Keran O’Brien sold his home, packed his life into storage, and traveled across the country. He appeared at Dorothy O’Brien’s doorstep in Rivervale, New Jersey, with nothing but a laptop and his Cocker Spaniel. The year was 2001.
“I said to him, ‘I’m still not marrying you,’” Dorothy recalls.
Quietly, though, she was thinking something else: I love this man. I better do something about it.
They married in 2002.
By then, both had already lived long, complicated lives—marked by difficult marriages, illness in their families, and hard-earned resilience. For more than 20 years, Dorothy had been best friends with Keran’s younger sister, Mary. The two women carried each other through the hard times. What Dorothy did not know at the time was that Mary had also been telling Keran her stories, just as she shared his with Dorothy.
They knew each other deeply long before they ever loved each other.
When Mary was diagnosed with an inoperable tumor in the late 1990s, Dorothy urged Keran to come from Arizona to Vermont to be with his sister. After Mary’s death, it was Dorothy and Keran who worked side by side to settle her affairs and honor her wishes in the face of family conflict and chaos. In that shared grief and shared purpose, something shifted.
In Dorothy’s words, “Keran was the last great gift that Mary gave me.” What followed was, as she describes it, “a romance for the ages.”
Early in their relationship, Keran sent Dorothy a translation of The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter by the Chinese poet Li Taipo. He underlined a single line that would become their private refrain:
“I desired my dust to be mingled with yours / Forever and forever and forever.”
Keran was a physicist whose work helped the world understand cosmic radiation. He published more than 135 scientific papers, served as a referee for multiple journals, and consulted for national laboratories and international agencies. He is best known as the creator of the LUIN code—short for Lunar and Interplanetary Nucleon—a model he first developed in the 1970s to simulate how cosmic radiation moves through the atmosphere. Decades later, he refined it into a version called PLOTINUS, still used today and regarded as the fastest and most precise model available.
At NAU, he served for 38 years as an adjunct professor in physics and astronomy, a role that Dorothy says was his proudest.
But for all the brilliance of his mind, it was his heart that defined him at home.
“He was selfless,” Dorothy says. “He always made me feel beautiful, loved, and respected. He never spoke a sharp word to me—never.”
Few things connected them more deeply than choral music.
Dorothy grew up with music. She sang a cappella in New York department stores at Christmastime to earn money to buy gifts for her children. Keran grew up immersed in Latin mass and the sound of men’s voices at a Passionist seminary next door to his childhood home. As a boy, nuns insisted he join the school choir—and because he “would never do anything anybody told him to,” he refused. Still, he never lost his love of choral music.
Dorothy says, despite no formal training, he had “a beautiful, beautiful voice.”
NAU Choral Studies became an important part of their lives during their time together.
During his entire tenure at NAU, Keran gave $10 every month to support the program. Together, he and Dorothy attended the NAU Holiday Dinner and concert every year. If they were traveling, they would fly back to Flagstaff just for the event.
“He enjoyed it that much, and it was that important to him,” Dorothy says. “We always looked forward to it. We loved it.”
Though Dorothy describes him as a deeply humble man, she laughs, remembering one small ritual. Every year at the holiday concert, he would pick up the program and look for one thing: his name on the list of donors.
“It was so unlike him! So charming! He was just so proud.”
Former Director of Choral Studies Edith Copley often told the O’Briens what an impact their steady, modest gifts were having—allowing the department flexibility to purchase additional music, cover small needs, and create opportunities that otherwise might not have been possible.
To the O’Briens, it was simple: “How do you thank someone for an exquisite experience?” Dorothy says. “You send money.”
When Keran died in August 2025, Dorothy knew exactly where his celebration of life needed to be held: at NAU, in the Kitt School of Music.
“He loved physics and loved the music that NAU provided to us over the decades,” she says. “I wanted to honor him truthfully.”
On November 2, Ashurst Hall filled with sound. NAU choral students sang. Friends joined in. Poetry was read. Stories were shared. The room, Dorothy says, felt alive with the things Keran loved most.
“In collaborating with Dorothy to celebrate Keran’s life, I experienced her palpable joy in being moved by the human voice,” says Director of Choral Studies Timothy Westerhaus. “We celebrated Keran together at his remembrance in the best way—telling stories and singing together—with students singing music from NAU concert traditions to Irish folk music with the O’Brien’s lifelong friends.”
For Dorothy, it felt full circle.
In their home today, Keran’s ashes sit waiting, and the line from Taipo’s poem comforts her as much as it ever has. But it’s also, in a quieter way, a description of how they lived their lives together: intertwined, steady, and faithful. Showing up, year after year—for each other, for their community, and for the NAU students whose voices so moved them.
Like the O’Briens, you can support the programs that move you and create lasting impact for NAU students.
