Kenny “Duff” Duffin died in 2023 without knowing he gave me the long-ago gift of his example to create a fictitious character in one of my novels, a Black hero who resists prejudice and fights for social justice. Duff’s strong spirit helps guide me as a writer to breathe resistance into America’s continuing struggle against injustice.
The story of our friendship needs telling now as much as ever.
In my 2020 novel Paddy’s Day in Trump Town make-believe man of integrity and champion of principle Paddy “Duff” Duffin keeps on pushing with the heartfelt pulse of a soulful Curtis Mayfield anthem. In Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited, the updated 2025 reissue Avventura Press released this summer, Duff drives the story as one of my book’s bold leaders. A difficult read, the book is loaded with harsh satire, dark humor and graphic brutality.
As a biracial Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania police detective searching Luzerne County hard coal country for his father, Duff represents goodness, courage and integrity in a disturbing contemporary story of racism, misogyny, violence, Irish American white supremacy and severe societal dysfunction. Duff’s mission makes clear how and why we must stand for what’s right in the increasingly wrong world of Donald Trump’s presidency, a system fueled by political corruption, discrimination and hate.
I pondered my fictitious character’s personality for a long time before naming him. I decided on his surname “Duffin” and his nickname “Duff” to proclaim his white Irish roots yet remain true to his Blackness. Many Black people in the United States carry Irish surnames for a variety of reasons. My fictitious character’s single mother gave her son her last name when he was born. She named her baby boy “Paddy” for a very different reason you’ll have to read the book to find out.
Kenny Duffin and I worked as drug and alcohol counselors at a Pennsylvania state prison re-entry facility at Third and Herr in Harrisburg in the late 1970s. Unlike the real Duff, who graduated from John Harris High School, I attended an all-white high school in Perry County. I met my first two Black acquaintances when I was 18 and attended Penn State in 1969.
Not long after I moved to the University Park campus I recognized a Black teenager from Harrisburg who the year before had sucker-punched me from behind at a dance that turned into a Black vs. white free-for-all in the aftermath of the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination. Heavily outnumbered the night my attacker threw his punch, I swallowed my urge to mix it up and headed for the door.
I still wonder if Duff knew the guy who hit me. Back then I decided not to ask. Let it go, I told myself, so I did. As the years went by I matured slowly but surely, got smarter and learned to control my own temper. During the almost four years I worked for the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill as a full-time counselor and part-time boxing instructor I made several Black friends from whom I learned lifelong lessons about race and class.
In addition to Duff, Corrections Officer Dickie Green, Robbie Lewis at the Police Athletic League gym, co-workers Dave Stockton, Jimmy Polite, June M. and stand-up peacemaker Norman “Bo” Wilson helped me understand my role in a nasty white society that rigged the system against Black people. I also learned from Butch at the Broad Street Market and Guff who owned the Zodiac Lounge across the street and eventually got murdered. I even forgave the young brother who blindsided me.
Equally important, Black inmates like Delbert Hodge, Jeff Smith and Boo Boo Lark, complex men raised in what can seem like a perpetual underclass with whom elite white America does not want to share the American Dream, helped me grow. Working for the “Bureau of Corrections” planted seeds in my psyche that took root decades later and provoked me to write Paddy’s Day in Trump Town, a flashpoint narrative about our time in America when white-hot bigotry elected a white racist president.
In 2024 mean-spirited mostly white American male voters did it again.
In my mind I see Kenny Duffin leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, taking a long drag off his cigarette, paying close attention before speaking in the inmate therapy groups we ran. Working 24/7 shifts in the musty four-story inner-city apartment building, we did what we could to help convicts re-enter society without depending on guns, heroin or other drugs and alcohol.
Whenever Duff spoke in his soft tones, Black B-Ward gang members from Philly, Pittsburgh rapists, and pimps, killers, Harrisburg junkies, athletes, Vietnam combat veterans and Black Muslims sat in respectful silence. Rough rural white rednecks paid attention, too. A smattering of Puerto Ricans nodded, tuning into Duff’s advice. Those who embraced his guidance had a better chance of making it on the street when they got paroled. Duff’s words and attitude carried weight. We won some and we lost some — both inmates and staff.
Unlike me Duff had nothing to prove. My big white ego did more to intimidate than heal. I did okay with most inmates, but Duff’s calm heart spoke with far more power than my macho attitude. Duff carried himself with confidence and class. He, too, had studied at Penn State’s main campus, could play some serious basketball and radiated a solid handsome bearing with smooth dark brown skin and a disarming smile. Duff could sing, too, having spent time on stage with one of the best ’60s soul groups to ever come out of the Burg, even better than the Emperors and the lead singer for the Magnificent Men as far as I was concerned.
Most of all, Duff was fair. That’s the moral of this story. Be fair. It’s nice to be nice. Equity makes us stronger people. Respecting ourselves and others provides power to escape prisons of weakness and insecurity.
I wish Duff had read my book. If people who knew and loved him do read my new paperback, they should quickly recognize Duff’s gentle spirit and embrace his vibrant energy in a sincere quest to improve their own and other people’s lives.
Kenny “Duff” Duffin sparked the pure sense of hope required for progress.
So does Paddy “Duff” Duffin, a main character in my novel.
We must continue to fight the power.
America needs all the help we can get.