Walter J. Meagher, SJ was born in Watertown, Massachusetts in 1895, graduated from Boston College High School, and entered the Society of Jesus in 1915. Meagher studied for four years at St. Andrew-on-Hudson, the Jesuits' preparatory seminary in Poughkeepsie, New York, and made his religious vows there in 1917. He studied philosophy at Woodstock College in Maryland, and then taught at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines for three years. Meagher was ordained a priest in 1928 at Weston College, and earned a Ph.D. in history in 1944 from Fordham University. He taught history at College of the Holy Cross from 1929 to 1954, and joined the School of Nursing faculty at Boston College to teach history in 1954 until his retirement in 1967.
Meagher was also an author, and in 1965 completed "A Proper Bostonian, Priest, Jesuit: the diary of Joseph Coolidge Shaw", an annotated diary collected from the memoirs of Shaw, the first benefactor of Boston College. A year later, Meagher published "The Spires of Fenwick", his history of Holy Cross since founding in 1843.
After retiring from teaching, Meagher was appointed spiritual counselor to the Boston College community. He died on November 26, 1989.
