Photos by Taylor Ha

Thirty-three cadets officially began their military leadership careers on May 17 at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus. At the 94th commissioning ceremony for Fordham’s Army and Navy ROTC program, speakers praised this year’s cadets for all they had accomplished so far while also describing what’s required of those who lead America’s soldiers and sailors.

For one thing, the guest speaker said, there are no days off.

“You are leaders 24/7, 365,” said Lt. Gen. Maria Barrett, commanding general of the U.S. Army Cyber Command, at the ceremony held at the University Church. “Lead by example. … You should hold yourself to a higher standard, because trust me, soldiers notice everything their leaders do.”

She conferred several other lessons gleaned from her 36-year career: Get to know your troops. Listen to noncommissioned officers; they’ll tell you what you need to hear. When you inevitably make a mistake, “get over it, fast,” and learn from it. Enjoy yourselves, as hard as it may be sometimes, and serve with passion and zest. Set high standards, communicate them clearly, and hold your service members accountable.

“At the end of the day, soldiers want to be part of a winning team, and they want a leader they trust and respect,” Barrett said.

Love-Driven Leadership

She then administered the oath of office to the cadets, who came from several New York-area universities including Fordham, which was to hold its University-wide commencement the next day. Most cadets were bound for the Army, the Army Reserve, and Army National Guard. One was commissioned in the Navy and one in the Marine Corps. One cadet, Miguel Angel-Sandoval, was an Army enlistee who would take part in a Yellow Ribbon ceremony honoring Fordham’s student veterans later that day.

Lt. Col. Paul Tanghe, Ph.D., professor of military science and the officer in charge of the Army ROTC program, noted the diversity of the cadets: they comprised 24 ethnicities and hailed from 11 states as well as countries as far away as South Korea and Senegal. And 40% were multilingual, speaking a total of 13 languages, Tanghe said in his remarks.

He lauded the cadets for demonstrating the love-driven leadership exhorted by two of their recent class dinner speakers, not to mention St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, and legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, FCRH ’37.

“Love-driven leadership is how great officers lead, it’s how the Jesuits educate, it’s why ROTC has the home and the partnership that we have here at Fordham,” Tanghe said.

Cadets received various awards and honors, including the President’s Saber, presented to Brian T. Inguanti, a member of Fordham College at Rose Hill’s Class of 2024 who was headed for the Army Corps of Engineers. The Rev. Joseph M. McShane Award for Excellence in Faculty Support to ROTC was presented to Matthew Butler, PCS ’17, senior director of military and veterans’ services at Fordham.

In her own address, Fordham’s president, Tania Tetlow, noted the essential role played by the cadets’ family members gathered in the University Church.

“You have raised, supported, challenged, inspired these extraordinary men and women graduating here today,” she said. “You have rooted them in service, you imbued them with courage, and so we are so grateful for you this morning.” 

Tradition holds that Fordham’s military heritage dates from 1848, when the state of New York issued Fordham 12 muskets for defense against the threat of nativist rioters, noted Lt. Col. Paul Tanghe, Ph.D., professor of military science at Fordham, at the Nov. 6 event at the Rose Hill campus. Today, the University is home to a military service community comprising “one of the most diverse [ROTC] cadet battalions in the Northeast” and more than 400 students who are veterans, he said, noting the University’s reputation for being welcoming to them.

“The military-connected community is one of the things that makes Fordham special,” he said. “This is a community that’s built around individual paths of service coming together in one place.”

Efforts to honor, support, and grow that community will be part of the yearlong anniversary celebration.

The Office of Military and Veterans’ Services and the Department of Military Science will host two events per month from January through November, with each month’s events organized around a chapter of military history at Fordham. January’s events include a service project—in partnership with Campus Ministry—related to welcoming immigrants, harking back to the origins of Fordham’s military training in 1848. Events in later months will commemorate the Civil War, Vietnam War, World War I, and other epochs, culminating in a gala to be held in November 2023.

There is also a “military muster” outreach effort to Fordham’s military community—ROTC graduates, student and alumni veterans, faculty and staff who served, and friends and family of Fordham veterans—to reengage them with the University. In addition, the veterans’ services office will lead an effort to raise $4.2 million to support ROTC cadets and student veterans as part of Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, the University’s $350 million fundraising campaign.

The veterans’ services campaign received some impromptu support at the Nov. 6 event, which celebrated two distinguished alumni veterans as well as the ROTC program and student-veteran community at Fordham.

Two Who Served with Valor

Attendees included alumni, student veterans, and cadets in Fordham’s ROTC program, a flagship program in the Northeast comprising cadets who attend 17 New York-area schools, from New York University to the Parsons School of Design, Tanghe said.

Two alumni veterans were inducted into the Fordham University Military Hall of Fame: William E. Kotas, FCRH ’69, a graduate of Fordham’s ROTC program, onetime U.S. Army captain, and Vietnam War veteran, who was honored posthumously; and retired U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Gerry Byrne, FCRH ’66, a Vietnam War veteran, media executive, community leader, and entrepreneur.

Kotas, who died last year, served as a platoon leader with the 23rd Infantry Division. He was inducted in honor of “the way that he approached all of his duties and obligations to others in his life,” from his cadet years to his post-Army life, Tanghe said.

“His military service was shorter than he wanted it to be because of the manner in which he approached it”—that is, with devotion to the soldiers under his command, Tanghe said.

In a display of that devotion, he personally led a patrol during which he suffered grievous injuries that would require a year of hospitalization and medical retirement from the Army. At the time of his injury, he continued to lead his men and directed them to safety. Kotas received multiple military honors, including the National Defense Service Medal, the Parachute Badge, and the Bronze Star Medal with the “V” device to denote heroism.

Moving back to Nashville, Tennessee, “he continued to find a life of purpose and meaning,” Tanghe said. Kotas was a founding member of the St. Ignatius of Antioch Catholic Church in Nashville and taught in its adult education program on Sundays, among other community activities, and worked for the U.S. Postal Service until his retirement.

Byrne, a 1962 graduate of Fordham Preparatory School, was commissioned via the Marine Corps’ Platoon Leaders Class, which he attended while earning his degree from Fordham College at Rose Hill. He served on active duty from 1966 to 1969, including a tour in Vietnam spanning  the latter two years.

“What I learned at Fordham Prep and Fordham College from the Jesuits was ethics and integrity,” he told the gathering. “In the Marine Corps, I learned discipline and leadership. When you combine it, it’s amazing what you get out of it.”

Byrne has had a distinguished career in media, serving as launch publisher of Crain’s New York Business, creator and chairman of NBC’s Quill Awards, and publisher of Variety, leading its transformation into a diversified global media brand. Today he is vice chairman of Penske Media.

He has hosted a Marine Corps birthday celebration in New York City for the past 25 years, and in 2009, he received the Made in New York Award from then-mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Byrne serves on the boards of nonprofits too numerous to name, including the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. He learned the value of staying busy, he said, from the famed television producer Norman Lear, who, during a conversation about packed schedules, told him that “life is not a rehearsal.”

“When I go back and think about friends and fellow marines who don’t have the ability to stand here like I am, it’s very moving,” said Byrne, who attended the event with some friends from the Corps and his wife, Liz Daly Byrne.

He said he was “extraordinarily honored” to be inducted into the Hall of Fame “and to be a Fordham graduate, and to see … everyone who’s here today.”

A Fundraising Campaign Begins

The fundraising campaign announced at the event has three components:

• An Emergency Relief Fund to promote wellness for military-connected students and provide loans to help students through financial distress ($100,000 goal)
• An endowment to enrich ROTC cadets’ and student veterans’ education by sending them to events and conferences, bringing guest speakers to campus, and providing gear needed for new training opportunities ($1.75 million goal)
• A drive to create a facility at Rose Hill for student veterans and cadets that promotes inclusion, community, collaboration, and information sharing, in part through new digital resources ($2.3 million goal)

Tanghe noted that the Emergency Relief Fund will provide microloans to help students who, for instance, might be unable to meet monthly living expenses on time, because their veterans’ benefit payments are held up by bureaucratic snafus. “If you’re missing a month of rent in New York City, that can be a significant financial burden,” Tanghe said at the Nov. 6 event.

Matthew Butler, PCS ’17, Fordham’s director of military and veterans’ services, said the fundraising effort has gotten off to a strong start, with one donor contributing $25,000 in mid-October.

During a follow-up meeting, the donor wrote another check, for $70,000, Butler said.

That’s when Byrne spoke up—“Liz and I will throw in the other five” needed to bring the tally up to an even $100,000, he said.

Asked later about his spontaneous decision to donate, he gave a simple reason.

“It’s supporting Fordham and veterans,” he said. “There’s no better reason than that.”

Register here to be connected with others in Fordham’s military-affiliated community.

To inquire about supporting the Office of Military and Veterans’ Services fundraising campaign, please contact Michael Boyd, senior associate vice president for development and university relations, at 212-636-6525 or [email protected]. Learn more about Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, a campaign to reinvest in every aspect of the Fordham student experience.

Growing up in Colorado Springs, Holloman was immersed in military culture. He graduated from high school in 2010 and enrolled in the New Mexico Military Institute. He went on to earn a B.A. in history at the University of New Mexico, and after enlisting with the Army, he served two tours of duty as a squadron communications officer in Afghanistan and South Korea.

Despite his years in the Army, Holloman never thought he’d make it to West Point. But In 2019, after being promoted to the rank of captain, he was accepted for a teaching position at the famed institution, formally called the United States Military Academy. 

And thanks to a partnership between West Point and Fordham’s Graduate School of Education (GSE), Holloway soon found himself doing something else he’d never dreamed of—attending school in New York City.

On May 21, he and fellow Army captain Rob Berchild will graduate with a Master of Science in Education in Curriculum and Teaching from the GSE.

“I was super nervous, because I had been out of college for about seven years, and Army education and civilian education are two very different things. It was pretty intimidating, but it was really good for me to see,” he said, especially given his lack of familiarity with the Northeast.

“I think one of the things that people don’t do enough is see different demographics and enjoy different cultures within the U.S. It’s been a blast, and I’ve learned a ton.”

Fordham and West Point established the partnership in 2016 to give military science instructors like Holloman the tools to teach soldiers how to navigate battlefields that are more complex than ever.

For Holloman, classes such as Creativity and Teaching, which he took with associate professor John Craven, Ph.D., were invaluable. Not only did he gain the skills and perspectives to be a better instructor, but he also found himself with a platform to share what is admittedly a different perspective, having been deployed twice and moved eight times.

“There were times in class where I’d sit there [in class]and people would say, ‘I can’t understand why this is this way.’ And I’d be thinking, ‘Because that’s not how the world works,’” he said, noting that sometimes he got the sense Craven was thinking, “Josh, why don’t you just say it? 

Holloman did share his thoughts, and said that he feels the experience “helps the people see the world from a different lens.”

His time at Fordham also taught him to contemplate what he is offering his cadets as in instructor, he said.  

“How can I take virtual reality and apply it to the classroom? How can I design that to make it an individualized learning environment for that student? Am I creating an environment for them to thrive, or am I creating an environment that is inhibiting their chance to learn? Am I asking the right questions?” he said.

“That’s what Dr. Craven opened up for us.”

Craven said it was a pleasure to see Holloman, who took several classes with him, go from being somewhat intimidated by a different style of education, in a different area of the country, to adjust, adapt, and ultimately thrive. It’s what GSE hopes to do with all the West Point captains who take the two-hour train ride to Lincoln Center once a week to become the best instructors they can be.

“These captains are taking these young cadets and teaching them leadership skills, communication skills, credible thinking skills and a sense of service to the country,” he said.

Although the civilian world and the military world are very different, Craven said there are a lot more areas of commonality than many realize.

“We’re fighting for social justice and they’re fighting for the country, so we actually share this sense of service to others. That shared connection is formed when we have education majors and teachers and administrators interacting with captains from West Point.”

After graduation, Holloman will return full time to West Point, where he will be an adviser for cadets who are choosing whether they want to pursue a career in military intelligence, cyber security, or signal corps (communications). He will also become a full instructor in the department of military instruction.

He’s grateful both for the degree he’s earned and the fact that being a full-time student brought him closer to his wife Kaysha, who is also earning a master’s in education this year, from Grand Canyon University.

“It was fun for us, because we could actually talk about things when I didn’t understand something. She’d, be like, ‘You know hun, this isn’t the Army, this is how a classroom works. This is how you should look at it,’” he said.

He’s also feeling a bit of disbelief that his life has taken this path.

“A kid from Colorado Springs never thinks they’re going be walking around Manhattan, like in the movies. It’s a pretty awesome gift the Army gave me.”

At the March 16 event at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, Funk spent time with students, answering their questions and discussing his role as the head of TRADOC, which oversees the training of Army forces and the development of operational doctrine for the Army. Funk oversees about 500,000 personnel who conduct all of the Army’s education, training, and doctrinal development, and he is one of the four most senior general officers in the Army, reporting directly to the chief of staff of the Army.

He and the students listened to a livestream event featuring his deputy Lieutenant General Maria Gervais, and the Army’s chief personnel officer, Lieutenant General Gary Brito that addressed the need for cohesive team building.

On the livestream, Funk asked his two lieutenants to share their “Army stories,”—or why they decided to serve—because “nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Funk broke down some of the topics discussed, including communication, trust, and the need for hardwork with the students.

“Our job is to do hard stuff and connect people,” he told the students. In order to do that, “we’ve got to overcome things.”

He gave the example of Gervais, who he said wanted to be an example for those she commanded, so she goes to the gym every day at 5 a.m. to work on her physical fitness and stay in top shape.

Funk also emphasized how TRADOC has been changing its communication practices to address the needs of their current officers and their loved ones.

“Now when you communicate with families—it used to be we brought them all into the gym, we laid it all out a bunch of powerpoint slides, and then we left—now you’re talking across continents because our soldiers are far and wide—immigrants from all over the place—and we have to communicate with those families,” he said.

Funk emphasized the need for honest and open communication because without it, he said, “they’re not going to follow you.”

The event was organized by Jennifer Alvarez, assistant professor of military science and head of Fordham’s Army ROTC program. It was Fordham’s first joint-event featuring a four-star general in charge of Training and Doctrine Command, which is the branch that oversees ROTC programs.

Her straightforward, just-the-facts delivery parsed the little told history of an “archipelago” of nation states that helped establish tax havens. They ranged from Monaco in Europe to the Bahamas and Cayman Islands in the Caribbean to Liberia in Africa.

The March 8 talk, titled “Twilight Capitalists: The Global Cold War and the Unmaking of Postwar Capitalism,” was delivered at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus to kick off a three-day conference hosted by the O’Connell Initiative on Global Capitalism, sponsored by Robert J. O’Connell, FCRH ’65.

In her talk, Ogle described a group of men who she said were part of the political establishment during World War II—members of the diplomatic corps, those with high military ranks, or members of the CIA or the British Intelligence—whose dubious practices contributed to the development of offshore banking.

“After the war, they were out of a job, and most moved smoothly to private business and banking,” she said. “They used their experience abroad to apply themselves to the notion of free enterprise.”

Among them, she said, were “diplomat capitalists,” like Walter H. Diamond, who worked at the Federal Reserve Bank during the war and was responsible for shutting down German and Axis-allied banks. He later became an adviser on tax policy and went on “to become a giant on the best strategies on tax avoidance,” said Ogle. Another, Edward Stettinius, once served as the U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman; he helped develop the Liberia Company in 1947, a partnership with the Liberian government and American businessmen—thus making Liberia one of the earliest tax havens. And Robert B. Anderson, former Secretary of the Navy and later of the Secretary of Treasury, went on to establish the World Banking Corp. He was eventually sentenced to prison for money laundering and operating an illegal offshore bank.

Ogle also highlighted British ex-spy William Stephenson, former head of the British security in the Western hemisphere. Stephenson, she said, was the model for author Ian Fleming’s James Bond character. Together with Stettinius, he formed the World Commerce Corporation, which was promoted as a way to invest in developing countries, but which Ogle called “a CIA front, of sorts.”

From a bank that had “enough generals, admirals, and spooks to run a small war” to an expert in guerilla warfare who made his fortune from designing a machine gun silencer, Ogle named neo-libertarian institutions and individuals that, upon helping win the war, found ways to funnel tax funds away from those nations they once defended. (She also touched upon former Nazis doing the same practice in Panama, Brazil, and Argentina.)

In closing, Ogle elaborated on the 21st-century consequences to these 20th-century maneuvers. She said the former spies weren’t profoundly patriotic, and they didn’t necessarily reflect upon “how they drained the nation state(s).”
“The greatest damage we see today is the inequality, [and]that can be clearly linked to the fact that it [is]much easier [for individuals]to hide vast amounts of wealth,” she said. “It has had a tremendous effect, and it fuels the perceived problem people have with the way things work.”