Just a few years before, Pagani had started feeling strange intermittent symptoms—numbness in her legs, tingling in her arms and torso, vertigo, and loss of taste, sense of touch, and hearing. After being told by several doctors that what she was feeling was either emotional or imaginary, one finally guessed that what she was suffering from was multiple sclerosis. MRI scans were not widely available at the time, Pagani explains, so he couldn’t confirm the theory. “But he thought it was my first exacerbation. I was in my 20s and burning the candle at both ends, but he told me to take a month off and do nothing.”

So she did, and her symptoms went away—until that morning in July a few years later, when everything changed. “It took a year to start coming back from that attack,” Pagani says. But she also credits that time with leading her to Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service.

Pagani had studied psychology at Boston University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1970. She knew she eventually wanted to enroll in a graduate program, but she also felt she had limited options. “There were really only three career tracks you took as a woman at that time,” she says. “The sight of blood made me shake, so nursing was out. I knew I wouldn’t be able to travel like I wanted to if I became a teacher. So I became a secretary.”

Pagani postponed graduate school for several years, until she became symptomatic. “I started peer counseling in between attacks and hospital stays, and I knew I wanted to study social work. So I said, ‘This is it. Once this damn disease stabilizes, I’m going to grad school.’

“I had to turn a negative into a positive,” Pagani says. “It sounds trite, but that’s how you survive.”

A friend who was pursuing a Master of Social Work at Fordham, Joyce Genovese Drummond, GSS ’89, encouraged her to consider the program. In her late 30s and with her MS under better control, Pagani began to pursue her dream.

For her, it was more than just the academic strength of the Fordham program that changed her. It was the way the faculty and staff supported her when she had recurring MS attacks or when she doubted herself. You would never know it hearing her now, but back then she felt the disease had sapped her of her characteristic energy.

“I thought my life was over; I didn’t have any confidence in myself,” Pagani says. “And at Fordham I had people cheering me on.”

After graduating in 1991, Pagani joined the staff of the Jewish Guild for the Blind as the only social worker at the nonprofit’s Yonkers location, where she worked until her retirement in 2014. “Helping people maximize what they’ve got even in the view of different abilities energizes me,” Pagani says of her chosen career path, which was informed by her own struggles. “Yes, you’ve lost a lot. But there are things you can do.”

The Westchester native has also stayed in touch with Fordham throughout the years. A lifelong theater buff, she has particularly enjoyed taking advantage of the numerous cultural and entertainment events sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations, including a special tour of the American Museum of Natural History in January. She has also been recognized as a member of the 1841 Society for her generous decision to include Fordham in her will, and has attended the group’s annual luncheons.

Pagani says she hopes to keep giving back to Fordham and to her local community. “I want to ramp up my volunteerism,” she says.

“I want to be connected on a deeper level. These places have played so heavily in my life. And I’m not even close to being done yet.”

Fordham Five

What are you most passionate about?
Seeing the results of my mentoring. For at least 15 years, I had social work students as interns, and teaching them was a big aspect of my job and my life. I’m still in touch with many of them. Some were challenging. But when you have good experiences in life, you don’t hold them inside. You have to pay it forward.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
My mom, who used to call herself “a wise old owl,” was an extraordinary role model. If not for her and my dad, I could have succumbed to the MS, because I had some pretty dark years. But my mom always told me not to give up. “Don’t give up, because there’s always something you can do,” she said. And boy was she right. Years later, my neurologist told me that he didn’t think I would ever be able to walk again. But I did. And I attribute that to the love that surrounded me and to my mother.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is definitely my happy place. That and the Theater District. The arts, the restaurants—oh my God, it’s the arts capital of the world. The energy is unrivaled. It really is. You just feel it.

I’ve traveled a lot, so it’s tough to pick a favorite place in the world of all the places I’ve been. I’ll give you my favorite place and the one that made the biggest impression. For my favorite, there is a place my cousin took me in France. I have cousins in Paris and in Provence, and they take me places that other people just don’t know about. The last time I went they took me to a place called Carrières de Lumières, the Quarries of Lights. It’s a huge, huge cave in the Provence area—which is one of my favorite places—and you enter the cave and there is an art show projected onto the walls, all set to music. And they do different themes. It’s a totally immersive experience that I’ve never had anywhere else. It’s amazing.

But there are also some trips that impress you and stay with you always in a different way. Like last May, we went on a cruise through six countries in Eastern Europe: Czech Republic, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria. And when we were in Budapest, along the Danube—I’m emotional talking about it—there is a memorial. You see along the river a line of iron shoes that go on for what seemed at least half a mile. And it’s in honor of the thousands of people shot by the Nazis on the bank of the Danube, who were made to take off their shoes before they were killed. They made a lasting sculpture to these souls. That made the biggest impression on me.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
I have a few. The first is one I was assigned in my clinical psychology class at Fordham, Listening with the Third Ear by Theodor Reik. I never, ever forgot that book. I still have it on my bookshelf, and I continue to lean on it throughout my life in different situations. It’s about listening to what somebody’s not saying to you. It’s me with my work and my relationships, and I think it’s indispensable for anyone in a helping profession.

The other two are both historical novels: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. The first made me wish I lived in the 1890s so I could have seen the Chicago World’s Fair. That they were able to do this, this incredible creation against all odds—that sort of thing really impresses me. The second is about a blind French girl and a German soldier against the backdrop of World War II, and I loved it so much that when we went to France I took two or three trains from Paris to get to the little town it’s set in, Saint-Malo. 

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
Marc Miringoff, who was the dean of students for GSS when I was there, and his assistant, Amy Miller. One of my first classes was with Marc, Social Policy. It was a class nobody wanted to take, because it was dry, but he instilled such humor into it. He was a terrific professor. He gave me my first A, and that meant a lot; it helped me keep going. I didn’t know if I could do it at that point, I felt I had so many strikes against me. Marc also used to host a folk night on Fridays, and even though I hate folk music it led to incredible bonding for all of us at the time. He made everything fun. And I was always in Amy’s office, telling her when I wasn’t sure I had the energy to do this. She showed me I could. They helped me on my way and had a tremendous impact on me, the two of them.

After graduating from Fordham in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in history, Farina turned her internship at the Union Square Partnership into her first full-time job. She went on to work at several nonprofits and in urban development positions in New York City.

“I loved community improvement, seeing the physical changes of individual neighborhoods, seeing how places transform and grow,” Farina says. But she felt a law degree would give her more opportunities to contribute to these kinds of endeavors.

So she returned to Fordham for law school, a place where “the Jesuit traditions and Catholic values come across in the culture of reaching out to the people,” she says.

Farina completed a law school internship at the Landmarks Preservation Commission and, after working at a zoning law firm, landed a position at New Yorkers for Parks, where she really hit her stride. There, she helped draft the first crime-tracking bill to pass in New York City, a bill that mandated that all crimes in the city’s parks be tracked and made publicly accessible via an online database. She also helped develop the first web-based policy action center for community groups and advocates, and she was part of the team that significantly increased city funding for parks for the first time in over a decade.

“It was an amazing job. Who doesn’t love parks?” Farina says. “Real estate owners win, kids win, people who are poor win, people who have money win.”

When she moved to Charleston in 2006, Farina found plenty of green space. What she couldn’t find was the food she used to get on Arthur Avenue. “I couldn’t get the cheeses and the bread, and that’s a problem for an Italian, I’ll tell you that much,” she says, only half joking.

So while she was studying for the South Carolina Bar Exam, she and her parents (who had moved to the area shortly after Farina) opened a small gourmet Italian food shop.

The store slowly transformed into a coffee shop and Italian tapas restaurant serving family recipes. The ingredients came directly from Arthur Avenue. “It was a way to keep a little bit of New York,” Farina says. And it was a great way to meet everyone in her new community.

Farina also met many South Carolina residents through Fordham’s alumni office. After realizing that the Fordham Alumni Chapter of South Carolina, Low Country was several hours away, near Savannah, Georgia, she requested a list of Fordham alumni in the Charleston area. “It wasn’t long before I was having two hour phone conversations with some these people,” she says. So she founded the Fordham Alumni Chapter of Charleston, South Carolina to bring them together.

Now the ever-growing club is a tight-knit group that meets for dinner, drinks, coffee, sports, and other events several times a year. “It’s the strangest thing,” Farina says. “You walk into a room with Fordham folks and people just seem to know each other already. There’s some thread, like we all lived a former life together. It’s an easiness.”

Terry Brennan, GABELLI ’89, helps Farina run the chapter. “It’s awesome being New Yorkers down here together,” and Charleston has definitely become “a melting pot,” he says, adding that Farina’s “dynamite attitude” helps her connect people easily.

After running the store for four years, Farina now focuses completely on her 9-year-old son, Spencer, and on her estate planning practice.

“Everyone needs a will,” Farina says, “and everyone needs to be taken care of—including children and pets.” Sometimes people also want to give back to charities or public organizations, as Farina herself has done with Fordham (she is a member of the 1841 Society). “So I see it as a public service in that sense,” she adds. I say it’s ‘handing forward the future.’”

Since Farina now has clients both in South Carolina and New York, she travels back to her native city relatively often. And when she does, it’s like coming home.

Soon Farina will be back in New York for a Regional Chapter Leader Summit at Fordham, scheduled just before Homecoming on September 24. She’s particularly excited because it will be her first Homecoming in more than 20 years.

“Fordham and New York are home. My son was born [in South Carolina], but he has a mixed Southern and New York accent, and he wants to go to Fordham. I think I’ve brainwashed him,” laughs Farina. “He just eats it all up.”

Richard Gyug, Ph.D., professor of history and medieval studies, spoke on Sept. 21 at a luncheon of the 1841 Society, whose members have established a life income gift to Fordham or included the University in their estate plans.

Using slides, he walked the audience through the long history of the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage route that starts in France and ends in northern Spain, at the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the legendary burial site of the apostle St. James.

Gyug, interim director of Fordham’s Center for Medieval Studies, has walked the route with Fordham students as part of study tours in 2007, in 2008, and again this past summer. Students walked the route’s final 200 miles.

In his presentation, Gyug drew parallels between those who traveled the route today and in centuries past. Some people he met along the way were marking pivotal moments in their lives—two had just retired, for instance, and one had just lost his wife of 35 years. For them, he said, the pilgrimage was a rite of passage that marked a life transition, just as it was for pilgrims of an earlier time who were walking to atone for their sins.

“Modern pilgrims take this sense of liminality, of passage, [and]make of it a rite of passage, which it was originally,” he said. “We lack rites of passage. We’re an age that often downplays ritual.”

In addition, he said, “there’s another sense of transition for both modern and medieval pilgrims in that you leave your daily community. You cross a threshold into the world of the pilgrimage, which is a different world, with its own rules.”

He described people of various nationalities, and vastly different backgrounds, coming together in youth hostels and bars and restaurants, and on the road, where they all undergo the same physical challenges or take part in the same rituals of the route. In one place, travelers make crosses out of sticks that they weave into a fence along the road. In another, they add stones to roadside cairns, which were used in pre-Christian Europe to protect crossroads from demonic possession.

Santiago de Compostela became a major pilgrimage destination in the tenth and eleventh centuries following the revival of the cult of St. James, Gyug said. The first named pilgrim was a French noble—Godescalc, bishop of Le Puy—who made the trek in 951.

Future pilgrims would leave their mark on the trail. For instance, when Adalard, viscount of Flanders, got caught in a snowstorm in the French town of Aubrac in 1120, he swore that if he were saved he would dedicate his life to the pilgrims. He survived, and established a hostel, as well as a commandery, or center for knights who were defending the pilgrimage route. Dozens of bridges were installed along the trail, Gyug said.

“All along the way … you pass sites that were built, and have their memory and their origins, in the pilgrimage,” he said. “Pilgrims wandered all over the countryside until they reached a fiord or a river,” and there a bridge was built and a town grew, with a cult site of its own.

He showed sites that likely had transcendent meaning for medieval pilgrims—the great church at León, the approach to O Cebreiro, or Santiago de Compostela itself, the end point of the journey.

At other sites, however, “the medieval ideal is, to us, incomprehensible or ludicrous,” he said, showing a cathedral at Santo Domingo de la Calzada. The cathedral contains a chicken coop, with a live hen and rooster, which harks back to the medieval tale of two birds on a judge’s dinner plate that sprang to life to show him that a young man who had been hung nearby was actually still alive.

“That’s one side of medieval devotion that is not transcendent, necessarily, and much more difficult for us to make sense of,” he said, to laughter.