James J. Clarkin, Dedicated Teacher;
Enjoyed Travel, Books, Film, Theater
James J. Clarkin passed away on Tuesday, June 17, in his home at Seabrook Village, in Tinton Falls, N.J. He was 99.
Jim was born in Newark, N.J., on April 30, 1926. His father, also James Clarkin, emigrated from Ireland early in the last century and married Mary (Mae) Byrne, Jim’s mother, in 1923. Jim had no siblings.
Raised in the Vailsburg section of Newark, Jim went to West Side High School and enlisted in the Navy at 17, serving in the Pacific as a seaman on the light cruiser Dayton during the final months of World War II. After the war, he briefly attended Vanderbilt University but returned home to Newark to look after his ailing mother and to finish his undergraduate education at Seton Hall. He would go on to complete a master’s degree in English Literature at NYU, and a doctorate in education at Rutgers. He was an engaged and innovative teacher all his professional life, at Robert Treat Junior High School in Newark, at Abraham Clark High School in Roselle, N.J., and finally — for over 20 years — at Jersey City State College, where he chaired the English Department and taught Irish, American and world literature.
In 1950, he married Ruth Moore, also of Vailsburg; she predeceased him in 2013. They are survived by three children — Sean, of New York City, Sarah Clarkin (Rick Weber) of Saranac Lake, N.Y., and Maura Rogan (Dan) of Evanston, Ill. — and by two grandchildren, Ben and Meg Rogan of Chicago.
In 1956, Jim, Ruth and Sean sailed to Holland, where Jim had a teaching Fulbright in Haarlem. Ruth and Jim’s experiences traveling in Holland and throughout Europe (with two-year-old Sean in tow) sparked a lasting curiosity about European history and culture, and led to several subsequent trips to France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, England and Ireland. For years after his time in the Netherlands, Jim’s Dutch students and fellow teachers would spend time with the Clarkins when they visited the United States.
In fact, a lively and joyful curiosity about the wider world — as revealed through travel, books, film and theater — was a central fact of Jim’s life with Ruth and their children. He was blessed with a phenomenal memory, which he carried into old age, of the books he had read and performances he had seen. Though he remained interested in politics all his life, the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy in the 1960s marked an end to any real emotional commitment to a candidate of either party. His tribal loyalties shifted to the Yankees, his preferred leisure activities to beach-going, working out and reading spy novels. From 1958 until 2013, the Clarkins lived in Westfield, N.J., where Ruth and Jim were active parishioners, first at Holy Trinity and later at St. Helen’s Roman Catholic Church. In the summer of 2013, Jim and Ruth moved to Seabrook in Tinton Falls; Ruth passed away only a few months later, in October 2013, after more than 63 years of marriage.
Slowly, Jim began to embrace life at Seabrook and undertook the first of a long list of popular courses and film series which he led there — referring by force of habit to his elderly students as “the kids.” Jim’s partner at Seabrook, Ann Dooley, was a source of great affection and companionship in his later years.
Jim was a man of integrity and devotion to his family and his faith. He was by turns brilliant, funny, stubborn and affectionate. He loved teaching, and leaves behind many students — now old and gray themselves — whose lives he touched, and who, many of them, stayed in touch with him over the years.
His children will carry with them always the stamp of his ideals and his love.
A funeral Mass was held on Saturday, June 21, in the chapel at St. Helen’s Church in Westfield. Interment followed at Fairview Cemetery in Westfield.
Those wishing to make a contribution in Jim’s memory are encouraged to consider the Scholars’ Fund for young staff at Seabrook Village, in Tinton Falls, N.J. (annmarie.matthews@erickson.com), or the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York (www.irishrep.org).
Funeral arrangements were in the care of Dooley Colonial Home in Westfield.
June 26, 2025
