“It was like a monastery,” Connolly joked. “It was very different from today. At the time, it was a mostly commuter school and it was still all male”—women didn’t arrive in a big way until his senior year, with the fall 1964 opening of Fordham’s Thomas More College for women.

From the start, Connolly and his classmates were determined to enliven the atmosphere. He and Donald Ross, FCRH ’65, his lifelong friend from the Bronx, began organizing concerts on the weekends. They booked popular performers of the day, including Ray Charles, the Clancy Brothers, the Kingston Trio, and Peter, Paul, and Mary.

The concerts were a big hit in the community, and they became a profitable business venture for the Class of 1965.

Next, Connolly and his friends tackled the matter of football. The sport had a rich history at Fordham but had been discontinued due to financial concerns in 1954. So the students spearheaded a campaign to bring it back. They enlisted the support of Fordham College Dean George McMahon, S.J., who in September 1964 helped win the University leadership’s approval to restart the sport.

‘The Campus Was Abuzz’

David Langdon, FCRH ’65, volunteered to serve as coach, and the students quickly set to work building the team. They hosted tryouts and pooled their own money, including funds raised from the concerts, to purchase uniforms, equipment, and insurance.

On November 7, 1964, Fordham’s newly formed club football team beat New York University, 20-14, before a crowd of 13,200 fans at Coffey Field. Jim Lansing, FCRH ’43, the former All-American at Fordham and owner of a local sporting goods store, was soon after hired as coach, and three years later, Fordham boasted the top club team in the country. By 1970, football was a varsity sport at Fordham once again.

“It was a heavenly moment. The campus was abuzz,” Connolly said of the 1964 victory against NYU.

He and his friends found other ways to perk up the local social scene while honing their entrepreneurial skills. For example, he and Ross partnered with their fellow Fordham Prep grad Mario Gabelli, a 1965 graduate of the Fordham business school that now bears his name, to form JMD Enterprises, a company they established to host dances off campus. Connolly said the undertaking was a great success and that the money he earned from the venture made it possible for him to spend a summer in Europe—a journey that turned out to be life-changing.

“I decided that I was definitely going to apply to go to Oxford after college and, at the end of those two years at Oxford, I met the woman who became my wife,” he said. “So I’m grateful to Mario because he was the business genius among us!”

A Tribute to Three ‘Brilliant’ Fordham Mentors

As an undergraduate, Connolly was devoted to the campus community in many ways—through his roles on student government, as an athlete on the tennis team, and as a member the Fordham Glee Club. He was also a dedicated student, building the pillars for his future career in academia.

Though he was an English major, Connolly gravitated toward philosophy and medieval history, areas he later specialized in as a professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, where he taught and served as an administrator for more than 40 years.

So influential were his Fordham professors in inspiring his interest in the Middle Ages that he dedicated his 2014 book, Living Without Why: Meister Eckhart’s Critique of the Medieval Concept of Will (Oxford University Press), to three of them.

“Norris Clarke, S.J., Robert O’Connell, S.J.—both philosophers—and Jeremiah O’Sullivan, a medieval historian, were among my very best teachers ever,” he said. “They were brilliant lecturers, and expert at engaging our interest in their respective and fascinating subject matters.”

Connolly said he knew nothing about the Middle Ages before taking O’Sullivan’s course as a sophomore, and he was “hooked” in the first half hour. He still has his notes from that class.

“Meister Eckhart said in one of his sermons: If the only prayer you ever said was ‘thank you,’ it would suffice. I inscribed it on the same page as my dedication in the book.”

After graduating from Fordham summa cum laude, Connolly earned a master’s in philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University. While living abroad, he traveled around Europe and met his wife, Marianna, while visiting Maria Laach Abbey in Germany. They eventually had their wedding there, and made their home in Massachusetts. The couple have two children and three grandchildren.

Connolly also pursued graduate studies at Princeton University and earned a doctorate at Harvard University. In addition to teaching at Smith, he served as the college’s first provost and dean of faculty, and as acting president during the 2001–2002 academic year. He returned to full-time teaching as the Sophia Smith Professor of Philosophy before he retired in 2014.

Connolly has kept in touch with many of his friends from Fordham and looks forward to reminiscing about the good times they shared together at the upcoming Jubilee weekend, June 3 to 5. It will be the eighth or ninth Fordham Jubilee he has attended—he’s stopped counting—and he encourages his classmates and other Golden Rams to join the celebration. “I think we had quite an extraordinary class,” he said. “Don’t waste an opportunity. It’s a very special experience.”

Among the festivities, Connolly is eager to attend Friday night’s dinner and breakfast on Saturday, and to hear from Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, whose Jubilee welcome address Connolly expects will be a “valedictory” of sorts. Connolly’s also looking forward to hearing more about Fordham’s future with Tania Tetlow, whose tenure as president begins on July 1.

“[Father McShane is] finishing his 19 years, and he’s had a great run. I’m looking forward to hearing his point of view [about the University’s future]. With the first woman president—and first layperson—this is a very exciting time for Fordham.”

Fordham Five (Plus One)

What are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about race, racism, and the Civil War in this country that never ended.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
I’m going to appeal to 14th-century philosopher Meister Eckhart. He told his listeners to live without “why.” Do the good, but don’t do it in order to be rewarded in any way. That’s the merchant mentality. You do something good in the hope of being rewarded and in particular, being rewarded by God, by getting to heaven or something. He said that’s the wrong attitude. The right way to do it is to do the right thing because it’s right. My book is built around that. It’s called Living Without Why: Meister Eckhart’s Critique of the Medieval Concept of Will.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
I think it has to be either the Rose Hill campus or the Cloisters. My favorite place in the world is home.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you, and tell us why.
I have probably read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings five times. It has this medieval flavor to it though it’s not set in the Middle Ages. He’s a masterful narrator and gives such loving attention to the natural world. There is something profound in the story about our inability as human beings to firmly establish a just society. The central character says, “Sometimes some people have to give things up so that others can live in peace.” That sums up a lot of what’s going on in the book, which is this heroic, epic quest.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
That’s impossible to answer! There are so many. Certainly my classmates Donald Ross, David Langdon, and Peter Carter. My professors, philosophers Norris Clarke, S.J., Robert O’Connell, S.J., and medieval historian Jeremiah O’Sullivan. George McMahon, S.J., who was the dean in my last three years at the college, also had a major impact on my life, along with Father [Vincent] O’Keefe, S.J. who became president at the start of our junior year.

What are you optimistic about?
That’s a hard one, at this moment with COVID and the incredible Ukraine disaster. I like to believe, along with Martin Luther King Jr., that the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. Right at the moment, it doesn’t look like it’s doing that. But I suppose I’m taking the longer view and I would say sooner or later, we’ll regain our sanity as a nation. That’s my hope, anyway.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Claire Curry.

After virtual gatherings in 2020 and 2021, Jubilee 2022 will be held in person on the Rose Hill campus from June 3 to 5. The alumni relations office anticipates welcoming its largest group of Jubilarians ever. Learn more and register today.

Carter spoke with FORDHAM magazine about his time at WFUV, Fordham’s radio station; his experience as one of very few black men on campus during the early 1960s; his eventful career; and his ill-fated judgment call regarding four mop-topped blokes from Liverpool.

As a Brooklyn boy, how did you choose Fordham?
Fordham was chosen for me. I went to Regis High School in Manhattan, an all-boys Jesuit school. The principal insisted students apply for Catholic universities. I was accepted at Fordham and offered a full four-year scholarship. As a poor kid of a single mother from low-income housing projects in Brooklyn, I certainly had to take that offer. I wasn’t given room and board, so my mother said, “We’ll move to the Bronx!” So I was a day hop. I majored in classical languages—Latin and Greek.

And you ran for student government?
In freshman year I boldly ran for student council office. I was vice president of the freshman class. I had what we called “the Regis vote.” In sophomore year I was treasurer, and I was in charge of funding for the concert committee [which arranged to bring musical acts to campus.] Our concerts included the Kingston Trio, Ray Charles, and Peter, Paul and Mary—my favorite. Our class started that committee—or at least formalized it.

You became sports director at WFUV. What was it like in those days?
I joined WFUV in my sophomore year. There was an opening right away in sports, and I just slid into doing play-by-play for Fordham basketball and baseball. I later became sports director.

WFUV was on the third floor of Keating Hall at the time. There was a studio, a half office for the station manager, two turntables in the engineer’s booth, and a record library behind the booth. That was it. We were all student volunteers. It was comfortable. You could bring your books and study.

I did a segment called Around the Town about things to see and do in New York City. I covered the Beatles coming to Carnegie Hall in February 1964, [three days after their famous Ed Sullivan appearance].  I captured the excitement and the screaming young ladies.

Working with the concert committee, had you heard of the Beatles before they came to the U.S.?
In early 1963, the concert committee had gotten wind of this group from Liverpool called the Beatles. Someone said, “Let’s fly them in to the Fordham Gym and have them do a concert.” As the money guy, I was skeptical. I said, “What? The Beatles? What are they, some kind of insects? We’ll lose our shirts!” So I said no.

So when people say, what was the worst decision you ever made—that was the worst decision I ever made in my life. Fordham could have been the first place the Beatles ever appeared in the United States if not for Peter Carter.

As sports director at WFUV, you covered the return of Fordham football in 1964. What do you remember from that broadcast?
The highlight of our class, the Class of ’65, was that it was the one that brought football back to Fordham [as a club team]. This was a total student-run operation.

Our first home game was against NYU. We broadcasted it on FUV. We had to get a telephone line so we could hook it up to our tower at Keating Hall. Then I had to figure out how was I going to get on-field interviews. With microphone wire in hand, I crawled under the stands, which had been built by students, to have a microphone in place on the field. I did those interviews personally. Not everyone could buy a ticket, but people tuned in to 90.7 for a very live broadcast. And Fordham was victorious.

You were one of very few African-American students on campus at the time. What was that like for you and your classmates?
I was one of seven African-American students—or as they called us then, Negroes—out of 2,000 undergraduate students at Fordham College. I had to learn how to navigate around human beings who, through no fault of their own, had never met anyone like me. Their view of black people was from television. Or from watching black athletes. I chose not to be an athlete. I became a campus politician. It was an all-white campus, and I’m a campus politician. And the radio station sports director. [It was] a world that these guys kinda had to get used to. They liked and respected me. We all learned something about one another, which made us better off.

What was it like starting out as a teacher in New York City?
I wanted to give back to the Jesuits what they gave me, so I taught Latin and Greek  for a few years at Brooklyn Prep [a Jesuit high school that closed in 1972]. Then the diocese opened an alternative school [for troubled students] called the New High School. I was maybe 26, and they asked me to be assistant principal. We did the best we could to help those kids grow, even though circumstances put them in a position where the world looked at them askance.

What were some of the greatest challenges of your career?
In 1975 I became principal of a middle school in New Castle, Delaware, that was educating 1,300 kids in a space with 986 capacity. I always remember that number—986. We turned that school around. The courts had just ordered the schools to be desegregated and we bused in black students from Wilmington. That was quite a challenge. They weren’t warmly received and they were scared. We worked very nicely—had a lot of social events and such—and soon they weren’t scared anymore.

Later, as Essex County superintendent of schools in New Jersey in 1989, I was responsible for 23 school districts, including Newark, which [the state] eventually took over because they weren’t able to get the job done. I helped lead that process. No one was happy and no one was pleasant. However, the important part is, we helped the kids.

The biggest challenge I had was in 1995, as superintendent of schools in Irvington, New Jersey. When I came, the district had a $9 million deficit. After four years, I left it with a $3 million surplus. I persuaded the entire staff, including myself, to take a one-year salary freeze. One time I had 24 hours to make a payment of half a million dollars to the insurance company or they were going to cut benefits to the entire staff. Using my persuasive skills—learned in part at Rose Hill—I got an advance in state aid and made the payment in time. That was the greatest challenge of my career and perhaps my greatest accomplishment. We can balance that out with the Beatles fiasco.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Nicole LaRosa.

In spring 1964, when Donald Ross, FCRH ’65, ran for student government president, he was looking for a way to foster school spirit on campus, especially on weekends.

“One of the things that we really noticed during our freshman year was how flat and uninteresting the college was in terms of activities in the early fall,” Ross says, adding: “On a Saturday … there was nobody on campus except the boarders.”

Football, he figured, would be the perfect solution, and bringing the sport back became the centerpiece of his Spirit Party campaign platform.

Students had tried to revive the sport before, but things lined up perfectly this time. Ross and running mate John Connolly, FCRH ’65, won the election, and because their class had organized on-campus concerts featuring some of the day’s top acts—the Kingston Trio, Ray Charles, and Peter, Paul, and Mary—they had some money to spend.

Administrators were hesitant to allow the sport to return, but the University’s new president, Vincent O’Keefe, SJ, was more open to the idea than his predecessor. And with Fordham College Dean George McMahon, SJ, in their corner, the students received permission in fall 1964 to establish and run a team on a club basis.

The Ram announced the news in its September 18 edition with a large, one-word banner headline: “FOOTBALL!”

Planning started immediately. Rugby team captain David Langdon, FCRH ’65, would serve as the team’s volunteer coach. He got the NYU club team to agree to a game at Rose Hill on November 14. An ad for tryouts drew 140 students, with 43 making the final roster. The team began practicing every day, learning a system that Langdon’s high school football coach had used.

Meanwhile, there was much work to be done off the field. Organizers estimated that staging the game would cost $18,000, and Ross, Connolly, and Langdon each loaned $1,000 to the cause. They used some of the money their class had made from those on-campus concerts, and though administrators told the students they couldn’t solicit money from alumni, they did so anyway. To earn a little extra cash, they even set up a stand on campus in which organizers would eat a goldfish for a dollar.

Ross and an army of volunteers began checking off a list of tasks: Tickets would need to be printed and sold, programs would need to be designed, and they’d need to buy uniforms, equipment, and insurance, plus refreshments for spectators. Fordham didn’t have an on-campus stadium, so they rented bleachers from a vendor in Texas that required that the students assemble and take down the structure. (They got a good deal, since the bleachers were on their way to the East Coast anyway, to be used in the nation’s capital for the presidential inauguration in January.)

To help prepare for the big NYU game, the team traveled north to play Maine Maritime and was crushed, 42-0, the military school’s canon blasting after each and every score. But those involved with the Fordham team saw that game as a tune-up for the main event. “To me, it was all just building towards NYU,” says Langdon.

Bill Burke, FCRH ’65, LAW ’68, worked as Fordham’s sports information director as an undergraduate from 1963 to 1965. With the help of New York Giants owner Wellington Mara, FCRH ’37, he got word out to the local media. All seven New York papers covered the game, with the great Dick Young promoting it to readers of the Daily News.

By game day, all the $2.50 tickets had been sold, but to cram more people in, they offered standing room admission for a reduced fee, stamping the hand of those who otherwise would have been turned away. Of the 13,200 fans who crowded into the makeshift stadium on the clear fall afternoon, an estimated 8,000 were Fordham alumni.

The game itself was a back-and-forth affair, but an interception by Roger Dexter, GABELLI ’65, late in the fourth quarter sealed the 20-14 win for the Rams, who rang the campus Victory Bell after carrying Langdon off the field in celebration. Langdon received congratulatory telegrams from a number of established college coaches, including Darrell Royal of Texas.

Ross, who’d go on to stage large-scale events like the 1979 No Nukes march in Washington, D.C., wanted to make sure that club football lived on at Fordham beyond the fall of 1964. While he and Connolly worked with their student government successors, Langdon (who’d chosen a team without too many seniors to make it easier to build a roster the following year), used some of the profits from the NYU game to hire a coach—Jim Lansing, FCRH ’43, a former All-American at Fordham and the owner of the sporting-goods store that sold the team its pads.

Club football proved to be a success. In 1965, the team went 4-1, and three years later, the 7-1 Rams were the top club team in the country. By 1970, football was a varsity sport once again. And in recent years, some five decades after the Spirit Party campaign, Fordham has had one of the best teams in the country at the Division I FCS level.

“I think those three guys—Donald Ross, David Langdon, and Bill Burke—were just ideally suited for this task,” says Connolly, the student body vice president. “Everything went off about as well as it possibly could have.”

—Joe DeLessio, FCLC ’06, is an associate editor at New York magazine’s website, nymag.com.

How did the experience of rallying students to bring football back to Fordham benefit you later in your career?
It taught me how to organize. It’s not all that dissimilar from some of the other things I’ve done, except in scale. We built a stadium for football, we built a stage for the No Nukes concert. We had ushers and other people for football. For the concert, we had people selling things and providing security and the like. But [the anti-nuclear movement]was a completely different issue and a completely different subject—probably a lot of the Fordham guys I worked with wouldn’t have agreed with the substance of the issue.

How did you get involved with Ralph Nader?
In law school at NYU, I knew some people who had worked for him, and they introduced me to him. Because of my background in student government and having done organizing of a kind that was different from most of the other people he was hiring, I ended up spending three years traveling, forming student Public Interest Research Groups on campuses across the country. Those were an idea Nader had, and we ended up co-authoring a book on it called Action for a Change.

The way it worked was students would vote to allocate a portion of their student activity fees and hire professionals like lawyers, scientists, engineers, or public policy people of one sort or another, and then work with them on real-world projects. It was great experience. He’s done just an amazing amount of work. I’ve spent time with him traveling, and it’s astonishing how recognizable he still is.

What are you working on now?
I’m just finishing up a six-year effort that ends in December of this year, working with a consortium of foundations to pool money to run a campaign to change juvenile justice laws around the country. What has happened essentially was in the late 1980s and 1990s, responding to a large crime wave, almost every state passed very harsh and punitive and ultimately dysfunctional laws that had mandatory minimum sentencing and lowered the age for someone to be considered an adult. So states where it was 18 sometimes went back to 16. They were locking kids up for long periods of time, and it wasn’t working. There were high rates of recidivism, and a series of studies showed what every parent knows, that adolescents aren’t always exercising good judgment. 

We’re working now in 31 states and have forged a very interesting alliance of people across the political spectrum. On certain parts of the juvenile reform issue, you can find Rick Perry and Jerry Brown in total agreement. Rand Paul, the libertarian senator from Kentucky, and Cory Booker, the liberal Democratic senator from New Jersey, are co-sponsoring legislation to reform juvenile criminal justice practices.

What do you think of the No Nukes movement today?
The whole energy picture has become much more complicated because of global warming. The stopping of nuclear power and the incontestable problems caused by dangerous air pollution from coal-fired power plants is driving a wave of renewable energy sources, whether it’s wind power or solar power, and they’re growing at very rapid rates. Had [the Three Mile Island]accident not happened and had nuclear power succeeded in growing further, you would see much less emphasis on solar and wind and other renewable sources because the utilities would have had so much money invested in [nuclear]plants, they’d have no incentive to look for alternatives. The fact that the nuclear industry in this country ground to a substantial halt has opened up the space for lots of other innovative technologies—and a much cleaner and ultimately safer way of generating power.

What do you hope Pope Francis will say in his upcoming encyclical on climate change?
Starting with what I hope he will not say: denounce industrial nations and corporations. This is too easy, too predictable, and so ho-hum. It will be a one-day news story, then gone and forgotten. Better to take a different tack, such as noting the reverence the world’s religions hold for the natural environment and using his convening power to bring together religious leaders to discuss the moral and spiritual threats posed by rapid climate change.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Joe DeLessio, FCLC ’06.