativity and critical thinking. Mother first encountered Regina Laudis in 1947, when she visited the newly arrived nuns in Connecticut. Here, she met Mother Benedict Duss, the revered and remarkable Foundress and first Abbess of Regina Laudis. Thus began a bond of respect and friendship, which would be a source of strength and insight until the present ay. In 1949, after graduation from Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, Mother became one of the first Americans to enter the monastery in its initial years. Prior to entering, Mother spent a brief time at Sheepfold. Mother Placid has been guest mistress of the Abbey since 1955. Mother Placid is a living witness to and participant in all that began in those yeas and to the singular human and spiritual achievements brought about through the collaboration of Lauren Ford and Mother Benedict Duss.

Summary of Mother Placid Dempsey O.S.B.’s narration of Sheepfold: Legacy of Collaboration:

It is an integral aspiration of the human spirit to seek for something more, something better: that which is real, substantial, significant. This is particularly manifest during and after times of upheaval and violence. So it was in the aftermath of two World Wars in the 20th century that Europe and America were throbbing with emerging new forms of spiritual, religious, cultural, artistic, and social renewal.

It was on the cusp of this watershed moment that Regina Laudis came into being in Bethlehem, Connecticut, through the creative relationship of Lauren Ford, the artist, and Mother Benedict Duss, the Foundress of Regina Laudis Monastery.

In a documentary produced at the Abbey of Regina Laudis especially for this symposium, we are taken through the home of Lauren Ford, known as Sheepfold, in Bethlehem, by Mother Placid Dempsey, O.S.B., a nun of Regina Laudis for over fifty years.

Mother Placid, herself an artist and longtime friend of Lauren, is uniquely able to offer fresh insights into the art and person of Lauren Ford, and the fascinating circumstances of the foundation of Regina Laudis, in which Lauren played a crucial part

Antoinette Keilty, a lifelong resident of Bethlehem, Connecticut, began working for Lauren Ford in 1943. For the next thirty years, until Lauren Ford’s death in 1973, she was her personal assistant running the artist’s household and administering her personal and professional affairs. At the same time, she and her husband Bryan, who was the caretaker at Sheepfold, Lauren Ford’s Bethlehem home, were raising a family of seven children. An avid gardener, Mrs. Keilty is on the board of the Bethlehem Historical Society and a Eucharistic Minister at the Church of the Nativity.

Carol Ann (Conway) Brown was born in Milford, Connecticut. She earned her B.A. in English and History at the University of Connecticut in 1964 and a MALS degree in Literature at Wesleyan University in 1971. She has taught English and ESL (English as a Second Language) in the United States and Puerto Rico, and served as Librarian and Archivist for the Waterbury Republican-American. She has served as President of the Old Bethlem (sic) Historical Society since 1995.

Scott Turkington A native of Minneapolis, Scott Turkington is Organist and Choirmaster for St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Stamford, Connecticut, where he conducts a choir of professional singers in a program of weekly Renaissance Mass settings and Gregorian chant. Before assuming this post in 1998, he was Assistant Organist and Conductor at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. While at the National Shrine, he played for over 500 services each year, and appeared on live national television dozens of times. Formerly, he has been Music Director at the Church of the Covenant in Boston; Music Teacher and Organist at the Boston Archdiocesan Choir School (Cambridge, Massachusetts), under Theodore Marier. Having studied at the University of Minnesota, the Boston Conservatory of Music and the Catholic University of America, his former teachers include Heinrich Fleischer, Phillip Steinhaus, and George Faxon. In frequent demand as an organ recitalist, he has played innumerable recitals in the Northeast, having made his New York debut at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He has performed for a national convention of the Organ Historical Society, and is a featured performer on the Organ Historical Society’s compact disc, Organs of Baltimore. In 1994, his choir performed for Pope John Paul II at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. He is currently the Dean of the Fairfield, CT Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. He has just finished editing A Gregorian Gregorian_Chant Masterclass by Theodore Marier, published by the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, CT. This book with its companion CD featuring the Stamford Schola Gregoriana and the nuns of Regina Laudis, both conducted by Mr. Turkington, may be obtained from http://www.abbeyofreginalaudis.com.

Donald M. Reynolds, founder and director of The Monuments Conservancy, is an art historian and the author of numerous books, articles, and reviews on American art and architecture, which include: Masters of American Sculpture, from the American Renaissance to the Millennium (New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1994), “Remove Not the Ancient Landmark”: Public Monuments and Moral Values, ed., (New York: Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1996), Monuments and Masterpieces: Histories and Views of Public Sculpture in New York City, rev. ed. (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997; original edition, Macmillan, 1988), The Architecture of New York City, rev ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994; original edition, Macmillan, 1984). He taught at Columbia University in New York City, where he earned his doctorate in art history (1974), and is the founder of The Samuel Dorsky Symposium on Public Monuments (1991), an annual tribute to the renowned art historian, Rudolf Wittkower , whose lectures on the interrelationship between the East and the West, from ancient to modern times, he compiled and edited in: The Impact of Non-European Civilizations on the Art of the West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), The Writings of Rudolf Wittkower: A Bibliography (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1989). He was consultant to the Kemper Foundation for The Corps of Discovery, the monument to Lewis and Clark in Kansas City, Missouri, unveiled in 2000, and for the National Black Catholic Congress, he designed the sculpture program of Our Mother of Africa Chapel in The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D. C., 2001.