LEBANON — When Lebanon Opera House Executive Director Joe Clifford thinks of Lauren “Duff” Cummings Jr., he pictures him in the shadowy wings of the city’s downtown theater, headset on and Cherry Coke at hand.

As stage manager, Cummings was integral to bringing LOH’s productions to life, but his work was the invisible kind; it transpired behind the scenes, enabling others to flourish in the spotlight. 

“Duff got a real kick out of people… He had no bias, whether you were a Grammy-winner, or if you were a little kid doing your first show on the stage, his whole goal was to make you shine,” Clifford said. 

Cummings, 74, died on Feb. 21 after a long battle with respiratory disease. 

He had many passions throughout his life, from playing bass to tending to the trails of River Park in West Lebanon, but his work at LOH, which spanned almost six decades, says perhaps the most about his charitable and fastidious character.

“This is what he really loved,” said Joel Giguere, LOH’s facilities manager and technical director.

Born on July 1, 1950, Cummings grew up in Hartland with his parents Lauren Herbert Cummings Sr. and Dorothy Cummings, and his younger brother, Duncan, who died in 2022.

Cummings attended Dartmouth College where he helped produce plays at the Hopkins Center. In 1969, he was part of a group of students who worked to restore LOH to a fully functional theater after it had been converted to a cinema 18 years prior.

He graduated from Dartmouth in 1972.

Save for a stint in the Virgin Islands, Cummings spent most of his life in the Upper Valley. He worked for the Hanover Police and the Fire Department, and in 1988 he got a job in Safety and Security at Dartmouth.

His coworker Richard Gavell, who Cummings affectionately called “paysan,” meaning “pal” or “countryman” in Middle French, recalls that he was the “consummate professional.”

Curious and witty, Cummings “bridged the generational gap between employees,” said Gavell, who shared an office with Cummings for 12 years starting in 2001.

Cummings saw his job as an opportunity to mentor students on campus.

“It was easy to see his genuine concern for students…The kids, they sensed it,” Gavell said.

Water safety was especially important to Cummings. In the early 2000s, he raised money from his Dartmouth classmates for a pontoon boat that the college’s safety and security officers still rely on to this day. The department used the boat to rescue at least a half dozen people in the years that Gavell and Cummings worked together.

Years later, in the summer of 2010, Cummings offered his own boat to help the Dartmouth Outing Club conduct a 3½-mile log drive from the Dartmouth Organic Farm to Gilman Island, which sits about half a mile from the Ledyard Bridge and where Titcomb Cabin had burned down the year before.

Greg Sokol, a Dartmouth alum who spearheaded the rebuild, remembers Cummings’ willingness to brainstorm ideas with students on the project while never stepping on their toes. “He appreciated our naive belief that we could do this,” Sokol said.

Working for Safety and Security is also how Cummings met his wife, Sandy. She was employed in the endowment office in 1997, and he was tasked with escorting her to the bank. After their first encounter, he traded shifts with another officer so he could escort her again.

By the time their paths crossed, Cummings had been sober for 10 years, something he didn’t discuss much with Sandy, but that she found comforting, having grown up around heavy drinking.

Sandy recalls how genuine Cummings was when they met. “It just kind of radiated from him,” she said in an interview.

Cummings had been playing bass with Carlos Ocasio in Latin soul band Frydaddy since the early ‘90s, and he and Sandy were married at Ocasio’s Hartland restaurant Skunk Hollow Tavern a few years after they met.

Cummings introduced Sandy to his love of the arts. Together they attended her first ballet and her first circus. “I had no idea how isolated my life had been until I met him,” said Sandy, who grew up in Barre.

When Sandy arrived at work, she’d often find Cummings had sent her an email: “I love you, pussel,” it read.

“Pussel” was his pet name for her.

“It was nothing he called anyone else,” she said.

Perhaps because of his background in law enforcement, Cummings was scrupulous in all areas of his life. He kept his workshop tidy, and always returned tools in better shape than when he got them, friends recalled.

Ocasio said he used to prank Cummings by leaving candy wrappers in his spotless pickup truck. The next day they’d be gone.

“He liked his things in order,” Ocasio said.

His fastidious nature came into play as a caretaker for River Park after property developer David Clem bought the land next to the Cummings’ home on North Main Street in West Lebanon.

Cummings helped build and maintain the pedestrian trails on the site.

“There was nothing he enjoyed more than sitting on a tractor and mowing all these fields that are part of River Park,” Sandy said.

Over the years the couple became close with the Clems. Chet Clem, David Clem’s son, spoke of Duff as a role model, especially in the years after Chet quit drinking.

“He’s irreplaceable as a friend and mentor, and I don’t know where I’m going to go for that,” Clem said.

Over the course of his life, Cummings continued to gig as a stage manager at LOH. His career there spanned 56 years, and he became beloved for his enthusiasm and attention to detail.

“I used to say Duff was my right arm,” said Giguere, who worked with Cummings for seven years.

He was known to walk around the theater with a can of paint, touching up the walls.

“If a valve stem gasket on a faucet broke and the faucet would leak, Duff would fix it before anyone could ask him to,” Giguere said.

Always concerned with others’ well-being, in 2017 Cummings invested over $10,000 to purchase a lift so that the tech crew could safely reach the focus lights on stage. He refused to be reimbursed.

Cummings might have loved the arts, and the people involved, yet his politics were far more conservative than that of his co-workers.

“He loved his Fox News,” Giguere said. “He and I would go around and around and around, but with Duff it was always civil, it was never personal.”

Sometimes Clifford wondered how Cummings would react to a drag show or a queer performer, but he was usually just blown away by the performers’ artistic prowess.

Cummings did a lot for other people, but asking for help wasn’t easy for him, especially when he got sick a couple years ago.

“He wouldn’t share exactly how he was feeling so I could help him more,” Sandy said. “He didn’t want to worry me.”

Humble to his core, he never assumed the Opera House would host a memorial service for him after he passed, Clifford said, laughing a little at his old friend.

Shortly after Cummings died, LOH held a celebration in his honor. Over 150 people attended from all parts of his life.

“It felt really good to know that it made his heart happy that we did that, and he didn’t have to ask us,” Clifford said.

Marion Umpleby can be reached at mumpleby@ vnews.com or 603-727-3306.