What We've Learned: Jeff and Margaret Flagg

Last spring, Boston College’s French department became a little less romantic. That’s because the married couple, and beloved professors, Jeff Flagg and Margaret Flagg MGCS ’67 retired after fifty-five and thirty-four years, respectively. (They first met in 1966 when they were both enrolled in the same pre-Romantic French poetry class at BC.) Over the years, the Flaggs collaborated on coursework and projects, including an immersion program, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, that featured well-known professors in fields from political science to philosophy delivering lectures in French. Longtime supporters of BC’s Burns Library, the Flaggs have a keen interest in Irish heritage and plan to travel to Ireland and France and write a book together with their newfound free time. We asked them to tell us what they’ve learned.

… about falling for French

Margaret: I started to learn French at age fifteen, as a sophomore at Fontbonne Academy in Milton, Massachusetts. That was the beginning of the rest of my life. It was love of French at the first sound bite. I was totally taken in by the beauty of the language and by the fact that I could learn by an immersion in French from the very first day of class. 

Jeff: I had about three years of French at Framingham High School in Massachusetts. From the very beginning I found this interest in structure, in how things fit together in language, and what the differences were between the French way of looking at things and expressing them and the English way of looking at things and expressing them.

… about teaching 

Jeff: We went to a wonderful lecture by David McCullough a couple of years ago on campus. And he said that passion is something that students cannot be taught, it has to be caught. They can only see it if it’s done in a very natural, authentic, sincere way. It can’t be something you put on or want to demonstrate, it just happens. We’ve both been very happy and gratified to see students catch that passion.

… about the importance of studying languages

Margaret: It lifts us out of what is familiar. To paraphrase the author Sam Keen in his work To a Dancing God, it silences the familiar and welcomes the strange. It embraces cultural difference, cultural commonality, and gives us as Americans a less critical perspective on the speakers of other languages. And, it’s a very marketable tool for future careers in many professions.

… about partnership

Margaret: It is a process that takes a lot of patience and a lot of real, solid work. In a sense, a good partnership resembles a good marriage. It’s based upon mutual purpose and respect. Don’t be afraid of disagreement—don’t look at it as an ego jab, but as a way to bring synthesis to differences and come to a better understanding.

… about BC’s mission

Jeff: We’ve learned so much from the students we’ve had the pleasure and honor of working with. We’ve been so impressed by their care for other people in the sense of service and being there for others. In my fifty-five years of teaching, one thing that didn’t change was the character of the Boston College students. They’ve inspired me and challenged me to try to do more for others. And through Margaret, I have been able to understand a rootedness in the traditions of Boston College. I never fully realized the joy of a BC commencement until Margaret and I processed together and I heard her sing “For Boston.”

Margaret: Boston College will always be a presence in our lives. It is part of who we are. Among the lessons it’s given us are to cherish the time spent together on campus. To give thanks for the beautiful people in our BC lives and our family and friends. And to follow Voltaire’s advice and cultivate a garden, as Candide did after a series of misadventures, and cook its edibles with friends.

… about love

Jeff: It’s important to have mutual respect, as well as an eagerness to learn from each other and to celebrate each other’s gifts and accomplishments. Sometimes we’ll read our separate books in the living room and enjoy an exchange of what we’ve discovered. She reads a passage from hers, I’ll read one from mine, we’ll go back and forth.

Margaret: The vows we took on August 4, 1973, were and still are a commitment of long duration. In good and not-so-good times, our faith in God and in grace has let us live it out. Marriage is a journey which takes us along many paths, and some lead to dead ends and others to places of real joy. Our working together at Boston College has been part of that joy. ◽