“Fordham is a very special place, and the student veterans here at Fordham are a really special group,” said guest speaker Jared Lyon, president and CEO of Student Veterans of America, or SVA. At the group’s national conferences, which draw more than 3,000 student veterans from around the country, “people ask questions about what goes on here,” he said. “They want to learn how they can replicate that at their universities.”

He spoke at the Yellow Ribbon Medallion and Bell Ringing Ceremony held by the University’s Office of Military and Veterans’ Services, or OMVS, in Keating Hall at the Rose Hill campus. At the ceremony, 23 of this year’s student veterans and military-connected students—and also Lyon, a student veteran himself—received a University medallion honoring their service. Afterward, for part two of the recognition ceremony, everyone visited the nearby Victory Bell and stepped up to it, one by one, to give it a ring, cheered on by their fellow student vets.

Pandemic Impact

It was only the second time the ceremony had taken place in this format. Inaugurated in 2019, it was modified for the past two years due to the University’s pandemic-related measures. Matt Butler, the University’s director of military and veterans’ services, began this year’s ceremony by calling for a moment of silence to remember the graduates’ friends and family members lost to the pandemic.

“Graduates, you should be proud,” Butler said in his own remarks. “You have endured many, many challenges, and overcome them all, from dealing with the demands of work, school, family, and other obligations [to]classes converted to online and virtual. You have Zoomed, Zoomed, and Zoomed some more. But you never let any obstacles stop you.”

He noted that the graduates were a diverse crowd that included 88-year-old John Lenehan, a Korean War veteran who began his studies at Fordham’s former downtown division at 302 Broadway in the 1950s and returned to the University last year to complete his degree. Last fall, Lenehan became the inaugural recipient of the OMVS’s new True Grit award, inspired by his story, that will go to student veterans who overcome significant challenges in earning their degrees, he said.

A Leading Chapter

Butler also lauded other leaders in Fordham’s SVA chapter, saying “they run one of the top SVA chapters in the country.” As examples, he noted student veterans’ volunteer efforts to help the victims of the deadly fire in the Tremont section of the Bronx in January; their collections to support Ukraine relief efforts; and their mentoring of prospective student veterans, among other efforts.

Student veterans are at the heart of the University’s “coordinated, full-community approach” to meeting the unique needs of student veterans, he said.

Student veterans at the ceremony represented several Fordham colleges and schools. The largest group was graduating from the School of Professional and Continuing Studies; others were graduating from the Gabelli School of Business, the Graduate School of Social Service, the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, Fordham Law School, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Lyon, in his address, said “thank you for your leadership, your willingness to volunteer on behalf of others.” He pointed to research showing veterans’ high college GPAs and high rates of college completion, and said “you are well equipped with your educations to go on and be the change we’d like to see in the world.”

“Your country needs you. The world is ready for you,” he said. “I can’t wait to see what you accomplish.”

A man answered the knock at the door. The agents didn’t know that this was their suspect. After a tense exchange with the agents, he pulled out a revolver and shot and killed two of them, Anthony Palmisano and Edwin Woodriffe, GABELLI ’62. He fled the apartment through a window, and city police and FBI agents captured him a few hours later. The murder of the two agents still resonates. Both were under 30, part of a tight-knit cohort of young agents in the FBI’s Washington field office, some of whom vividly recall the events of that day, January 8, 1969. And the killings were shocking for another reason. Woodriffe, 27 at the time, became the first black FBI agent to die in the line of duty.

For burial, he was brought back to his native Brooklyn, back to the city he loved, where he had worked his way through Fordham before launching his career in government service.

This April, the story of the earnest, witty agent who died too soon came back into the spotlight as the city honored him by making his name a fixture on the urban landscape. In a well-attended ceremony on a Brooklyn street corner, in the heart of the neighborhood where Woodriffe grew up, his immediate family spoke in remembrance of a radiant young man whose spirit seemed, somehow, to be present still.

A Child of Immigrants

Like so many New York stories, Edwin R. Woodriffe’s begins with immigration—his parents came to America from Trinidad when they were either in their teens or barely out of them, said Woodriffe’s daughter,  Lee Woodriffe, of Lithonia, Georgia. They  ran  a  dry  cleaning  shop   in the struggling Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, getting up early every day—“no time off, no sick days, no nothing”—and instilling  a  strong work ethic in their children, she said.

The youngest of three boys, Woodriffe helped out at the dry cleaner’s after school and doted on his parents, Lee Woodriffe said. He was an altar boy at nearby St. Peter Claver Church, where he met his future wife, Ella Louise Moore, during Christian confraternity classes.

After graduating from Brooklyn Preparatory School, he earned a degree in accounting at Fordham’s City Hall Division at 302 Broadway, where he was vice president of the philosophy club. He paid his  way by working as a police cadet and as an elevator operator at Macy’s, his daughter said. Upon graduation, he and  Ella were married, and they had two children, Lee and her brother,  Edwin Woodriffe Jr. Lee was only 5 when her father was killed, but learned from others what he was like. He was a jazz lover who would sometimes play his saxophone on the roof of the building where the family lived, she said. A voracious reader interested in religion and philosophy, he was a deep thinker, which was apparent from his conversation and his humor, she said.

The idea of working in law enforcement had taken hold when he was young; he admired his older brother for being a New York City police officer. After working for the Treasury Department in enforcement, he joined the FBI in 1966. Sometimes he would sign letters “Eliot Ness,” Lee said, describing her father as “really good-natured, and just always cracking a joke.”

In the FBI’s Washington, D.C., field office, he was low-key and decisive, “a very classy individual” who was courteous toward crime suspects, said Ed Armento, a retired agent who trained under Woodriffe for a week.

Lee Woodriffe said her father was one of only a handful of black FBI agents. Retired agent Robert Quigley, GABELLI ’62, recalled working with three black agents besides  Woodriffe in the Washington field office. Given Woodriffe’s talents, “there is no doubt in my mind that [he]would’ve been one of the top FBI executives had he lived,” Quigley said.

He recalled a story of solidarity against racism that  was  told  to  him: When Woodriffe was an FBI trainee in Washington, D.C., he and his classmates went to suburban Maryland to rent apartments, but they all pulled out of a pending housing contract when told Woodriffe would be barred. “The other agents were aghast,” Quigley said, so they sought housing elsewhere.

A Tragic Day

Quigley remembers the day when agents learned of a bank robbery by Billie Austin Bryant, an escaped federal prisoner. Woodriffe, Palmisano, and another agent went to the apartment where they had heard  Bryant’s  wife or girlfriend lived, said  Quigley,  citing reports  prepared  afterward. The agents couldn’t have known it was Bryant who opened the door when they knocked—“They have no photograph, no idea what he looks like,” Quigley said. “Back in those days, all we had were radios in the car. There was no way to send a photo.”

Bryant told the agents the woman they were seeking wasn’t there. When they asked to come in and wait for her, he refused and started to close the door. Woodriffe put his foot in the door to stop him, and Bryant pulled out his revolver. Woodriffe and Palmisano never got a chance to pull their firearms, said retired agent Charles Harvey, who tried to revive the two agents soon after.

Bryant surrendered to a police detective six hours later, after being tracked down to an attic in a building where someone had reported noise, said Quigley, who was there when Bryant was captured. Bryant was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole.

The 50th anniversary of the two agents’ deaths was commemorated  in Washington in January by the bureau’s Washington field office and the Society of Former Agents of the FBI. Harvey spoke at the event. “Our job is to never forget,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, another remembrance had taken root.

A Street Renamed

St. Peter Claver Church sits at the intersection of Jefferson Avenue and Claver Place in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Lee Woodriffe spearheaded the two- year effort to have the City Council co-name the segment of Jefferson Avenue starting  at  that  intersection  in honor of her father, hoping to keep him present in a part of the city that was important in his life, she said.

“I did not want his final resting place in people’s minds to be in Cypress Hills Cemetery,” she said. “It’s very important to me that [his story]come full circle, but come full circle in the right way.”

The co-naming sends an inspiring message, she said. “Here is somebody who came from an impoverished area, odds stacked against him, but through perseverance and diligence and having integrity and wanting to do  better, rose up through the ranks and really made something of himself. It’s a story of hope, and what you can become.”

On April 26, FBI Special Agent Edwin R. Woodriffe Way was formally christened in a ceremony attended by FBI agents, New York City police,  city  officials,  clergy,  and  friends   and members of Woodriffe’s family, including his widow, Ella Woodriffe.

“There’s a saying that hatred corrodes the vessel it’s carried in, but today I  have  no  hatred,”  she  said.  “I speak with heart-filled joy and thanking God for allowing all of us to be here in attendance as a testament to my husband’s memory.

“His  story  began  right  here   at  St. Peter Claver Church,” she said. “Edwin went to school here. He went to church here. He was an altar boy here. We met as teenagers  here.  …  We were married here, we had two children, and lastly, he was funeralized here. He will be forever remembered in our hearts.”

Edwin R. Woodriffe Jr., who was 6 when his father died, lacks vivid memories of him. “There are photos and stories from friends and family, but the nuances are lost,” he said at the ceremony. “What was his favorite color? I don’t know. I have one of his high school essays on basketball. Were the Knicks his favorite team? I don’t know, and if I did, I don’t remember.

“But he got a B+, by the way, on the paper,” he said, to laughter.

“The thing I  remember  most  is the idea of  him  represented  inside  the family,” said Woodriffe, whose mother got help from extended family in raising him and Lee. “I feel blessed that my father’s sacrifice was a part  of inspiring my sister and I to be the adults that we are today. And on the 50th anniversary of his passing, I’m honored to see his name on this corner, where his story can continue.”

Auxiliary Bishop James Massa of the Diocese of Brooklyn also spoke at the ceremony. He said the newly unveiled street sign is a reminder “that a great New Yorker once lived among us and overcame racial barriers in order to serve, in order to protect the vulnerable and contribute to the common good of our nation.”

Fifty years after the untimely death of Edwin R. Woodriffe, his memory brought dozens of people to the corner of Brooklyn where he grew up. They came to commemorate the earnest, witty FBI agent and Fordham graduate whose character still resonates—and whose name now adorns a street sign outside St. Peter Claver Church, a formative place from his childhood.

Jefferson Avenue at the intersection with Claver Place, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, was formally co-named Edwin R. Woodriffe Way in the April 26 ceremony attended by FBI agents, New York City police, city officials, and friends and members of Woodriffe’s family.

“It’s an extraordinary thing when you can see a dream come to fruition,” said Woodriffe’s daughter, Lee Woodriffe, who spearheaded the effort to have the street co-named. “You need a lot of patience, understanding, tenacity, a dose of good humor to see it through,” along with a sense of honor and purpose, she said.

“Getting here today, we used those same principles,” she said. “And they’re the same principles that made my father who he was, and what his life symbolized.”

Woodriffe, GABELLI ’62, was a son of immigrants from Trinidad who grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant and worked his way through Fordham’s City Hall Division at 302 Broadway, earning a degree in accounting.

He was not quite 28 years old when he was shot and killed by a bank robber in Washington, D.C., on January 8, 1969, becoming the first black FBI agent to die in the line of duty. (See related story.) At the time, Lee Woodriffe said, he was one of only a handful of black agents who had succeeded in joining the bureau.

Woodriffe’s widow, Ella Woodriffe, also spoke at the ceremony. “There’s a saying that hatred corrodes the vessel it’s carried in, but today I have no hatred,” she said. “I speak with heart-filled joy and thanking God for allowing all of us to be here in attendance as a testament to my husband’s memory.

“His story began right here at St. Peter Claver Church,” she said. “Edwin went to school here. He went to church here. He was an altar boy here. We met as teenagers here, attending Christian confraternity classes. We were married here, we had two children, and lastly, he was funeralized here.”

“He was gone from our lives too soon,” she said. “But he will be forever remembered in our hearts. His legacy will live on through his children, and now through the co-naming of this street.”

Woodriffe’s son, Edwin R. Woodriffe Jr., was 6 when his father died, and said he lacks vivid memories of him.

“There are photos and stories from friends and family, but the nuances are lost,” he said at the ceremony. “What was his favorite color? I don’t know. I have one of his high school essays on basketball. Were the Knicks his favorite team? I don’t know, and if I did, I don’t remember.

“But he got a B+, by the way, on the paper,” he said, to laughter.

“The thing I remember most is the idea of him represented inside the family,” said Woodriffe, whose mother got help from extended family in raising him and Lee. “I feel blessed that my father’s sacrifice was a part of inspiring my sister and I to be the adults that we are today. And on the 50th anniversary of his passing, I’m honored to see his name on this corner, where his story can continue to be a positive one.”

Other speakers at the ceremony included Bishop James Massa of the Diocese of Brooklyn.

“May all who walk or drive on this street glance from time to time at the sign with the name of Edwin R. Woodriffe,” he said, “and know that a great New Yorker once lived among us and overcame racial barriers in order to serve, in order to protect the vulnerable and contribute to the common good of our nation.”

Fifty years ago, three FBI agents came calling at an apartment in southeast Washington, D.C., during a hunt for a bank robbery suspect. Only one of the agents would survive what happened next.

A man answered the knock at the door. The agents didn’t know it was the suspect they were seeking. After exchanging some tense words with the agents, he pulled out a revolver and shot and killed two of them, Anthony Palmisano and Edwin Woodriffe, GABELLI ’62. He fled the apartment through a window, and city police and FBI agents captured him a few hours later.

Today, the murder of the two agents still resonates—both were only in their late 20s, part of a tight-knit cohort of young agents in the FBI’s Washington field office, some of whom still vividly recall the events of that day, January 8, 1969. And the killings were shocking for another reason. Woodriffe, 27 at the time, became the first black FBI agent to die in the line of duty.

For burial, he was brought back to his native Brooklyn, back to the city he loved, where he had escaped his impoverished neighborhood by working his way through Fordham and launching his career in government service. In April, the city will unveil a remembrance of the polished, thoughtful agent with a sharp sense of humor, ensuring that his memory will remain very much alive.

A Child of Immigrants

Edwin R. Woodriffe was the third child of immigrants from Trinidad who lived in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. They owned a dry cleaning shop, getting up early for work every single day “without fail” and instilling a strong work ethic in their children, said Woodriffe’s daughter, Lee Woodriffe, of Lithonia, Georgia.

Woodriffe graduated from Brooklyn Preparatory School, a Jesuit high school in nearby Crown Heights, and earned an accounting degree at Fordham’s City Hall Division at 302 Broadway, where he was vice president of the philosophy club, his daughter said. He paid his way by working as a police cadet and as an elevator operator at Macy’s. Upon graduation, he married Ella Louise Moore, whom he had met in a Christian confirmation class when they were teenagers, and they had two children, Lee Ann and her brother, Edwin R. Woodriffe Jr.

Growing up, Woodriffe had admired his older brother for serving as a New York City police officer; after graduating from Fordham, he worked for the U.S. Treasury Department in enforcement before joining the FBI in 1966. Sometimes he would sign letters “Eliot Ness,” Lee said, describing her father as “really good-natured, and just always cracking a joke.”

Much of what she knows of him was related by others, since she was only 5 when he was killed. He was a jazz lover who would sometimes play his saxophone on the roof of the building where the family lived in Brooklyn, she said. A voracious reader interested in religion and philosophy, he was a deep thinker, which was apparent from his conversation and his humor, she said.

In the Washington, D.C., FBI field office, he was a low-key and decisive agent, “a very classy individual” who was courteous toward crime suspects, said Ed Armento, of Prospect, Kentucky, a retired agent who trained under Woodriffe for a week.

Retired agent Robert Quigley, GABELLI ’62, recalled working with three other black agents, in addition to Woodriffe, in the Washington field office. A story of solidarity in the face of discrimination was recently passed along to him, he said—when Woodriffe was an FBI trainee in Washington, D.C., Woodriffe and his classmates went to suburban Maryland to rent apartments, but they all pulled out of a pending housing contract when they were told Woodriffe would be barred. “The other agents were aghast,” Quigley said, so they sought housing in D.C. or Virginia instead.

A Tragic Day

Quigley remembers the day when agents learned of a bank robbery by Billie Austin Bryant, an escaped federal prisoner. Woodriffe, Palmisano, and another agent went to check out the apartment where they had heard Bryant’s wife or girlfriend lived, said Quigley, citing reports prepared afterward.

It was Bryant who opened the door when they knocked, but they weren’t sure it was him. “They have no photograph, no idea what he looks like,” Quigley said. “Back in those days, all we had were radios in the car. There was no way to send a photo.”

Bryant told the agents the woman they were seeking wasn’t there. When they asked to come in and wait for her, he refused and started to close the door. Woodriffe put his foot in the door to stop him, and Bryant pulled out his revolver.

Woodriffe and Palmisano never got a chance to pull their firearms, said retired agent Charles Harvey, who tried to revive the two agents and later removed the weapons from their bodies at an area hospital.

Bryant was captured about six hours later, surrendering to a local police detective when he was tracked down to an attic where someone had reported noise, said Quigley, who was there when Bryant was captured. Bryant was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole.

Commemorations in D.C. and Brooklyn

The 50th anniversary of the two agents’ deaths was commemorated in Washington in January by the bureau’s Washington field office and the Society of Former Agents of the FBI. Harvey spoke at the event. “Our job is to never forget,” he said.

Another commemoration is coming up on April 26 in Brooklyn, when the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Claver Place will be formally co-named Special Agent Edwin R. Woodriffe Way. The City Council approved the co-naming within the past year after Lee Woodriffe petitioned for it. She is also writing a book on her father’s life, the shooting, and its aftermath.

Her father “loved Fordham,” along with all things New York, she said, and the renaming keeps him present in a part of the city that was important in his life, when he was an altar boy at St. Peter Claver Church.

“I did not want his final resting place in people’s minds to be in Cypress Hill Cemetery,” she said. “It’s very important to me that [his story]  come full circle, but come full circle in the right way.

“Here is somebody who came from an impoverished area, odds stacked against him, but through perseverance and diligence and having integrity and wanting to do better, rose up through the ranks and really made something of himself,” she said. “It’s a story of hope and what you can become.”

This particular dinner table was in Westchester County, New York, on Thanksgiving 2010. Mike Casey, FCRH ’96, was telling Harry Hammer, FCRH ’55, LAW ’59, that he’d just gotten the keys to a one-story commercial property at 59 Reade Street in Manhattan, last occupied by an Italian restaurant called Spaghetti Western. He had known about that spot from his time as a New York City firefighter at Ladder 1 on nearby Duane Street, but Hammer, the father of one of Casey’s closest friends, knew even more about the property’s history.

“He was like, ‘Oh, the old Joe Maxwell’s space!’” Casey recalls.

From 1938 to the late 1960s, Joe Maxwell’s was a popular local hangout for students at Fordham’s 302 Broadway location, including Hammer, who earned his Fordham Law degree there. Hearing Hammer talk about the classic New York pub, which was known as much for the tall tales of its eponymous, Irish-born proprietor as it was for its sizzling steak, Casey knew what he wanted to do with the space.

“Once he said it, I realized using Joe Maxwell’s as an inspiration would be a great fit,” he says. After the light bulb went off and he decided to pay homage to the old Fordham haunt, there was only one person he wanted to go in as a partner: Alex Tortolani, FCRH ’02, who had managed several of Casey’s previous establishments, including Mugz’s, the popular bar near Rose Hill, which Casey had owned for several years.

“Mike came to see me at my job and told me to put in my two weeks’ notice,” Tortolani says. “We saw the vision and started working toward opening Maxwell’s Tribeca.”

A Space Steeped in History

As Tortolani got involved with the project, he would visit the New York City Municipal Archives on Chambers Street, where he learned about the various businesses that occupied the building after it was constructed as a five-story commercial site in the mid-nineteenth century. After becoming a one-story building in the 1930s, the space started playing host to a series of restaurants, the longest-running of which was Joe Maxwell’s.

This sense of history made Casey and Tortolani realize that while they wanted to bring a modern sensibility to Maxwell’s, certain features from Joe Maxwell’s and subsequent tenants were worth keeping, like the original bar, which they only had to clean up a bit; a service bell hanging on a wall next to the kitchen, which they believe dates back to the building’s origins; and a pair of hazy, Art Deco mirrors behind the bar, aged over many years in pre-smoking ban New York.

In addition to these period touches, the co-owners have given the space a distinctly Fordham-friendly flair, with a large amount of wall space devoted to University memorabilia, including a maroon banner, a taxidermy ram’s head, and framed photos of old Fordham athletics teams.

Hearty Food, Both Classic and Contemporary

Like the décor, the menu at Maxwell’s, which FORDHAM magazine’s staff sampled over lunch on a brisk October day, is full of classics that are refined and updated with some modern twists. The baked spinach and artichoke dip, served with warm pita bread, was satisfying comfort food that, while rich, was not so heavy that it put us down for the count. Another highlight from the appetizer menu was the grilled lamb lollipops, cooked medium-rare and served with a tangy tzatziki sauce. A Cajun shrimp and salmon Caesar salad would have been large enough as a meal for one but was also great to share, with the well-seasoned seafood giving it a nice bite. The salmon reappeared in one of the large plates, a pretzel-encrusted Scottish salmon dish served with broccoli, jasmine rice, and a ginger-lemon cream sauce. The fish was cooked perfectly and the sauce’s bright citrus notes gave the whole dish a lovely flavor.

The two showstoppers, though, were both beef dishes. The Jameson Black Barrel burger, which seemed to be a very popular choice among the Maxwell’s lunch crowd, was a huge, half-pound patty wrapped in bacon, cooked with Jameson Black Barrel Select Reserve bourbon, and topped with whiskey slaw and Irish cheddar and porter cheese. The meat was juicy and the flavors all mixed together for a huge blast of umami, everything you could want in a midday meat fix.

And while the burger is deservedly popular, those with an appetite for nostalgia will perhaps be more interested in the saloon steak frites, a dish inspired by the legendary steak sandwich at Joe Maxwell’s that fed many a hungry Ram after classes at 302 Broadway. Our steak was served on the rare side and was well-seasoned. It rested atop a heaping pile of haricot verts and delicious potato wedges. This thick-cut version of frites allowed for the ideal fried potato texture profile: crispy and dark on the outside, soft and light on the inside.

To wash it all down, Maxwell’s has a beer menu with a variety of drafts and bottles, a small selection of reasonably priced wines by the glass and bottle, and a mix of both classic and creative cocktails, including a very solid old-fashioned, a tart and refreshing blackberry mojito, and a watermelon martini that put a bright spin on the boozy original.

An Enduring Fordham Connection

As satisfying as the fare is at Maxwell’s, Casey and Tortolani have taken just as much care to make the restaurant a home away from home for their fellow Fordham grads. They say that in addition to going to Maxwell’s for events like athletics fundraisers and informal reunions, alumni often find themselves stopping by for a quick bite or beer. And sometimes a patron who didn’t know about the restaurant’s Fordham connections will look up and take delight in seeing all the tributes to their alma mater.

“It’s amazing how many people come in here and see the Fordham stuff and are like, ‘Oh, I went to Lincoln Center’ or ‘I went to the Law School,’ Tortolani says, noting that such moments occur several times a week on average. “People who go to Fordham tend to stay in the city, so it’s a good connection for us.”

Especially neat for them is when they get customers who remember Joe Maxwell’s from their days at Fordham’s old downtown home.

“It’s cool to have old-timers come in and tell you that this was their go-to college bar,” Casey says. “They really appreciate that we brought back that aesthetic and that connection to Fordham.”

Sometimes these visitors bring gifts, which can come in the form of items to add to the wall or stories about the old days. Casey says it’s always fun to hear about the hierarchy of the bar seating at Joe Maxwell’s, where first-year students were relegated to the dark back of the bar and juniors and seniors got the prime seats near the large front windows.

As for wall art, one of their favorite pieces of memorabilia is a photo of Joe Maxwell himself, standing outside his establishment, smiling broadly in a sharply tailored suit complete with bow tie and pocket square. That photo, which hangs on a post by the front windows, was from a Fordham Law yearbook that a group of 302 Broadway alumni brought in one day.

Networks and Tributes

That type of strong alumni network is something that both Casey, who majored in economics, and Tortolani, who majored in communications, have found particularly valuable about their time at Fordham.

“I think aside from the studies and the business knowledge, what was so great was the relationships and the people,” Casey says. “So many relationships stay in the city—bridges of communication between different fields of work. Hands down, if people want to stay in the city, I always recommend going to Fordham.”

Hammer, who has stayed very involved with Fordham over the years and goes to every home football game, would likely agree with Casey’s assessment. He still works in the neighborhood and drops by Maxwell’s whenever he can. Despite his fond memories of the original Joe Maxwell’s, he says that Casey and Tortolani have managed to improve upon their predecessor’s place, making it “much more convivial.”

The appreciation goes both ways, as Casey and Tortolani have made sure to pay tribute to the man whose stories inspired them to create an old-school New York pub that honors its forebears while offering a comfortable and satisfying dining option for City Hall and courthouse workers and tourists alike.

“I was at Maxwell’s six months ago, and they brought me to the back and had me look up at the wall,” Hammer recalled. “And there was a picture of me from when I was four years old. I have no idea where they got it!”

The spirit of the ’60s was very much alive during the festivities, as graduates from the Class of 1968 were welcomed into the ranks of the Golden Rams, and on Friday evening, attendees rocked out to the sounds of the Beatles cover band the Fab Faux.

For the second year in a row, the weekend set the stage for celebrating more than $70 million raised by Jubilee classes since they last came together on campus five years earlier.

Honoring the Past

In his welcome address, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, spoke of the University’s transition from a small Catholic institution founded in 1841 by Irish-born Bishop John Hughes to a nationally-recognized Jesuit university boasting an undergraduate student body of more than 9,000 students from across the world.

He emphasized the University’s commitment to preserving Hughes’ vision for Fordham to be an academic institution that welcomes students of every class, race, and creed.

“When people say, ‘what is Fordham?’ I often say, ‘wrong question.’ It’s not a what, it’s a who,” he said.

“When you pray for Fordham, see in your mind’s eye and in your heart all the women and men whom you knew at Fordham, and whom you cherished at Fordham, and the young women and men who you will meet today.”

A Family Affair

Though there were many couples at Jubilee, not everyone brought a spouse as their date. Don Quinn, FCHR ’58 was there with his daughter, Carolyn Quinn Hickey, FCRH ’88. The pair has attended Jubilee celebrations together ever since Don presented Carolyn with her diploma at her graduation.

“Tonight [at the gala]I’m not sitting with the class of ’58. I’m sitting with the class of ’88,” Don quipped.

“He’s a good dancer,” said Carolyn, a former elementary school teacher who’s now teaching at the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. “For all my friends, class of ’88, whose husbands don’t like to dance—he’s the go-to.”

Don was one of several veterans from his class present at the event. He was originally part of the class of 1954, he said, but four years in the Navy interrupted his college career. When he returned to Fordham, he was working, going to school, and raising a family.

Just before the luncheon, members of the class unveiled a plaque that honors two all-time great Fordham basketball players from their year: Jim Cunningham and Bill McCadney. The plaque will hang in the Rose Hill Gym.

A Call to Do More

Michael Wieloszynski, UGE ’68, told a group of about 50 alumni from 302 Broadway—which once housed Fordham’s schools of education, business, and law—that they still have plenty left to offer the world.

“People of my generation were actively trying to do something, but don’t think we succeeded particularly well,” he said.

“I look at our kids, and our kids’ kids, and … it wasn’t until this year, with gun control, that you had young people making any protests. There’s a lot to be done.”

And although it’s easy at their age to say it’s somebody else’s turn, Wieloszynski noted that “that somebody else is our kids. And there’s a lot of knowledge and lot of experience here. I don’t see people walking around with crutches here, or IVs,” he said. “We need to get involved.”

The mini-reunion, as it was called, offered a chance for the 302 Broadway alumni to reflect on their unique shared experience.

“We were sort of isolated so we got the chance to know everyone. We were a small school but we had the Fordham campus for Fordham activities—the football team, the basketball team,” said retired teacher John Ruzicka, UGE ’68. Standing next to him was Donald Czajkowski, also UGE ’68, whom Ruzicka called “my closest friend,” and for whom he served as best man.

Debating a Decade’s Impact

The significance of the 60’s was front and center in “A Look Back, Hosted by the Class of 1963,” at Loyola Hall. The discussion was organized and moderated by Elmer Brunsman, FCRH ’63. (Sadly, Brunsman died later that evening. The University is planning a memorial service to honor him. His obituary can be found here.)

Paul Saunders, FCRH ’63, argued that theirs was the last class marked by insularity. In many ways, it was a class that was shaped more by its 1959 high school graduation, he said. Social justice, which is a major part of the Fordham experience now, and even later in the 1960’s, was not really discussed.

“We were very insular, smothered, satisfied, unquestioning about the world, and narrow. What is consistent from our day to today is the emphasis on academic excellence, but in my opinion, almost everything is different. And I submit, much better,” he said.

Women at the Forefront

In the McGinley Center, members of the Thomas More College Class of 1968 gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their graduation. It was a groundbreaking achievement, as they were the first members of Fordham’s all-women’s college that operated from 1964 to 1974.

One of those women, Louise Zotttoli Priest, TMC ’68, had an additional celebration to savor: 50 years of marriage to Richard Priest, FCRH ’68, who was also in attendance. They met at a mixer on campus when they were 17, and wed at the University Church in August 1968, shortly after graduation. Zotttoli Priest recalled taking the long bus ride to campus from her home in what would become Co-op City.

“You’d get off at Fordham Road and the Third Avenue El was still here, and everything was dirty and sooty, and you’d walk through the gates onto the campus of Fordham, and it was like stepping through the gates of paradise,” she said.

Throughout the weekend, many women went on record with their memories through the newly launched Thomas More College Oral History Project, which will store their recordings in Fordham’s archives.

Marymount Women Celebrate Their Own

At Duane Library, the women of Marymount College presented Stacey Tisdale, MC ’88, with their Alumnae of Achievement Award.

“My cousin once told me the friends you make in college are the friends you have for life, and it’s been so true. In the past 30 years, I think we’ve been through everything together,” Tisdale said.

“I was often told by news directors that I didn’t look like a financial journalist. I’d say ‘You’re going to have to change what your idea of what a financial journalist looks like.’ I realized it was a battle I wasn’t going to win, but one I would transcend.”

Maura Gaines, Ph.D., MC ’58, received the Gloria Gaines Memorial Award, given in recognition of service to community, church, and college. The award is named after her sister, also a Marymount alumna, who died at age 24. The Golden Dome Award went to Angelica Hinojosa Valentine, MC ’03, GSS ’05, in recognition of her commitment to advance the legacy of Marymount College.

The event also paid special honor to Sister Mary Heyser, R.H.S.M., MC ’62, who has served as the chaplain for Marymount alumnae since 2009, and who will soon move to Immokalee, Florida, where she will work with the Legal Aid Service of Collier County with Sr. Maureen Kelleher, MC ’60.

Rainbow Rams: Old Friends, New Revelations

As Jubilee attendees enjoyed a barbecue on Martyrs Lawn, more than 40 Rainbow Rams, the LGBTQ alumni affinity group, gathered for cocktails and camaraderie on the Walsh Library Terrace. Among them were Jim Gifford, FCRH ’68, and Tom Reilly, FCRH ’68. Gifford and Reilly were roommates, but neither knew the other was gay until a few years after graduation.

Reilly was thrilled to discover there was an LGBTQ gathering at Jubilee, since coming out of the closet wasn’t really an option when he graduated.

“The atmosphere was very different, all men wearing suit jackets to classes—we were very stiff upper lip,” recalled Gifford. “So, coming back here and seeing that there’s a gay alliance, that makes me see Fordham in a new light.”

For outgoing Rainbow Rams President Stephen Erdman, FCRH ’13, seeing LGBTQ Golden and Silver Rams celebrating with his class was a bittersweet culmination of his tenure at the two-year-old group. He said that finding out that friends were gay after leaving campus is still a common occurrence (a pair of Silver Rams roommates at the gathering had the same coming out experience as Reilly and Gifford).

“It’s important that we have these groups, because there are still people who feel that they can’t come out on campus,” said Erdman. “But college is an important time to meet each other and be true to ourselves.”

—Nicole LaRosa, Tanisia Morris, Tom Stoelker, and Gina Vergel contributed to this story.

View and order your Jubilee class photo. Use the password Jubilee18 to log in.

“I’ve been very lucky in life,” he says, “including who I married.”

The O’Briens met in the mid-1960s at Fordham’s undergraduate business school in Manhattan, then located at 302 Broadway, and each earned a B.S. from the University in June 1968.

This spring, as they prepare to celebrate their Fordham Jubilee, their first as Golden Rams, they have been reflecting not only on their undergraduate days but also on the shared values that brought them together and inspire them to give back to their alma mater.

An Interborough Connection

Annette grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, part of a large extended Italian-American family; Dan was the oldest of seven children in a large Irish-American family based in Manhattan and New Jersey. They both went to Catholic high schools and were encouraged to attend a Catholic college.

At Fordham, they served together on the student council, but they didn’t begin dating until their senior year. A friend of Dan’s was dating one of the few other women in their class and suggested a double date. Dan asked Annette. “It grew from there,” he says.

That December, Dan started a six-week internship that took him away from campus, but he and Annette stayed in touch by letter, a method that may have added a tinge of romance to their blossoming relationship.

“That’s how the seed got planted and maybe kindled the spirit in both of us,” Dan says. By the time he came back to campus, “in the spring, we were steady.”

They found a lot of common ground, especially in the important role family played in their lives. “We just felt we came from the same kind of background and had the same goals and the same ideas,” Annette says of their connection.

In fall 1968, just a few months after graduating from Fordham, they selected an engagement ring together, and Dan proposed on a bench outside of Tavern on the Green, where they had gone for dinner.

Soon after, Dan, on the cusp of being drafted, decided to try to get into the Army Reserve. He was accepted later that year and served for six years, during which time he and Annette were married—at Annette’s family parish, Our Lady of Guadalupe in Brooklyn, in December 1969.

“We’ve always been on the same page in terms of where things go. We swim in the same direction,” Dan says of their marriage. “Our strengths and weaknesses complement each other. If we get angry, it doesn’t last. It just works, and we are happy about it.”

Reconnecting with Their Roots, Supporting Students

Over the years, their shared focus on family has been a key to their joy. The O’Briens have four daughters, and the couple hosts an annual Christmas Eve dinner that includes more than 50 family members in their Ridgefield, Connecticut, home.

They also have been running together for about 35 years, and typically compete in three or four half-marathons every year across the country, including ones in Georgia, Florida, and California.

The O’Briens admit that it took them 40 years before they re-engaged with their alma mater—at a time in their lives, Dan says, “when making connections to the past feels important.”

About 10 years ago, after meeting Fordham’s president, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., the couple established an endowed scholarship to help future generations of Fordham students.

“I always felt that I should give back to the school,” Annette says. “I liked being there, and I got a good education. I feel happy about giving back and helping kids, too.”

Like Annette, Dan says he’s “very happy to be reconnected.” In addition to providing scholarship support, he serves on the President’s Council, through which he mentors students and discusses his role as an adviser at J.H. Whitney & Co. in New Canaan, Connecticut.

“There is a great Fordham family throughout the country, and by reconnecting, you feel part of that again,” he says. “They extended their hand to me, and I’m happy to be back.”

—Maja Tarateta

It was the former Vincent Office Building at 302 Broadway, “that narrow, old building with the slow elevators” but “kindly elevator operators,” in the words of Maggie Cumming Casciato, UGE ’68.

It’s now 50 years since she earned her bachelor’s degree with one of the last Fordham classes to be educated at 302 Broadway, which served Fordham students for 25 years amid the hustle and bustle of Manhattan’s historic heart.

Situated two blocks from City Hall and a 10-minute walk from where Fordham’s Jesuits first founded a school in Manhattan in the 19th century, 302 Broadway was the last of Fordham’s locations in the lower part of the borough, the final redoubt of what might be called the Jesuit university of Old New York.

“Another New York City Skyscraper”

The Vincent Office Building was constructed for the estate of John Jacob Astor in 1899, designed in a Romanesque revival style. Elevators had only been around for a few decades, and a brochure boasted that the ones in the Vincent would run “day and night”—patrolled by watchmen, no less. Other amenities included “filtered iced water” available on every floor.

The Vincent was an apartment building before Fordham bought it to house its City Hall Division following the expiration of the University’s lease in the nearby Woolworth Building. With the purchase, Fordham “realized one of her fondest hopes,” in part because of the building’s proximity to transit lines, The Ram said in its Sept. 10, 1943, issue.

The building housed the schools of law, business, and education. When she went there to register for classes in the early 1960s, the 14-story building “just seemed like another New York City skyscraper,” said Casciato, a native of Elizabeth, New Jersey, who had become enamored with Manhattan while growing up.

But the building’s location was choice. “The neighborhood was our campus,” she said—there was an Italian place across the street offering a plate of spaghetti for 99 cents, and a nearby pub, Joe Maxwell’s, “where a lot of friendships developed” as students nursed a drink for a while before class. (The drinking age was 18 at the time.) A few blocks away was the Brooklyn Bridge, where she used to go on walks to be alone with her boyfriend.

And next door—until the paper folded in 1950—was the New York Sun building, where John Payne, GABELLI ’51, once got a welcome surprise. After making a sketch of 302 Broadway’s front entrance for the Maroon Quill, the business school’s newspaper, he walked next door to show it to the Sun’s art editor, who gave him a letterpress engraved zinc plate of the drawing the next day, along with several proof prints.

“I still have the plate as a reminder of how nice and accommodating he had been,” Payne said. “302 Broadway was a wonderful location, and it opened some doors for me while I was a student.”

Every student at 302 was a commuter, and some lived at home with their families, Casciato noted—“We didn’t know what we were missing in terms of campus life.” But the urban “campus” held many delights, such as visiting museums for art class, singing with other students for the Christmas tree lighting at City Hall with the mayor, or visiting Chinatown and Little Italy, she said.

“C’mon in the House”

In the building itself, there were hangouts on the 14th floor—where students would play bridge or study—and in a sublevel lounge, she said. There was a first-floor meeting room with a bare-bones stage, “just an elevated platform,” where the Thalians, an acting troupe, would perform, Casciato said. One former member, Gerard McLoughlin, UGE, ’58, GSE ’60, said the Thalians won a one-act festival that pitted them against all Jesuit schools on the East Coast.

And traveling between all the floors was made memorable by the people who ran the elevators, who were “always very friendly and cordial,” Casciato said. “C’mon in the house” was the familiar greeting of one well-known operator, named Hodge, McLoughlin said. Casciato recalled how the operators would stop the elevator a foot below the floor and then crank the car upward by hand, inch by inch.

But the elevators didn’t always make it to every floor, The Ram noted in a Dec. 3, 1968, article about the impending move to the new Lincoln Center campus. The building was increasingly decrepit and crowded. Nonetheless, some students lamented its loss, describing the sense of tight-knit community created when all the students circulated in the same close quarters.

And there was also an urban vibe—endearing to at least one student—created by police cars, fire engines, and noisy demonstrations at City Hall. Atmosphere also came from the sound of the IRT subway “passing on the other side of the thin wall,” the article said.

Whatever the conditions, students were transformed, and moved on to become dedicated professionals in education and other fields.

“Many wonderful professors taught excellent classes to eager students, many of whom were the first in their families to attend college,” Casciato said. “A great number of those students went on to become truly dedicated teachers and school administrators in New York City and elsewhere.”

Fond Memories

Today the building is long gone, replaced by the immense Ted Weiss Federal Building, but it remains the home campus for many alumni, if only in memory.

The Lincoln Center campus is “like a school I’ve never been to,” Casciato said. “And I don’t identify with the Rose Hill campus either, because I was only there a few times,” including for her graduation in June 1968.

Fifty years later, she is looking forward to reconnecting with former classmates at the 302 Broadway reunion being held as part of Fordham’s Jubilee weekend, which takes place from June 1 to 3 on the Rose Hill campus. (The reunion takes place Saturday, June 2, at 2:30 p.m. in Hughes Hall at Rose Hill. Alumni of 302 Broadway are also welcome at the Block Party at Lincoln Center on June 7.) Casciato stays in close touch with several former classmates; in 2015 they all took a cruise together on the Queen Mary to mark the 50th anniversary of when they all met at age 17.

The building at 302 Broadway “holds a lot of wonderful memories for us, four years of growing up, maturing,” said Casciato, a French major who later moved to Connecticut with her husband to start a family and worked as a management accountant.

“I look back on it fondly,” she said. “It was an old ramshackle building, nothing to be proud of, but what we made it inside was very important.”

In 1963, Joyce Onorato was a sophomore history major at Marymount College, when she agreed to join one of her suitemates on a double date. She met Brian Abamont, a science major at St. John’s University. Weeks later, he invited Joyce to a movie. She recalls thinking he was not her type, but she went anyway and had a strange flash that she would marry him.

“I thought, what? I don’t even like this guy!” she says.

They didn’t see each other again until the first night of summer classes at 302 Broadway, Fordham’s Manhattan home for undergraduates at the time. Joyce had enrolled in an economics course there, and Brian had transferred to Fordham from St. John’s to major in education. He walked out of an elevator one evening and bumped into Joyce. They began dating, and soon she was wearing his Fordham pin.

“I would ask her every night if she wanted a ride home from class,” says Brian, who, like Joyce, grew up in Queens. “I kept asking, and she said no. One night, she said yes. I took her home that night—and every night since!”

In 1966, Joyce graduated from Marymount and began taking summer classes at NYU for a master’s degree in European history while Brian completed his education degree at Fordham.

“I was following my mother’s instructions not to get engaged until I graduated,” he says. “The night I finished my last course, I was anxious.”

So anxious that he proposed to Joyce in his car in front of 302 Broadway. A year later, they were married.

Brian began his career in education as a high school social studies teacher and retired as an assistant principal in guidance in 2002. Joyce also worked as a teacher but dreamed of law school. Following the birth of their fourth child, with the support of her mother and Brian, she earned a law degree from St. John’s in 1988. She eventually joined MetLife as managing attorney in the company’s Long Island office, a position she’s held for 18 years.

The couple has kept their Fordham-Marymount connection alive. Joyce has served on the board of the Marymount Alumnae Association of Fordham University (she was president of the alumnae board at the time of the consolidation with Fordham). And she and Brian continue to support the Marymount Legacy Fund, an endowed scholarship fund that helps young women follow their educational dreams at Fordham.

Earlier this month, the Abamonts returned to Fordham to celebrate their 50th reunion—their first as Golden Rams—during Jubilee weekend. Joyce was presented with the Marymount Golden Dome Award, which is given each year to an alumna whose efforts of service and achievement have benefited Marymount.

With a 50th wedding anniversary coming up next July, Joyce recalls that it was those days at 302 Broadway that really brought the couple together.

“After that year at Fordham, we both knew,” she says. “And that hasn’t changed.”

—Maja Tarateta