Courtesy photo Longtime Daniel Webster College assistant professor Donald Fagan and his wife, Eileen, pause for a photo at the college’s annual Bid For Excellence scholarship auction in 2004. Fagan died Friday after a brief illness.

NASHUA – They spent the weekend mourning his passing, many by posting heartfelt tributes to an online blog created in his honor.

And this morning at 11, faculty members and students, past and present, who knew popular Daniel Webster College professor Donald D. Fagan will jam Immaculate Conception Church in Lowell, Mass., to bid the longtime educator farewell and celebrate the life of a unique, widely respected man.

Don Fagan, a 31-year assistant professor of business management at Daniel Webster, died at his Lowell home Friday after a brief illness. He was 67.

“There was truly no one like him,” Annette Kurman, DWC public relations director, said Monday. “This is a great loss to us, both professionally and personally.”

Fagan also taught at Nashua’s Rivier College, Franklin Pierce College in Concord and Middlesex Community College in Bedford, Mass. Despite declining health, he continued teaching at DWC and Middlesex until two weeks before his death, Kurman said.

“He came in one day looking very tired; it was obvious he didn’t feel well . . . I think he napped most of the day,” Kurman said. “But Don loved teaching and truly enjoyed coming in each day. He enjoyed the company of everyone he worked with.”

Fagan’s fiery, passionate delivery was legendary among his economics, investment and personal finance students, who good-naturedly dubbed his brand of teaching “Faganomics,” Kurman wrote in a tribute that was released Monday.

“Professor Fagan taught not just in terms of curricular goals and outcomes, but in terms of how to live life to the fullest, leading by his own example,” she wrote. “He was a very practical teacher . . . Don had an interesting story to support every theory he presented.”

Personal tributes to Fagan and condolences (www.dwc.edu/news/Fagan/Fagan.shtml) over the weekend and into Monday.

“I always remember Don Fagan’s view of people from California, wrote Dennis G. Rouleau, a 1983 DWC grad. “He used to say that the United States was tilted toward the Pacific and that all the nuts and screwballs rolled down into California.

“He was a great man, and I certainly appreciate what he did for me.”

A lifelong Red Sox fanatic who loved attending home games and even traveled to Florida for spring training, Fagan habitually listened to games on his office radio, Kurman wrote. “His passion for baseball and other sports arose from his youth, when he boxed in the amateur Golden Gloves . . . he often told us stories of growing up in Lowell.”

A 1963 graduate of Northeastern University with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, Fagan later attended Rivier College and got his master’s in business in 1978.

Before becoming a teacher, Kurman wrote, Fagan dabbled in the fast-food industry, becoming a management executive for Burger King and Dunkin’ Donuts. There he met a young Nashua police officer, Bob Ravenelle, who years later became DWC’s director of campus safety and served for 25 years.

Early in his teaching career, Fagan taught junior high and high school in the Lowell area, Kurman wrote. He was named chairman of DWC’s business department in 1982, and received the college’s “Teacher of Excellence” award in 2002.

A lifelong private pilot who loved world travel, lasagna, practical jokes and sports, Fagan was known to quietly reach into his own pocket to assist those in need. “One time he learned of a student who didn’t have the money to pay for her last semester at DWC,” Kurman’s tribute states. “Don loaned her the thousands of dollars she needed to complete her studies . . . she later repaid the loan that allowed her to graduate.”

Keith Moon, a DWC business professor from 1982-95 who met Fagan when the two taught at Franklin Pierce, remembered a perennially positive man with a terrific sense of humor. He was quoted in Kurman’s tribute.

“Whenever I was looking for Don on campus, he was easy to locate,” said Moon. “All I had to do was wander around until I heard laughter, and there would be Don.

“He had a way to make the world seem bright, even when his world was not.”

Professor Neil Parmenter, Fagan’s “officemate” for the past several years, who Kurman described as one of Fagan’s closest friends on campus, was also quoted in her tribute.

“There (wasn’t) a morning that went by that Don, with his coffee and the sports sections of several newspapers and magazines, didn’t sit down with me and others to discuss how we can solve the world’s problems,” said Parmenter.

Another among the scores of bloggers honoring Fagan was 1993 graduate Darlene (Meely) Hutchinson.

She wrote, in part, “Mr. Fagan was the heart and soul of DWC. He was always there with a laugh and a smile, but he was also always available to assist with any academic questions or needs. He was not just a professor. He took a sincere interest in each person . . .

“DWC has lost an incredible person,” Hutchinson wrote.

“Anyone who knew Don Fagan will forever have his handprint on their heart.”