“Leo was an extremely active and committed member of the modern language and literatures department,” said Andrew Clark, Ph.D., the department’s current chair and professor of French and comparative literature, who worked with him from 2003 to 2015. Clark noted that Hoar served on multiple committees and advocated in particular for international education. He was also an active participant in Fordham’s ROTC program and a moderator for the university’s sailing team.

Clark said Hoar’s true passion was Cervantes, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and revered for The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, which he penned in the early 17th century. When Hoar joined the faculty in 1963, he took over the then 11-year-old Fordham Cervantes lectures, which had enjoyed international acclaim as the only continuous event of its kind devoted to Cervantes. He oversaw multi-day conferences held to commemorate 25-, 40-, and 50-year anniversaries of the lectures. 

A native of Worchester, Massachusetts, Hoar served in the U.S. Army from 1953 to 1955 and was discharged with the rank of second lieutenant. He earned a Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures from Harvard University in 1965. He started teaching at Fordham as an instructor in 1963, became an assistant professor in 1965, and was promoted to associate professor in 1970. 

In 2003, he was honored with a Bene Merenti medal for 40 years of service at Fordham and lauded as an enthusiastic and demanding teacher who developed innovative teaching methods and helped organize study abroad trips to Spain. In 2015, he retired after 53 years of service to the University.

A Home at Rose Hill

Even after he retired, Hoar regularly visited the Rose Hill campus and was a fixture on the fifth floor of Faber Hall, where the department is located. From that vantage point, he could gaze down on the University Church, where he and his wife Georgine were married on the United States bicentennial, July 4, 1976. 

The two met at Fordham in 1966, when Georgine was teaching full-time for the department. They two bonded over a love of the works of the novelist Benito Pérez Galdós; he was a focus of her master’s thesis, and he would go on to publish Benito Pérez Galdós y la revista del movimiento intelectual de Europa, Madrid, 1865-1867 (Madrid, 1968).

They honeymooned in Canary Island Gran Canaria, the birthplace of Galdós. After their children were born, Georgine continued to teach as an adjunct; she also served as a moderator for the foreign language society Alpha Mu Gamma and worked with Hoar on the Cervantes lectures.

 When she was also honored for 40 years of service in 2017, it was estimated that between her and her husband, the two had 100 years of teaching experience between them, adding up to 200 semesters and about 12,500 students.

“Fordham is really our home. It’s where we met, and we never counted the years. Leo always said that he would just never retire. It was the love of his life to teach the students,” Georgine said. 

“He was known as a tough grader, but fair, and the students always enjoyed him because he had a wonderful sense of humor. He absolutely enjoyed what he did. If he had a 10 a.m. class, he was in his office at 8.”

Cherishing the Life of the Mind

His daughter Jennifer Hoar said she spent so much time as a child with her father on the Rose Hill Campus that when she moved out to Los Angeles, she attended—and made friends at—a Fordham alumni event even though she went to Georgetown University. She said she never met someone who was as passionate about his work as her father.

“We’d be on vacation, and he’d have a briefcase and bring it out on the beach with a legal pad and pen and books,” she said

“I didn’t think it was weird because that was how he was himself. It was just, ‘I enjoy the life of the mind so much that it’s relaxing for me to be on the beach reading and writing and thinking and getting ideas.’”

Although Hoar was well known for his intellectual prowess, Jennifer said that something less known about her father was that he never missed an opportunity to express his feelings. 

“That really spoiled me for life. I’ve met very few people, and certainly few men, who are not only able to identify with such specificity and precision their feelings but are also unafraid to speak them. That was a massive gift he gave me,” she said. 

Like his sister, Hoar’s son Leo Hoar III, Ph.D., GSAS ’04, spent a great deal of time at Rose Hill and remembered being fascinated by his father’s commencement robes, which he considered a “full-out wizard outfit” when he was little. He returned to Rose Hill in 2002 to earn an M.A. in English and eventually earned a Doctor of Philosophy in English language and literature/letters at the University of California, Irvine.

During those two years at Fordham, he developed a routine where he’d periodically stop by his father’s office, and because the elder Hoar was often there well past office hours. He’d find himself chatting with his father and his office mate at the time, the late Paul Trensky, Ph.D., a professor of Russian literature and comparative drama.

“When Trensky was there, the three of us would just sit around, and they would tell sophisticated jokes and I would pretend to laugh at them because I had no idea what they were talking about,” he said laughing. 

“They’re some of my favorite memories of my life, to be honest. I didn’t tell myself, ‘I’m going to Fordham so I can hang out with my dad,’ but it was this amazing kind of side benefit.”

When he graduated in 2004, his father was there to give him his diploma. The younger Leo works in the private sector now but has no doubt that his father inspired him to get a Ph.D.

“I think it’s because the model that he put forward was so irresistible. It was so clear to me growing up that he absolutely loved every single day that he went to work,” he said.

A Legacy that Keeps Alumni Connected

Mary Ellen Kahn, GSAS ’73, earned an M.A. in Spanish literature with Hoar as her professor. Hoar’s enthusiasm for Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer was so contagious, she said, she was inspired to delve deeper into the poet’s work and do more research on his influences. Kahn said Hoar also made medieval poetry, which some consider a bit obscure and dry, come alive

“I consider him kind of a Renaissance man because he had a way of linking music to the literature that he taught,” she said.

She harkened back to Hoar’s lessons for 30 years in her work as a high school Spanish teacher in Rockville Centre, New York.

“I was able to bring my enthusiasm, which I had caught from Dr. Hoar to my students to get them excited about poetry and literature,” she said, noting that her fond memories of Fordham inspired her to join a University Women’s Giving Circle.

“One of the reasons that I keep supporting Fordham is because of my memories of Dr. Hoar.”

A Life Filled with Joy

Arnaldo Cruz-Malave, Ph.D., a professor of Spanish and comparative literature, said Hoar was an important member of the “MLL family.” 

“I remember him most toasting to others and laughing. His generosity on these occasions and his great sense of humor, which were a balm during difficult times, is what I will remember and cherish most about him,” he said.

Clark remembered Hoar as an avid sailor who sailed out of the Bronx’s City Island with his friends and family. When Clark became chair of the department, he said, Hoar gave him a bottle opener, a bottle of champagne, and a note that captured his spirit quite well—’Enjoy the bubbly, and remember what Napoleon said about champagne: In victory you deserve, it and in defeat you need it. In your case, it’s victory!”   

“One of my favorite memories is when Leo and Georgine returned to Fordham for a spring departmental party in 2017. They were impeccably dressed, deeply gracious, and filled with youth. With a live Mariachi band playing, the two started dancing together with some pretty impressive moves. It inspired others to join in. You could see that there was great love between them and a life filled with joy, appreciation, and happiness,” Clark said.

“We will miss him and are blessed with the energy and contributions he gave to the department over many decades.”

Hoar is survived by his wife, Georgine Barna Hoar; his daughters Jennifer Hoar and Judith Tietz; his son, Leo Hoar III; his sister, Nancy Gunning, and many loving nieces and nephews.

A wake will take place at McGrath Funeral Home in Bronxville, New York, on Thursday, June 30, from 6 to 8 p.m. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at St. Joseph’s church in Bronxville on Friday, July 1, at 10:45 a.m.

Shortly after earning his doctorate in European medieval studies from Johns Hopkins University, Father Picó came back to a tumultuous campus at Fordham, where students had successfully agitated for changes in the curriculum to reflect the growing diversity of the student body. The Department of African and African American Studies had been established in 1969 and, through the efforts of the student group, El Grito de Lares, a Puerto Rican Studies program followed in the fall of 1970.

Two days before the first course was set to begin, however, the professor hired to teach the class bailed out. Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, S.J., GSAS ’41, a Fordham sociology professor who had researched the Puerto Rican migration to New York City, invited Father Picó to teach the class. At the time Father Pico had, in his words, only a “sketchy” knowledge of Puerto Rican history, but he accepted the position and began cramming.

“I was coming to Puerto Rican history with many questions; those of my prospective students were my own,” he wrote in the preface to his book Historia General de Puerto Rico (Marcus Weiner Publishers, 2005). The book is considered by many to be the definitive history of the island, said Cruz-Malavé.

The course became the cornerstone of what would eventually become the Latin American and Latino Studies Institute (LALSI). It was one of the first such programs in the country, Cruz-Malavé said.

El Grito de Lares, the student group that started it all, is still active on campus.

In his book, Father Picó acknowledged his experience at Fordham as the moment he pivoted from medieval history to the social history of Puerto Rico. He specifically credited Fordham Puerto Rican and Latino undergraduates for showing him the importance of viewing history from the “bottom up.”

“I have learned from all my students, but I learned more from these than from any others,” he wrote. “For them, the course was not a three-credit class to fill an academic record; it represented the fundamental university experience […] in Puerto Rican history. They came in order to find out who they were.”

“He remembered his students’ examples of seeing themselves as part of history, as protagonists in it rather than as its victims,” said Cruz-Malavé. “He saw their actions as an encouragement to research Puerto Rican history and to write a new kind of historiography, one based on the perspectives of those on the ‘bottom’ of historical processes.”

Cruz-Malavé said that Father Picó’s and Father Fitzpatrick’s pedagogy aimed to link critical thinking to engagement with social issues and service to communities they were studying. For Father Picó, that meant returning to Puerto Rico, where he eventually rose to become a distinguished professor at the University of Puerto Rico. Cruz-Malavé said he was admired for his many community-based projects, including his research and education of convicts, many of whom went on to receive a university degree.

“He was a scholar who was interested in working with ordinary people, and in the way they were not only acted upon by social phenomena, such as migration, but the way they could also be agents of change,” said Cruz-Malavé.

Cubans, though, were for the most part impervious. Their own baseball season was experiencing the nation’s greatest pennant race between league rivals Almendares and Habanas, in which Almendares won a historic 13 of 14 games.

The arrival of the Dodgers’ in Cuba and the Cuban League’s extraordinary baseball season that winter were distinct events, but both foreshadowed the modernization of Major League Baseball by challenging white ballplayers’ monopoly of the U.S. professional game.

“A large and significant part of what we know as American baseball history actually took place outside of the geographical boundaries of the United States, in places like Havana,” said Arnaldo Cruz-Malave, PhD, director of Fordham’s Latin American and Latino Studies Institute (LALSI).

On Nov. 6 at Fordham, Cruz-Malave and author and baseball journalist César Brioso, a longtime sports journalist whose book, Havana Hardball: Spring Training, Jackie Robinson, and The Cuban League (University Press of Florida, 2015), has just been published, held a discussion on the Cuban leagues and breaking the color barrier in the sport.

Brioso, a digital producer and former baseball editor at USA TODAY Sports who immigrated from Cuba with his family when he was five months old, became enthralled with his native country’s baseball history—and how it became intertwined with that of the United States—while listening to his father’s recounting of Cuban baseball of the epoch.

“Once I learned that Jackie Robinson’s historic major league season began in Cuba in spring training, Robinson and the Cuban league became obsessions for me,” Brioso said.

Ascending to the Major Leagues

Brioso, who has also written for the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, subsequently spoke with dozens of players, managers who either participated or witnessed the Cuban League’s 1947 denouement, and Robinson’s eventual ascension to the major leagues that year.

He told of how the Mexican League for a time lured American and other professionals to that country with promises of generous contracts. Faced with the possibility of defections, Major League Baseball’s commissioner, Happy Chandler, effectively ostracized those who absconded south of the border and also those who played with or against them. An ensuing agreement between the Cuban League and Major League Baseball would for a time strengthen baseball in the island nation and nearly land a AAA affiliate in Cuba.

But perhaps the most significant outcome on the grass of that island country would be the adaptation of black, white, and Latino players to play together, on Cuban League teams, barnstorming squads, or in spring training sessions for their Major League clubs.

“That certainly helped change the way a lot of white players probably thought about African-American players,” Brioso said.

That experience eased the way for Robinson’s scaling of the color barrier and the eventual integration of the game in the United States.

“Cuban and, by extension, Latin-American cultures are an important, even a crucially important, component of U.S. American culture,” Cruz-Malave said, “especially as represented most evidently by baseball.”

The event was co-sponsored by LALSI and the Cuban Cultural Center of New York.

–Rich Khavkine

After decades of stalemate between Cuba and the United States, Muñoz, FCRH ’15, figured she would probably never see the country of her family’s origin, from which her grandparents emigrated in the 1960s.

So, when she saw that Fordham’s Latin American and Latino Studies Institute was offering a course study tour to Havana, she jumped at the opportunity.

“My grandparents had told me so many stories about it—and suddenly I was there,” said Muñoz, who graduated on May 16. “Walking [along that boardwalk]was intense. There were so many emotions. I have chills just thinking about it.”

Muñoz was one of 19 undergraduate students who traveled to Havana last semester. It was the first group of Fordham students to do so since the United States and Cuba announced normalization in December 2014.

The course, Contemporary Cuban Culture, explored the renewed importance of Havana as a vibrant contemporary cultural scene and introduced students firsthand to the music, art, dance, literature, and film that have emerged amidst Cuba’s transition to a globalized world market. The students stayed at Cuba’s premier cultural institute, Casa de las Américas, and took classes with Casa faculty.

For some students, the trip offered a perspective of the island nation to which few American students have had access.

For others, like Muñoz, the trip connected them to a heritage known only through family lore.

In Havana, Muñoz met her grandfather’s cousins (her only relatives left in the city) for the first time. She had contacted them via email before she left and had made plans to have dinner with their family. The reunion was powerful, Muñoz said. At her great-cousins’ house, there were pictures on the walls of her grandparents and her father.

“I’ve gained a greater consciousness about my identity and my roots,” Muñoz said. “It also helped me not to see things in black and white. When my grandparents left … in the early 60s, they’d lost everything. So I had grown up with this dichotomous version of Cuban history. But then I met the family members who had decided to stay and heard [their stories about Cuba].

“The experience helped me to see that you can’t reduce a person to just one identity. It’s about seeing the whole person. That’s something that I’ve also learned by being at Fordham.”

The theme of seeing individuals and situations in all of their complexity surfaced often throughout the study tour, said course instructor Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, PhD, professor of Spanish and comparative literature. Not only did students gain a more nuanced understanding of U.S. and Cuban relations, but they also experienced the frictions within Cuban society itself.

“Havana is a city of great economic tensions,” Cruz-Malavé said. “The whole discourse of the Cuban revolution had been about equality—and in some spheres that was accomplished, most notably in education and health. But then came the collapse of the Soviet Union, which subsidized the Cuban economy, [followed by]the deterioration of the Cuban economy in the 90s.”

The economic collapse forced Cuba to rely on the tourism industry, which did help to revive the economy. However, it also introduced foreign currency into the country, such as euros and Canadian and American dollars, which are significantly more valuable than the Cuban peso. The competing currencies have created a gap between those with access to foreign money and those without access—in essence, a gap between foreign tourists and Cubans.

“The students had read about this inequity, but there’s nothing like being there and realizing … that you, as a tourist, have access to things that Cubans do not,” Cruz-Malavé said.

Cruz-Malavé recounted an instance when a small group of students attempted to visit the Jose Martí Memorial Museum with a young Cuban they had met. The guards at the museum allowed the Fordham students to enter, but not the Cuban student—tourists only, they said.

“So we just left,” said Muñoz. “I was so mad. I asked [our friend], ‘Aren’t you upset?’ And he said, ‘I used to get upset by it, but it’s just part of life.’ That broke my heart. Because it’s not okay. It’s wrong on so many levels.”

In response to these inequities, the students opted for solidarity, Cruz-Malavé said—for instance, forgoing tourist restaurants and dining instead at paladares, family-run restaurants that often operate right within a family’s home.

Most importantly, he said, they went straight to the source to find out what life is really like in Havana.

Travis Hernandez, a rising senior, said that one day he joined a group of boys playing basketball. At the end of the game, one of the boys invited Hernandez to have dinner with his family.

“When we got to his home, the door was already open… which surprised me, because where I grew up in New York City, that’s not something you do,” Hernandez said.

“That little gesture—keeping the door open—meant something. It said a lot about the open community there.”

Photos by Travis Hernandez and Sebastian Reismann

[doptg id=”20″] ]]> 18258 https://now.fordham.edu/arts-and-culture/panel-explores-the-new-normal-for-u-s-cuba-relations/ Fri, 27 Feb 2015 12:30:00 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=7271 “They’re going to put a U.S. embassy in Havana! In Havana!”

Sujatha Fernandes was on the subway when the announcement came that the United States and Cuba would be restoring full diplomatic relations after nearly 54 years. A scholar on Cuba, Fernandes was nonetheless shocked when the man seated next to her on the train began shouting the news.

Margaret Crahan, another renowned Cuba scholar, was at an academic conference in Havana when the news broke on Dec. 17. Crahan—as well as the 400 international researchers at the conference with her—were also caught off guard.

“We were struck dumb,” Crahan told a Fordham audience. “And then the room erupted as people cheered, cried, and hugged. We started asking ourselves, ‘How did this happen?’ And eventually, ‘What impact will this have?’”

On Feb. 26 a panel of Cuba scholars gathered at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus to discuss the impact that the normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations will have on the empowerment of Cubans and on America’s relationship with the island.

Sponsored by Fordham’s Latin American and Latino Studies Institute, the panel featured:

• Margaret Crahan, PhD, director of the Cuba Program at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Columbia University
• Sujatha Fernandes, PhD, associate professor of sociology at Queens College, CUNY and author of Cuba Represent!: Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures (Duke University Press Books, 2006)
• Achy Obejas, Cuban-American author of the novels Ruins and Days of Awe, and a translator, journalist, and blogger

The policy change is a paradigm shift, the panel said. Still, there are difficulties and copious details to iron out before the two countries reach a new “normal.”

For instance, Crahan said, Cuban President Raúl Castro has made several requests that will require significant negotiation between the two countries, including the return of the Guantánamo Bay naval base to Cuba, the end of Radio y Televisión Martí (a Miami-based broadcaster that transmits newscasts to Cuba), and compensation to the Cuban people for the “human and economic damages” caused by U.S. policies.

Nevertheless, slow progress has begun. Some restrictions have already been relaxed. For instance, all professionals and not just academics can now travel to Cuba for work or study purposes. Travel agencies and airlines no longer need to obtain special licenses, leading many to start looking into expanding flights to the island nation.

Ordinary tourism is still prohibited, however. “So don’t pack your bikinis just yet,” Crahan said.

Obejas said that one policy that has to be undone is the Cuban Adjustment Act—commonly known as “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” policy. Enacted in 1966, the law grants permanent residency to any Cuban immigrant who reaches American soil.

“It would be impossible to normalize relations if you’re giving those who are dissatisfied with their situation in their home country the opportunity to come here no questions asked, no asylum petition—nothing except their physical presence on U.S. soil.”

The panel is a precursor to a Fordham undergraduate study tour of Havana that will be led over the spring break by Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, PhD, professor of Spanish and comparative literature.

The course, Contemporary Cuban Culture, will explore the renewed importance of Havana as a vibrant contemporary cultural scene. Students will be exposed to the music, art, dance, literature, and film that have emerged amidst Cuba’s economic transition to a globalized world market.

The aim of this radical policy change, the president said, is to “cut loose the shackles of the past” and “unleash the potential of 11 million Cubans.”

Next week, Fordham University will host a panel discussion exploring the impact that the normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations will have on the empowerment of Cubans and on our humanitarian assistance to the island.

“Empowerment, Humanitarian Aid, and the Normalization of U.S.-Cuba Relations”
Thursday, Feb. 26
12:30 to 2:30 p.m.
Bateman Room | Fordham Law School | 2nd Floor
150 West 62nd Street, NYC

The panel will feature renowned Cuba scholars and humanitarian aid activists:

• Margaret Crahan, Ph.D., director of the Cuba Program at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Columbia University
• Sujatha Fernandes, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology at Queens College, CUNY and author of Cuba Represent!: Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures (Duke University Press Books, 2006)
• Alberto R. Tornés, director of economic empowerment at Raíces de Esperanza

The panel, which is sponsored by Fordham’s Latin American and Latino Studies Institute, is a precursor to an undergraduate study tour of Havana that will be led over the spring break by Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, Ph.D., professor of Spanish and comparative literature.

The course, Contemporary Cuban Culture, will explore the renewed importance of Havana as a vibrant contemporary cultural scene. Students will be exposed to the music, art, dance, literature, and film that have emerged amidst Cuba’s economic transition to a globalized world market.

The group of 10 Fordham undergraduates, one alumna, one Fordham graduate student and one Providence College undergraduate was based at Havana’s Casa de las Américas, Cuba’s foremost cultural institution founded with the onset of the socialist revolution in 1959. In addition to maintaining a rigorous schedule of attending interdisciplinary lectures and seminars, students toured the country, reflecting in a course journal on Cuban life, history and culture. Since all of the lectures were in Spanish, an advanced proficiency in the language was required.

“We wanted to give students a more complex view of the situation in which Cubans presently find themselves,” said Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, Ph.D., an associate professor of Spanish who designed and led the study tour. “Cuba is in transition. It is still a society trying to uphold certain socialist ideals about social inequality, yet it is forced, nevertheless, to insert itself in the global market in order to survive. Students were able to experience how those socialist ideals sometimes clashed with the new market realities and how sometimes they created new opportunities for Cuban culture.”

Students heard from some of Cuba’s top artists and intellectuals, including Catholic scholar Msgr. Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, literary scholar Luisa Campuzano, environmental historian Reinaldo Funes and poet Reina María Rodríguez. For Fordham senior Jorge A. Vallés, meeting with Rodríguez held special significance due to the poet’s prominence within Latin America and the discussion’s intimate setting.

“[Visiting with Rodríguez] stands out because the entire group was able to go to her house, one that she built with her own hands and has served as a haven and meeting place for some of Latin America’s most influential writers,” said Vallés. “She ended the night by reading some of her poems to the group and giving us autographed copies of her book.”

Among the historic sites visited was the parish of Our Lady of Regla, a center for Catholic and Afro-Cuban religious worship. The group also explored the architecture of Old Havana that dates back to the 16th century and attended a performance by the National Ballet of Cuba as well as the premiere of a Cuban film. However, students also got a chance to witness smaller, more intimate aspects of everyday life.

“The most valuable lesson I learned on this trip was that politics and Cuba are synonymous,” said Kattia Tan (FCLC ’03). “The passion in the politics was incredible and every Cuban we interacted with had an opinion—a very well-informed opinion at that.”

In spite of Cuba’s economic and political woes, Cruz-Malavé, who specializes in the Hispanic Caribbean, believes that there are hopeful signs visible in Cuba’s vibrant cultural scene. He also sees Fordham’s historic trip as one of many encouraging signs that individuals are taking time to deeply consider the complex nature of Cuba’s political, social and cultural environments.

Upon completion of the course requirements, which also included reading assignments and weekly papers, undergraduates received four credits, and graduates received credits that can be applied toward a Master’s Certificate in Latin American and Latino Studies. The study tour was facilitated by the Office of International and Study Abroad Programs, Summer Session, the Office of the University Chaplain, Latin American and Latino Studies, and Luz Lenis, Ph.D., an assistant dean at Fordham College at Rose Hill. Administrators are already planning a return trip to Cuba next summer and are hoping to further enrich the program with additional graduate students and applicants from other institutions.