Paul A. St. Clair

Obituary of Paul A. St. Clair

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We are heartbroken to announce the passing of our beloved father, Paul Anthony St. Clair. Paul passed away on Tuesday, December 30, 2025, while in the company of his partner in New Jersey.

Paul was born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 1, 1953, to a large and loving Irish family. His early years were spent attending public and Catholic schools (St. Catherine of Alexandria) where he was a member of the Sea Cadets, played schoolyard basketball with older brother, Jimmy, in the schoolyard near the house on 48th Street, rode the Culver Shuttle with younger brother, Johnny, and learned to dance to 1950s Rock-n-Roll songs played on the radio in the kitchen with older sister, Susan. Not to be outdone, older sister, Rosemary, always assured that a teenage Paul would never leave their Beverly Road apartment making a fashion faux pas. A significant moment came in his young life when older brother, Peter, brought home a harmonica. From the moment Paul picked it up, he was dedicated and devoted to mastering it as well as the banjo, guitar, and pedal steel guitar. The songs of the 1960s, along with the nurturing of their wonderful parents, Ginny and Harry, as well as their many aunts and uncles and innumerable cousins (the Rusignos, the Thiekes, and the Kennedys), all kept Paul and his family singing and playing instruments. They were his first band, and Paul would play in many, most notably, the Roamin' Cadillacs ;)

His love of music, the country rock scene of the 1970s, as well as the youth protest movement of the 1960s, spurred Paul to play in many venues, from Manhattan, to Montauk, to eastern Germany, and to Sweden. Paul was in attendance for the playing of the National Anthem by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock in 1969, where he also crossed paths with the famous Wavy Gravy. It was after that, he said, that he came back to Flatbush, parted his hair down the middle, and became an avowed hippie. His love of music led him to play banjo late one night on WBAI radio in Manhattan, where he crossed paths with the renowned Citizen Kafka. Paul was a self-published recording artist with an account on Sound Cloud.

Not simply an avid, but a voracious reader, Paul recognized at an early age the intermingled roots of poverty, gender, economics, disability, and race at the crossroads of exploitation and greed. He applied an historical analysis to the intersectionality of these factors and sought, like his heroes, Pete Seeger, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Jones, among others fighting against injustice, to discover the basis of exploitation as well as divine music's place in the story of our multifaceted and very complicated world. Always interested in history, Paul studied, both in school and out, the revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries. Bearing these interests in mind, he worked in blue collar jobs, specifically at the Ford Motor Plant in Edison, New Jersey. His love of events past propelled him to major in history at Brooklyn College under Drs. Renate Bridenthal, PhD and Teofilo Ruiz, PhD. Upon graduation, he was accepted into a PhD program in European History at Binghamton University, studying under Drs. Jean Quataert, PhD, Melvyn Dubovsky, PhD, George Stein, PhD, and Deborah Hertz, PhD. A Fulbright scholar, Paul lived in Leipzig, Germany, with his wife and son, for an academic year while he researched early-1900s electoral politics in Saxony. In German. He incorporated his understanding of intersectionality into his academic scholarship at Broome Community College (now SUNY Broome) where he taught countless students between 1996 and 2022.

During those years, Paul married and was the proud parent of two beautiful children. Both parents took on the role of being their first teachers. From Paul, they learned many things, including, but not limited to, chess, the American music canon, and, of course, love. Visitors, adults and children alike, would observe that you could always count on a history lesson at the dinner table in the St. Clair household.

Paul held dear the writings of Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut, and he revered the poetry and instrumentation of Bob Dylan, whose style inspired Paul to also play harmonica while strumming his beloved guitar.

A devotee of many genres of music, Paul could pick up any instrument and make it sing. He was the meanest blues harp player this side of Memphis, honoring Lead Belly, Howlin' Wolf, and Muddy Waters. His rendition of the essential chortling laughter of the harmonica on "Roadhouse Blues" by The Doors in a music establishment one night in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn - just a stone's throw from Ovington Avenue - is most memorable. He was the most melodic pedal steel guitar player (inspired by the music of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris and CSNY) and was the sprightliest and jangliest Bluegrass (Scruggs style) banjo player north of the Smoky Mountains! Bill Monroe, Bob Wills, Asleep at the Wheel, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, Dr. John, Elmore James, Professor Longhair, Little Walter, Son House, John Lee Hooker, Paul Butterfield, Johnny Cash, the Rolling Stones (whom he called the greatest rock-n-roll band of all time), Ian Tyson, the Carter Family, Emmylou Harris, Billie Holiday, Rhiannon Giddens, and Elvis are just a few of his music heroes. He played pedal steel guitar for the Patsy Kline Review held here in Johnson City and for the Ithaca College theater production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. He was also featured as a studio musician playing pedal steel guitar with Nashville recording artist, Steve Haggard, in whose band Paul played in the Montauk and eastern Suffolk County music scene during the early 1980s. In the early 1990s, he played pedal steel guitar with bands in the New York counties of Broome and Chenango and in northern Pennsylvania. Scores of people will remember his musical chops.

Growing up in a National League family in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Paul was steeped in the lore of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Ebbets Field. Paul remembered well the grief his older brothers felt when the Dodgers headed out west, but was able to embrace the advent of the New York Mets, never giving up hope for yet another Subway Series.

A Renaissance Man, a jokester, a musician par excellence, a darn good history teacher, a devoted son, sibling, father, grandfather, and friend, Paul leaves behind a kaleidoscopic legacy of creativity as well as the following souls (including the spouses of his nieces and nephews and their countless children) whom he loved: his son, Andreas St. Clair; his daughter, Susannah St. Clair, her husband, Patrick Roach, their young son, Jack; his former wife, Natascha Franco St. Clair; his sisters, Susan St. Clair (deceased) and her husband, John La Rufa, children Ginny, Jesse, and Eric; Rosemary St. Clair Dolan and her husband, Tommy Dolan, children Molly; his brothers Peter St. Clair and his wife, Carol Sepkosky, children, Johanna, Nicole, Timothy, and Molly; James St. Clair and partner, Deborah Lee, former wives Linda Schwez, and Nancy Lange (deceased), children Robert, Steven, Evan, and Jonah; John St. Clair and his wife Joanne Cirincione, children Jeremy and Anna; his parents, Virginia Kennedy St. Clair and Harold St. Clair (deceased); and his partner, Paula Mirabile.

A Funeral Mass will be offered at St. Thomas Aquinas Church, Highland Avenue, Binghamton, Friday January 9, 2026 at 1:30 p.m. Burial will be in Holy Cross Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY at the convenience of the family. The family will receive friends at the J.A. McCormack Sons Funeral Home, 141 Main Street, Binghamton, Thursday January 8, 2026 from 4 to 7 p.m. The Mass will be live streamed at www.sta-sp.org