Father Edward Hughes McGrath was born in New York on 7 January, 1923, to Dr. John F McGrath and Lillian McGrath. After middle school studies at Saint Ignatius Loyola School, he attended Regis High School where he graduated in 1940.

He joined the Jesuits in 1943. Ed McGrath came to India in 1949; just two years after six Jesuits from the Maryland Province started the Jamshedpur province. On arriving at Jamshedpur, he was asked to teach Standard IV students of Loyola School along with taking public speaking classes for XLRI students and helping Fr. Quinn Enright SJ (founder and director of XLRI) run XLRI. Father Quinn Enright obtained permission from Bihar University to prepare candidates for Ranchi University’s MA degree in Labour and Social Welfare.

After spending a year in Jamshedpur, Ed McGrath was sent for theological studies to Kurseong, Darjeeling. He was ordained priest on 21 November, 1953.

In 1959, when Fr. Enright did not return from USA, Fr. McGrath, then 36, took over as Director and, along with a team of dynamic Jesuit Fathers and lay colleagues, put XLRI on the country’s educational map as one of its finest business schools. It has not budged from this position in over six decades. As a school of labour relations, XLRI was born out of Ed McGrath’s dream to strengthen industrial relations in India through stronger trade unions and better personnel managers who practiced ethical management. Fr. McGrath conducted several courses for management and trade union groups at XLRI. During the 1960s, under his guidance, XLRI started offering courses for unions in collaboration with the steel union at the Steel Worker College, Jamshedpur.

His early writings included: The Priority of Labour based on Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical, On Human Work; Rumour and the Worker; A Guide to the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947; Payment of Wages Act, and Compensation Workmen’s Act. His bestseller was Basic Managerial Skills for All, a Prentice-Hall publication that went into nine editions and sold over a million copies. This was his magnum opus, a fine treatise on human skills of industrial relations, personnel training, labour negotiations, arbitration, mediation, conciliation, unions management and leadership.

Fr. McGrath was at his best during the bloody communal riots in Jamshedpur in 1979. When the city was burning, he persuaded some XLRI faculty to join him in organizing the first peace march through the epicentre of the riots (Mango). He then brought key leaders from both communities to XLRI for three days for a residential programme designed to repair the fractured communal relations and build bridges between Hindus and Muslims. When the dust finally settled down, Ed McGrath wrote an article about this episode which was published in the Social Action.

In 1987, Fr. McGrath became the director of the Human Life Centre in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Here he developed vocational training courses in written and spoken English, computer operations, tailoring, and carpentry among others. He was very inclusive in his outreach to all – rich and poor, young and old, literate or illiterate, man or woman. He had special love for the marginalized, the powerless, and the Chotanagpur tribals.

Above all, he taught us compassion and humility. He would say, “Your dreams must have place for the less fortunate. Else it is only ambition.” He spent years together running a centre for tribal youth making them more employable.

10 December, 2016, a coffee-table book on Father E.H. McGrath SJ was released at the inaugural session of Annual Homecoming by Fr. McGrath himself, in the presence of Fr. Abraham, Director of XLRI, the XLRI Alumni and the entire XL family. The book entitled The Legendary Fr. Ed McGrath SJ– Revered Teacher, Inspiring Forever was an initiative of his students and XL alumni. It contains photos of Fr. Edward McGrath, SJ and tributes from generations of his students. Fr. McGrath lived a simple life, thought big, did big things, loved greatly, remembered and loved his students, and was one of the most revered, respected and admired Jesuits among his students and friends. He was a holy man. He never judged anybody unjustly. He had no enemies, only friends.

This year in 2017, Ed had been a Jesuit for 75 years, and associated with XLRI close to seven decades in making it a world-class school of Industrial labour relations and business management. Fr. Ed was Director, XLRI in two innings: 1959-62 & Sept. 1981 – Dec. 1982.

I had the privilege of knowing him and working with him for many years at XLRI; we agreed and disagreed, argued and counter-argued; our business management concepts and models were different, but we were friends, dedicated to the same Magis, to the Greater Good, to XLRI, to Xavier School of Management.

He lived 94.5 years, suffered acutely during the last few years, but never complained, and always smiled. He was full of cheer, and loved to watch National Geographic Animal shows or Discovery Channel on TV, and went to bed early to rise by 5:00 am each morning. He did that too, last Friday, 4 August, but breathed his last shortly thereafter at about 6:30 am.

During each of his last ten years in the province infirmary at XLRI hundreds of his students dating back from 1949 would visit him, especially when they gathered for their anniversary class reunions. Meeting and a “selfie” with Maggie was a treasured moment of the Class Reunion. Most of the time, even when he was in the nineties, he greeted his students by name and the year of their graduation.

Hundreds of tributes have flown in since his departure, several of them from great celebrities such as CEOs, HR Directors, Union Leaders, and founders of NGOs. Ratan Tata, former chairperson of Tata Sons, admired Fr. McGrath and wrote about him in the Foreword of the Coffee-Table Book on Ed McGrath: “Father McGrath was amongst the first few people I met when I was assigned to Jamshedpur. I can never forget his great ability to put you at ease and the warmth of his friendship… Fr. McGrath has become as much of an institution himself in Jamshedpur as the formal institution with which he has been so closely associated.”

Fr. E. Abraham SJ, Director, XLRI, said: “His basic pedagogy was to ‘learn by doing’. What I admired most about him was his love for students, love for poor, his hard work and his fantastic sense of humour. He was truly a great human being and a wonderful priest.”

In short, Ed was a legend, a brand, an institution, a defining identity of XLRI, a tradition, a legacy, a culture, and a heritage. Maggie has moved on. He’s gone home. May he rest in peace. He lived simple, he died simple.

• Ozzie Mascarenhas, SJ