Classmate Marty Doggett delivered the eulogy for his good friend and NPHS classmate Richard Muglia at New York's Cosmopolitan Club immediately following the funeral services on the morning of May 10, 2022. Below is the full text of Marty's tribute to Richard.
Death leaves a heartache no one can heal. Love leaves a memory no one can steal.
We are gathered here today to acknowledge and share both our joy in the extraordinary gift Richard Muglia’s life was to us and the intense pain that accompanies his passing. Your presence here is a testament to the remarkable web of connections that Richard created and a great comfort to Ellen, Alice, Bill, Will, Sam, Haley, Anthony, Anita and Babe.
Anna Quidlen once observed that “grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us”. Grief tends to be unspoken publicly except for moments at a funeral or memorial service. Hearts heal faster from surgery than from loss. Grief is a train that doesn't run on anyone's schedule. Despite our love of closure and desire to get through something as quickly as possible, this isn’t the way our emotions work. If they did, the messy complexities of grief would be distilled into sound bites that people would lock away. In fact, grief becomes an enduring thing called loss. Loss is forever. We are defined by those whom we have lost. In this case, we are all privileged to have known Richard. Does the pain of loss ever stop hurting? If it ever does I’ll let you know. However, all of you today provide an unconditionally loving presence that soothes broken hearts, binds up wounds and addresses loss. It is a gift we all give to each other. Suffering isolates us, loving presence brings us back.
My initial encounter with Richard occurred on my first day of school as a clueless ninth grader at North Plainfield High School. I was an alien in a strange land. You see, I had spent my formative elementary school years at St Joseph’s Grammar School, indoctrinated by the misnamed Sisters of Mercy. Ours was a regimented routine; uniforms, prayers three times a day and regular lectures about comportment and obedience so that you would not turn out like the Protestants at the public school. So, knowing no better, I showed up dressed in a jacket and tie for my first period Algebra class. I was made increasingly self-conscious by stares from my new classmates when the teacher suddenly called on me. I immediately stood up and blurted out an answer,“2x + 9 Sister”. Gales of laughter erupted. Fortuitously, I was, quite literally, saved by the bell from complete humiliation. As I slouched out of class, Richard, whom I didn’t know from Adam, came over, put his arm around me, and said, “Ditch the jacket and tie; never stand up in class except to leave and remember these ladies aren’t your sisters”. Stick with me Catholic School kid and I’ll de-program you. This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. The irony is that this came from a fellow who, later in life, became a paragon of sartorial splendor, decorum and the epitome of a well-mannered gentleman.
Richard went on to amass a resume and professional body of work that was exemplary by any standard. After graduating from Williams, He earned a Master’s in Public Health from Yale and then received a law degree from Columbia where he was named a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. He was hired immediately by Skadden, Arps, one of New York’s most distinguished law firms and quickly made partner. His legal portfolio was primarily centered in London, Europe and Russia. He specialized in mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity transactions, privatization deals and a host of other complicated legal arrangements that were well beyond the understanding of mere mortals. Richard had the legal acumen, the temperament, tenacity and work ethic to make him the lawyer of choice for Governments and international corporations. His practice required him to be a high profile, globe-trotting Red Adair putting out legal fires and making deals. All of this was done with understated competence and modesty. Not bad for a kid from North Plainfield.
One might deduce from this description that he was a stuffed shirt, workaholic Establishment lawyer. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Richard was never afraid to color outside the lines and two vignettes from his college days reveal another side to his personality
One evening, Richard, our other roommate Lester, and I were somehow persuaded by a bunch of sadistic friends to play intramural hockey. Since none of us would have ever been mistaken for Guy LaFleur, most of the evening was spent either clutching the boards in terror or trying to get up from faceplants and pratfalls on the ice. Ineptitude can be exhausting and thirst provoking, so naturally we went to the Purple Pub, the local college watering hole, to recover our dignity. As we bellied up to the bar, a townie who had obviously been way overserved was jawing at the bartender. All of a sudden without provocation, he reached over the bar and slugged the barkeep, spewing blood in all directions. I grabbed the drunk by the back of the arms and after a brief struggle, was able to calm him down. Still having him firmly in my grasp, I slowly began to turn him away from the bar to further defuse the situation, but then, inexplicably, he began to rage, flail and struggle. We crashed on a table like a scene from some grade B western and real chaos ensued until Lester came to my aid and the lout was finally subdued. As we walked back to our dorm room, I mused, “I don’t understand what set that guy off; I thought I had him calmed down and under control”. With a twinkle in his eye and an ironic smile Richard replied, “When you wheeled him around from the bar, I thought you were setting him up for an application of Biblical eye for an eye justice, so I popped him a few times.”
As a senior, Richard inadvertently made campus life memorable for a new Williams first year girl. Richard was an attendee at the bachelor party we held for Steve Crehan, the 6’ 4’’ 230 pound defensive end on the football team. Steve was a gentle giant who did everything in life to the max. Steve really, really enjoyed his bachelor party and by 4:30am was passed out stone cold on the floor. Being probably the only semi- responsible person left at the party, Richard recruited the only other upright reveler, Robert Koegel, to help him transport the inert guest of honor back to his dorm room. It should be noted that neither Richard nor Robert broke 5’ 6’’ on the height chart. The next morning, still in an alcoholic haze, I dragged myself to breakfast and overheard the aforementioned coed as she and a friend chatted over their eggs. She breathlessly recounted to her companion, “I woke up early. The sun was rising and I looked out the window and saw this enormous giant being carried on the shoulders of two midgets. They threw him in a car and sped away. Very strange,” she said, “I guess I’m not in Kansas any more.”
When Richard received that cruel diagnosis almost six years ago, he was not about to let it interrupt the joys of living. As Susan Sontag said, he now held dual citizenship in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. He continued to fly fish in the streams of Montana and the Gaspee. He and Ellen made the home in their beloved Martha’s Vineyard a place of hospitality where guests were welcomed warmly. A visit with the Muglias in Chilmark provided respite from mainland life. Stimulating conversation, epicurean delights and expertly mixed cocktails were reliably part of the experience. Richard was the lord of his manor, always on the lookout for a new project, a practical improvement or an adjustment to his garden. He delighted in sharing these with friends.
When that inevitable day came, this poem by Maya Angelou seemed to be written for Richard.
When great Trees fall
Rocks on distant hills shudder
Lions hunker down in tall grasses
And even elephants lumber after safety
When great trees fall in forests,
small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear
When great souls die,
The air around us becomes light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly
Our eyes, briefly see with a hurtful clarity
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines, gnaws on kind words, unsaid
Promised walks never taken
Great souls die and our reality, bound to them ,takes leave of us
Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened.
Our minds formed by their radiance fall away
We are not so much maddened as reduced to unutterable ignorance
Of dark, cold caves
And when the great souls die, after a period peace blooms,
Slowly and always irregularly.
Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be better.
For they existed
Richard and I were friends for almost 6 decades. We had a special relationship that included doing stupid things together, unsuccessfully chasing girls in high school and college, playing sports, rooming together, attending each other’s weddings, reveling in professional accomplishments, celebrating the birth of children and grandchildren, comparing medical protocols and trying all along to be good husbands and fathers. I loved him like a brother. He loved his amazing wife Ellen and his accomplished and talented children, Sam and Alice and their spouses Haley and Bill with all his soul. He absolutely adored little Will! He loved his friends. He loved life and lived it as if each day might be his last; and then one day it was. His was a truly authentic existence. As a wise rabbi once observed, I find myself in the odd position of mourning less than I ought because I am so grateful I got to know him at all. The world doesn’t produce as many nice, high character guys as it should. Ditto for people who possess exemplary courage, strength, decency and faith. Richard got 71 years to show the rest of us how to brighten the lives of others and the world. Forgive me, but I am indignant that he didn’t live longer.
