fordham A History and Memoir revised edition * * * * * * * * * * * * * Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. 16950-00_Fordham_FM 6/4/08 11:47 AM Page i FORDHAM REVISED EDITION 16950-00_Fordham_FM 6/4/08 11:47 AM Page ii 16950-00_Fordham_FM 6/4/08 11:47 AM Page iii FORDHAM A History and Memoir REVISED EDITION Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. Fordham University Press New York 2008 16950-00_Fordham_FM 6/4/08 11:47 AM Page iv © 2002, 2008 Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. All rights reserved All photographs, except where noted below, are reprinted courtesy of Fordham University Archives. The photograph of the birthplace of John J. Hughes, S.J., is courtesy of Francis Canavan, S.J. The photographs of the Seven Blocks of Granite, of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Robert I. Gannon, S.J., and of the bust of Orestes Brownson are courtesy of the William Fox Collection at the Fordham University Archives. The aerial view of the Rose Hill campus is courtesy of Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Fordham University Archives. The photograph of Laurence J. McGinley, S.J., is courtesy of Art Green, Fordham University Archives. The photographs of Timothy Healy, S.J., Leo McLaughlin, S.J., Edward A. Walsh, and Michael Walsh, S.J., and of Pedro Arrupe, S.J., are courtesy of Conrad Waldinger, Fordham University Archives. The photograph of Claire Hahn is courtesy of Jack Becker. The photograph of Eileen Markey is courtesy of Eileen Markey. The photograph of Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., is reprinted courtesy of Peter Freed. The photograph of Joseph M. McShane, S.J., is reprinted courtesy of Jon Roemer. Previously published by Loyola Press. Interior design by Think Design All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means— electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the publisher. Printed in the United States 10987654321 16950-00_Fordham_FM 6/4/08 11:47 AM Page v TO MY BROTHER DAVID J. SCHROTH 1935–2001 ∞ Fordham College, 1957, B.S., Fordham Club Fordham Law School, 1961 New Jersey Superior Court Judge Father Athlete Marine Honorable Man v 16950-00_Fordham_FM 6/4/08 11:47 AM Page vi 16950-00_Fordham_FM 6/4/08 11:47 AM Page vii Table of Contents Acknowledgments . .ix Preface . .x Prologue . .xii 1 ∞ Michael Nash Arrives . .1 2 ∞ A Visit from Mr. Poe . .21 3 ∞ Brownson, Hughes, and Shaw . .43 4 ∞ Michael Nash Goes to War . .63 5 ∞ Jimmy Walsh Gets Started . .82 6 ∞ Becoming a University . .106 7 ∞ “We’ll Do, or Die” . .132 8 ∞ Gannon Takes Charge . .157 9 ∞ From Oedipus to Dachau . .181 10 ∞ Lou Mitchell Meets G. Gordon Liddy . .202 11 ∞ Football Loses, Courtney Wins . .227 12 ∞ Jesuits and Women . .247 13 ∞ Leo . .264 14 ∞ The War at Home . .291 15 ∞ The Bronx Is Burning . .309 16 ∞ Identity Reconsidered . .338 Epilogue: A Millennium’s Last Class . .360 Epilogue II: Eight Years Later . .373 Chronology of Fordham . .376 Notes and Sources . .389 Selected Bibliography . .404 Index . .413 16950-00_Fordham_FM 6/4/08 11:47 AM Page viii 16950-00_Fordham_FM 6/4/08 11:47 AM Page ix Acknowledgments My list of people to thank is long. For inspiration, one who most stands out appears in these pages. Joseph R. Frese, S.J., was my mentor from my arrival at Fordham when I served his daily Mass on the fourth floor of Dealy Hall. He gave me my topic for my first book, The Eagle and Brooklyn, concelebrated my first Mass, and preached at my final vows. Thomas Hennessy, S.J., Robert Grimes, S.J., Roger Wines, and Msgr. Thomas Shelley generously shared their deep knowledge of Fordham history. Patrice Kane and Vivian Shen, Fordham archivists, generously made their treasures available. Many professionals and friends read parts of the manuscript and offered corrections and suggestions or helped with research: Kate Adams, John Antush, Richard and Bernadette Cieciuch, Tom Curran, Daniel A. Degnan, S.J., John Deedy, Jim Dwyer, Herman Eberhardt and Laura Chmielewski, Susan (Barrera) Fay, Alice Gallin, O.S.U., Don Gillespie, John Harney, David Herndon, Robert H. Hinkle, Jerry Holden, John and Carolyn Holl, Jonah Hulst, Robert Keck, S.J., James R. Kelly, John Kezel, William Lanouette, James Loughran, S.J., Mark Massa, S.J., Morgan Melchiore, Joe Muriana, Paul Nigido, Danny O’Byrne, Nick and Patricia O’Neill, John W. Padberg, S.J., Nicola Pitchford, Peter Reichard, Rene Sanchez, Arthur Schore, Stephen Stuart, David Toolan, S.J., Rupert Wentworth, and Mike Wilson. Finally, I thank my own Jesuit community at St. Peter’s College, where most of this was written, and the staffs of the St. Peter’s College library and of the Jesuit villa houses at Cornwall-on-Hudson and Mitchell Farm, where I could interrupt my writing with a swim. ix 16950-00_Fordham_FM 6/4/08 11:47 AM Page x Preface I do a lot of my thinking on long runs and bike rides, so it was on a ride along the New Jersey shore in the summer of 1996, with my biography, The American Journey of Eric Sevareid (1995) behind me, that I decided to try to tell the story of Fordham. For a number of reasons, I wanted to tell it in a different way, not as the traditional institutional history that tends to concentrate on high administrators, buildings, finances, and distinguished faculty, but rather, as much as possible, through the experiences of students, the young men and women who were shaped by the institution and who carried its spirit into a larger world. Thus, where the documentation was available, I have told stories of individuals formed by Fordham—a few, such as Denzel Washington and G. Gordon Liddy, famous; some, such as Robert Gould Shaw and James J. Walsh, fairly well known; others, like Michael Nash and Lou Mitchell, less so. Then I also follow their lives for a while after leaving school. Through them, we meet some great teachers, deal with some educational and religious controversies, watch the borough of the Bronx rise and fall, march off to war four times, open Catholic higher education to African Americans and women, and witness what some have considered the loss of Fordham’s Catholic identity along with its emergence as a prospering and ambitious institution in the heart of New York City. I realized that I could not tell these personal stories and also do the complete, definitive history of a large 159-year-old institution, giving due attention to all the graduate and professional schools, each meriting a history of its own. So I have concentrated on Fordham College, the trunk of the tree from which the branches have sprung. It is the historical heart of the university and, until the development x 16950-00_Fordham_FM 6/4/08 11:47 AM Page xi PREFACE XI of the Lincoln Center campus in the 1960s, the core of its identity. Although there have been Jesuit administrators and teachers at the other schools, Fordham College has been the most “Jesuit” of the several colleges. It is also the one I know best, allowing me to use my own student and faculty experiences as a unifying thread. Without trying to do too many things at once, I have described Fordham’s relationship with the several other worlds it has inhabited. The Bronx has been transformed from a remote farming community into a teeming, sometimes hostile, environment, but a place Fordham would not flee. American Catholic higher education was slowly emerging from its academic ghetto into intellectual competition with its secular neighbors. America itself repeatedly called on Fordham’s Catholic young men to demonstrate their patriotism at the cost of their lives. The Catholic Church, after centuries of certitude, was changing, and the Society of Jesus, which first came to America as a missionary order, had established a formidable network of colleges and universities, with a profound impact on both Catholic and American culture. So the last word on Fordham University remains to be written, but I hope this story will ring true both to those who know it and to those who meet it here for the first time. RAS March 2000 16950-00_Fordham_FM 6/4/08 11:47 AM Page xii Prologue I ∞ The bright Sunday-in-May dawn breaks over the Bronx. It is 6:30, but much of the campus has been up all night, and some who would have liked to sleep later had been awakened at 4:30 by the mad clanging of the old ship’s bell of the aircraft carrier Junyo. Presented by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, blessed by Cardinal Francis Spellman, and first rung by Harry S. Truman in 1946, it hangs in front of the gym. Exuberant seniors coming home high on the beer at Clarke’s Bar near the corner of Fordham Road and Webster Avenue and on the thrill of their impending graduation thought it would be fun to wake up the world. Outside the gates, cars and buses cough, groan, and rumble past the Bronx Botanical Gardens on one side and, a little farther up Fordham Road on the other side, the Bronx Zoo. It is a bustling, graffiti-spattered Spanish neighborhood of 150,000 people, where any one of us could climb the hill on a Saturday afternoon through the chattering crowds to the subway station and never hear the English language once. A few blocks to the south is Belmont, or Little Italy, a tight, colorful enclave surrounded by Spanish and black neighborhoods, a remnant of thirty years ago when it seemed the whole world made the Bronx its home.