“This is one of the things that’s apparent every time I’m in the building; it’s apparent when I’m in the elevators in a special way,” said Father McShane at the reunion celebration. “This is a community that takes building community and sustaining community very seriously.”

Many alumni in attendance noted that while the campus’ location gives students unparalleled access to culture and commerce, it also creates challenges in forming community amidst the bright lights of the big city.

Friends to Rely On

Jamie Rodriguez, FCLC ’14, said that when he moved to the city from Connecticut, his first two years were spent out and about town. While he was involved in the community, it wasn’t until he was an upperclassman did he fully embrace the campus.

He credited his classmates with getting him involved with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, which took him to Atlanta, Georgia, for three years after graduation. On his return, he once again turned to his former classmates for community. And, more recently, when he was diagnosed with a chronic illness, his Fordham friends once again stepped up.

“My Fordham community were the ones who went to any fundraisers I was having in the city, and they were very much the ones who helped heal me,” he said.

Education’s Role in Community

Rashid Davis, GSE ’03, said the notion of community rests in education, which goes beyond any one location. Davis received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Graduate School of Education at their Block Party reception. He is the founder of P-TECH, a career and technical high school that was visited and praised by President Barack Obama, who lauded its high graduation rates, high college acceptance rates, and career opportunities through the school’s IBM partnership. Today more than 100 schools nationwide use the P-TECH model.

“When we’re talking about community building it always goes back to education,” he said.

“In education, you have to know how to relate to people: You need parents, you need students, you need faculty and staff, you need the colleges, you need the industry, and you need the community.”

He said that at GSE he was in a cohort which required students to operate in teams.

“It wasn’t just about our individual success, we had to redefine success, because when you learn how to work collaboratively, it’s not about what works best for you, you have to understand what works best for a community,” he said.

Business Influenced by Philosophy

For Michael Koczko, GABELLI, ’91, ’93, a vice president of state and local tax at CBS, the required core courses in theology and philosophy provided him with an understanding of how businesses can foster community simply by paying their fair share.

Though he’s not necessarily consciously thinking about the classes he took on Socrates and Picard, he said, “it’s there,” in his mind, influencing his thoughts. “Part of the idea is that corporations and the individuals are the citizens of the world and the money that gets taxed is for the services that the government can provide.”

A Neighbor Finds Connection

Maria Ortiz, GSS ’13, it would seem that the notion of community is a no brainer. She serves as co-chair of the housing committee on Community Board 4, which serves Hell’s Kitchen. She grew up behind the Lincoln Center campus in the Amsterdam Houses. And she works as a forensic social worker at the Legal Aid Society. But she said she never tapped into the Fordham community until she began at the Graduate School of Social Service.

“I really feel a connection to Fordham thanks to Elaine Congress and Susan Egan,” she said of the school’s associate dean and former associate dean, respectively. “I consider Elaine a mentor. I shared a paper with her about growing up and my humble beginnings and she actually teared up.”

One Man, Four Campuses

For one alumnus, the community connection was to Fordham as a whole—not just Lincoln Center. Michael Chavers, PCS ’12, began studying at Marymount College in 1982 when the all-women college offered co-ed weekend courses for working adults. He took classes every other weekend and could stay in dorms on the Marymount campus.

“I was working five days a week, 12 to 13 hours a day, when it was time for me to go to school I was ready to go,” he said. “It was awesome.”

Besides taking technology courses to buttress his career as computer programmer, there were other benefits of attending Marymount. It was there that he met Michele Holmes Chavers, MC ’99.

“I decided to stay in the dorms that fall and who stepped off the elevator in the science building but my future husband,” recalled Holmes Chavers.

By 1985, Chavers’ career hit high gear and he was off to other cities. When he returned to Marymount, its transition to becoming a part of Fordham had already begun, so he transferred his Marymount credits to Fordham and took classes at the Westchester campus on the weekends through the School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS). He would go on to take classes with PCS at Rose Hill and finally at Lincoln Center—making him one of the very few to take classes at all four campuses.

“I really got a charge out of it. I was the first male student that helped create the ambassador program for career services [at Marymount]. I volunteered because I felt so good in my heart about Fordham.”

In his welcome address at Tognino Hall, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, urged alumni to not only enjoy their time with old friends but also take pride in their alma mater.

“Be proud of Fordham, and tell the story,” Father McShane said. “What story? Your story. Where you came from. Why did you come from here? What did you get? How did you turn out? Who are you now? And how do you trace who you are now to who you were then?”

The classes celebrating this year raised more than $83 million since their last Jubilee five years ago.

A Tale of Two Love Stories

Todd Brooks, FCRH ’94, met his wife on the second Sunday of their freshman year. Four months into their relationship, he recalled, he told his then-girlfriend he loved her for the first time.

“She looked at me and she goes, ‘That’s nice,’” Todd Brooks said, while his wife Stacie Kloepfer-Brooks, FCRH ’94, GSE ’95, gently protested. But two years later, she wrote him a handwritten poem about their time together—a memento he’s kept for more than 20 years.

“We kind of grew up together, right? When we started dating, I was 18 and you had just turned 19,” Todd said, turning to Stacie. “And now we’re 46, 47 years old.”

Seated beside the Brookses on Martyr’s Lawn were their classmates, Ann Marie Denning, FCRH ’94, LAW ’97, and P.J. Denning, GABELLI ’94, ’01, both of whom were first-generation Irish-American college students. Today, Ann Marie works in development at Fordham Prep and P.J. is a public relations partner who has served as an adjunct professor at the Gabelli School of Business.

In 1998, the Dennings were married by two Fordham Jesuits: Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., former president of the University, and Richard J. Dillon, S.J. And like the Brooks, the couple has five children—the oldest of whom just finished his first year at his father’s alma mater.

“It was a great time,” P.J. said. “Fordham was good to us.”

Reliving Milestones from the ’60s and ’70s

The Sixties were marked by many milestones, including the military draft and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, said alumnus Michael Piellusch as he reflected.

“We were the first class to be drafted,” recalled the Golden Ram. “I ended up joining the Coast Guard, and I’m still working for the military. As it turns out, it was one of the best things I ever did. But some of our classmates didn’t survive.”

During that same decade, students at Marymount College, which became a part of Fordham before it closed, weren’t allowed to wear pants outside the dormitories, said an alumna at the Jubilee cocktail reception.

“We had a strike in May 1966 or 1967 that we be allowed to wear pants from 9 until 1 on Saturdays,” said Anne Goett, MC ’69. “We marched in our academic gowns.”

Marymount alumnae celebrated at a gathering and awards ceremony in Butler Commons on Friday night, where Christina Favilla, MC ’89, GABELLI ’97, was given the Alumna of Achievement Award and Marilyn O’Connor Dimling, MC ’74, was given the Gloria Gaines Memorial Award. Brigid Driscoll, R.S.H.M., GRE ’02, former Marymount president who passed away last October, was also recognized.

At Saturday’s picnic, Adriana Delia Collins, FCLC ’74, and Joseph Gursky, FCRH ’74, marveled at how much they’d been through together since they first met in Walsh Hall.

“We would meet in the stairwell and chat. We were just confidantes,” Gursky said. “She told me everything; I told her everything.”

Collins said the two remained connected. “Over the years I got married, raised my family, moved around the world,” she said, “but we would always stay in touch.”

They still remember gathering on Martyr’s Lawn, the very spot where the picnic was being held, to watch the last Third Avenue elevated train depart along the tracks next to campus on April 29, 1973. The line was demolished not long afterward.

Although Collins, who now lives in San Francisco, has returned to campus over the years, it was Gursky’s first Jubilee, and only his second time back in the 45 years since graduation. He joked that he majored in “social life” as an undergraduate, but it was also a tumultuous time for him, he said; he had been coming to terms with his homosexuality. Last Saturday, he served as a Eucharistic minister at a Mass at the University Church.

This year’s Jubilee was extraordinary for another Ram from the Seventies: Joan Garry, FCRH ’79, a previous GLAAD executive director who helped persuade the New York Times to include same-sex couples in its wedding coverage.

“This is my first time seeing a rainbow flag anywhere on this campus,” Garry said, gazing at the colorful cloth waving across the Walsh Family Library’s terrace at the Affinity Chapters Open House, where the Rainbow Rams were one of several groups represented. “It’s not just moving, but it’s also for me, a recognition that this institution is ready to accept people and students and faculty for exactly who they are.”

For the younger generation of Rams, Jubilee was a chance to cherish their college years. Jennifer Rivera, FCRH ’14, a communications and Spanish language and literature double major who lived in four different Rose Hill dormitories and studied abroad in Granada, now works at MTV as a coordinating producer. But when she returned to campus last weekend, she rekindled a feeling that never really left her.

“As soon as I walked on campus, I was so overcome with joy,” Rivera said. “I’m so happy that I was able to go to Jubilee because it really just made me appreciate Fordham all over again.”

Hiding a Live Ram in the Backyard

For nearly five decades, the Rose Hill campus was home to more than 20 live rams. Before a big sports game, Fordham’s rival, Manhattan College, would try to kidnap the animal and dye its wool green—Manhattan’s school color.

Sometimes, the rival school succeeded. But one year in the late ’50s, the University temporarily hid its ram in a residential backyard that belonged to Joe Mansfield, FCRH ’59, a commuter student.

“I didn’t tell my parents. My mother did discover it though because she kept asking, ‘What’s that noise?’” said Mansfield, a retired university fundraiser who lives in North Carolina. “And the noise was the ram saying, ‘Ba-a-a-a.’”

A Harvard-to-Fordham Transfer

Richard Grant was one of seven black students in the class of 1965. They called themselves “the Fordham Seven,” he said. But his life almost panned out differently. Shortly before his first semester at Fordham, he learned Harvard had accepted him from its waiting list.

“My parents insisted that for the legacy of black people in America, I could not turn down Harvard,” Grant said. “They said, ‘If you don’t go to Harvard, we’re not going to pay [for your education].’”

He attended Harvard for one year. But he wanted to live in New York, and he wanted a Catholic education. While his parents attended graduate school, he had been raised by an Irish Catholic woman who baptized him and showed him what it meant to be a Catholic.

“That’s how I came to be at Fordham,” he said with a smile.

—Patrick Verel, Gina Vergel, and Ayesha Akhtar contributed reporting.