That’s just the kind of fund Sgt. Joseph Collins would have wanted to support, according to his sister.

Margaret Collins, M.D., TMC ’72, recently supported the fund by donating $25,000 from a life insurance annuity that Joseph left behind when he died in 2001. Recalling what he and their brother, John, went through after serving in the Vietnam War, she said today’s veterans “shouldn’t be burdened with not having what the government promises to give them. That’s just not right.”

Still, it happens with some regularity, said Matthew Butler, PCS ’17, senior director of military and veterans’ services at Fordham.

Student Vets on Tight Budgets

The government’s Post-9/11 G.I. Bill payments can be delayed or scheduled to arrive after the bills are due, causing headaches for student veterans who often have “very little margin of error” financially and have to make difficult choices as a result, Butler said.

“We’ve seen a few students that have made those decisions between getting a MetroCard or putting food on their table for the family,” he said.

The emergency fund offers student vets microloans or emergency grants. It’s one fundraising effort launched last year as part of the yearlong celebration of 175 years of military training at Fordham. The fund dovetails with the student wellness and success priority of the University’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student.

Collins said her brother would have been pleased to help veterans, including those “who are trying to complete a college education and to begin a second career, and who can add so much, and do add so much, to our society.” She is also funding a scholarship for student veterans in Joseph’s name.

Lives of Service

Joe Collins served with “Dustoff” helicopter crews that evacuated the wounded from combat zones, and his brother, Capt. John Collins, M.D., FCRH ’55, served as an Army surgeon and head of a surgical research team.

Both suffered post-traumatic stress, Joe to a greater extent, and came away from the war anguished at how it was being conducted, said Collins, a pediatric pathologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

The siblings grew up in the Bronx. Joe graduated from Fordham Preparatory School and briefly attended Fordham University before he was drafted into the Army. He later earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Lehman College after retiring from the Army around 1990 and worked as a teacher in Brooklyn and in San Francisco.

During his time in Vietnam, John Collins, who died in 1992, made discoveries that improved treatment of wounded soldiers—finding that the practice of adding bicarbonate to banked blood supplies could be harmful, and also showing the need to address respiratory distress, or “shock lung,” when treating traumatic injuries.

In separate conversations with her, Collins said, her brothers each hailed the other’s courage: John praised Joe for traveling in helicopters that landed in combat zones, and Joe commended John for riding with ambulance crews to reach wounded soldiers sooner, even though the ambulances were “sitting ducks” in the exposed plains around Saigon.

Hearing them talk, “I decided that a hero is the guy who always sees that somebody else did more,” she said. “Somebody else had more danger. Somebody else really braved it.”

Learn more here about Fordham’s services and supports for student veterans and military-connected students. 

To inquire about giving in support of student veterans at Fordham, please contact Patrick Russell, director of development, at [email protected]. Learn more about Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student and make a gift. 

“You will be adults—or adult-ish,” Tetlow said to about 500 juniors and seniors on Nov. 29. “It is where you get the blessing and the challenge of free will, and you get to decide for yourself who you want to be.” 

Fordham Prep is an all-boys Catholic Jesuit secondary school located on the northern tip of the Rose Hill campus. It was established on the same day as Fordham University, on June 24, 1841, and by the same person—John Hughes, an archbishop of New York. 

In Fordham Prep’s main auditorium, Tetlow was interviewed by two seniors, Peter Canale and Ryan Irving, who host the school’s student-run podcast Ramblin’. Their questions ranged from funny to serious, starting with a few controversial takes: Would you rather have a classic bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich from New York City or a po’ boy from Louisiana? A New York style cheesecake or a beignet? (“A po’ boy,” she instantly answered, to a chorus of good-natured boo’s from the boys. She chose cheesecake for dessert, to whooping and applause from the audience.) 

What Makes a Jesuit Education Unique? 

They also discussed deeper topics, including the benefits of a Jesuit education. 

“The Jesuits were scientists, explorers, and cartographers. They documented languages. There are 35 craters on the moon named after Jesuit astrologers. Did you know that?” she said, to a chorus of noes. “They really helped to create education as we know it.” 

Tetlow said that the Jesuits developed schools that were so amazing that they attracted many children of the elite, but the Jesuits also tried to make education available to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. “That was a pretty radical thing for the 1500s, of trying to make sure that people got to have that opportunity beyond just the richest families,” she said. 

The third thing that makes a Jesuit education unique is that it’s not really meant for the students themselves, she said. “It’s to make you into the kind of men who go out and matter to the world. It’s to arm you with the skills you need—the discipline, the hard work, the knowledge, all of it—but not just so you can have lives where you’re seeking status or money or the superficial kinds of things, but that you can have purpose,” she said. 

At an all-boys school like Fordham Prep, there are some advantages, Tetlow said. 

“You can challenge each other on a different version of what it means to be a person, that being a man means being a person with integrity who cares about other people, who is honest and honorable [and reinforce that in each other],” she said. “I saw this with my dad and all my uncles who went to a Jesuit high school in New Orleans.” 

‘I Thought I Knew Who She Was’

In an auditorium full of students getting ready to apply to college or waiting to back from schools they had applied to, Tetlow also talked about why higher education is important. College is a place where you learn how to explain your thoughts to the world in a way that everyone can understand, no matter what career you choose, she said. It’s a home where you find people who are similar to you, while connecting with others who come from different worlds. And it’s a place where you rethink your biases. 

Tetlow recalled the first course she ever taught, where she had a student who fell asleep in every class. At first, she thought the student wasn’t paying attention because she came from a privileged background. But after their last class, the student approached Tetlow and apologized. It turned out that she was working three jobs to make her way through law school and support her two younger siblings through college. Their parents were drug addicts. Once she came of age, she fought her parents for custody. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court—and she won, said Tetlow. 

“I thought I knew who she was, and I didn’t. So you get to learn more of that. You get to learn it in a diverse school like this. You get to learn it … going to college, being in school with women and how to engage with them in a different way—of meaningful respect and relationships … and figuring out that overlap of what you’re really good at and what you love doing,” Tetlow said.

Navigating Life As A 16-Year-Old College Student 

Life has given Tetlow many experiences, including attending college at age 16, she said. 

“Socially, I was not prepared for college. I lived in the dorm with everybody else. I was not terribly cosmopolitan and sophisticated at 16 years old, so I spent the whole first year being like this: ‘Oh my Gosh! What am I seeing?’” she said, while the audience chuckled. “I think what’s more important in your education than learning fancy math and reading important novels is this emotional development you have as a child. … That is one of the most important things you’re learning at this age: how to have a friendship, how to have a relationship, and how to treat people well.” 

But the biggest lesson she learned over the past five decades is how to understand people: what drives them, what they care about, and how to communicate with them, she said. It’s a skill that’s hard to teach in a classroom, and it’s difficult for managers to teach that to their employees. But it’s a skill that often determines your success in life, she said.  

In his closing remarks, Fordham Prep’s principal, Joseph Petriello, thanked Tetlow for visiting their school. 

“We want to thank you for sharing your ambition, humility, and creativity with us today,” said Petriello, who is a double Fordham University alumnus and an adjunct faculty member himself. “You are an inspiring witness to our shared mission—our Catholic Jesuit mission that has really united our schools since 1841.”

On Oct. 31, administrators from both schools met at the Rose Hill campus with Tania Tetlow, president of Fordham, and the executor of Scully’s estate to accept the gift to the University and to speak to the importance of Scully’s legacy. “With this gift, we celebrate Vin’s talents and fundamental decency, and teach them to the next generation,” Tetlow said.

“He loved these schools, and this is a way for him to express his gratitude,” said the executor, Edward White, during the meeting. He visited both schools to go over the gifts, which can be used however each institution sees fit.

Also on hand to celebrate the gift were Ed Kull, Fordham’s athletic director, and Chuck Singleton, general manager of WFUV, Fordham’s public media station, where Scully worked as a student broadcaster before gaining renown as the Voice of the Dodgers, the baseball franchise that moved from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles in 1957.

Sometimes referred to as the Velvet Voice, Scully was beloved for his eloquence and iconic style as an announcer, and provided inspiration for generations of sports broadcasters. Scully served the Dodgers for 67 years, retiring in 2016. He was 94 at the time of his passing on August 2.

His many awards and honors include induction into the University’s Hall of Honor and into the broadcasters’ wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, as well as a Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed by President Barack Obama in 2016.

On Nov. 1, Scully was honored with a video tribute at WFUV’s annual On the Record awards dinner. On March 20, he will be honored with a posthumous Founder’s Award at the 2023 Fordham Founder’s Dinner, to be held at The Glasshouse in Manhattan, with Scully’s family accepting the award on his behalf. Two days later, on March 22, the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, will celebrate a memorial Mass in Scully’s honor at St. Patrick’s Cathedral at 10 a.m.

In addition, the press box at Houlihan Park at Jack Coffey Field will be renamed in Scully’s honor, among other initiatives to honor his legacy, the University announced on Nov. 14.

Setting the Tone

The son of Irish immigrants, Vincent Edward Scully graduated from Fordham Prep in 1944 and went on to call baseball, basketball, and football games for WFUV—which was founded during his student years at Fordham College at Rose Hill.

“WFUV turns 75 this fall, and in the beginning, there was Vin Scully,” Singleton said. “Vin set the tone in 1947, and his influence echoes today in the quality work of WFUV’s talented young sports journalists.”

Scully kept up with Fordham over the years, taking interviews from FUV student journalists, hosting some workshops for them, and returning to campus as commencement speaker in 2000 and receiving an honorary doctorate from the University. His presence is also felt in Fordham athletics, since he played for the baseball team as a student.

In remarks after the meeting, Kull said Scully was “more than just a voice; he was an institution and a true master of his craft.”

“The impact he made on not only baseball, but the entire sports media industry, is humbling,” Kull said. “His story, with his Fordham and Bronx roots, continues to inspire our Rams and the entire Fordham family.”

A Bond with Fordham

Scully’s Fordham baseball career included a game against Yale, whose team included a future U.S. president, George H.W. Bush. When Bush was president, he met Scully for golf and later sent him a framed photo taken of them, White noted at the meeting.

“He frequently spoke very fondly of his experience at WFUV, and always felt that he was a part of the Fordham family … and wanted to contribute equally to Fordham Prep and Fordham University, which is exactly what he did,” said White, Scully’s business manager and friend for over 40 years, after the meeting.

“As a lifelong Catholic, he had a deep appreciation for the faith foundation provided at this exceptional Jesuit institution,” said White, senior partner with Edward White & Co., LLP, in Woodland Hills, California. He noted that Scully sponsored him during his own conversion to Catholicism. “He loved the foundation that he received, spiritually and academically. Every time he spoke of Fordham, it was glowing.”

He sometimes glimpsed Scully’s kindness and generosity—as well as his fame—while traveling with him, along with Scully’s late wife, Sandra, and his own wife, Mary White, who also attended the Oct. 31 meeting.

“Wherever we went, he was so well received, and so appreciated and so loved, and people would oftentimes stand in line to see if they couldn’t get his autograph or if they could have a photograph of him,” White said. “He was very thoughtful and compassionate to everyone. Whether he was speaking to a parking attendant or a most senior person [in politics]or in the commercial world, he treated everyone equally.”

During his trip to New York, White attended another event with a small Fordham connection—a Nov. 1 ceremony in which another client of his, the late singer and actress Lena Horne, a 1997 Fordham honorary degree recipient, became the first Black woman to have a Broadway theater named after her.

It was a joy to see where Scully attended school, White said. “He was truly a wonderful, giving, loving human being. We all loved him. We miss him indeed.”

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.

Going to Fordham “sent my life on a trajectory that I could never have imagined,” said Rowen, who went on to a successful career as a business executive, philanthropist, and alumni leader for his two alma maters, Fordham Preparatory School and Fordham University.

There were struggles and uncertainties—for all eight of his high school and undergraduate years, he was commuting two hours each way from his home on Long Island. And, for a time, his family finances made it seem doubtful that he could attend college at all.

But it was also a pivotal time in many ways: During his junior year at the Prep, an intervention from one of the Jesuit instructors put him on the path to the University and taught him an important lesson about overcoming difficulty. And then there was his experience at Fordham College at Rose Hill: the friendships formed, the classes that conveyed a moral sense, and faculty members’ help with the basics of landing a job.

“The faculty was very engaged, very caring,” he said. Going to Fordham “was one of those points that, when you look back in your career or your life, are transformative,” he said. “I feel I have a debt to the University and the Jesuits for how they helped me.”

He has made many major gifts to both Fordham Prep and Fordham University—including, now, a major contribution toward completing the Joseph M. McShane, S.J. Campus Center, a keystone of the University’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student. The Career Center in the new building will be named for Rowen in recognition of his gift—signifying the importance, for him, of how Fordham prepared him for his post-college pursuits.

After graduating in 1986 with a degree in English and a minor in economics, he joined Merrill Lynch and then Kidder Peabody, where he worked in the incipient field of quantitative finance. After working in executive roles at Deutsche Bank and SAC Capital Advisors, he joined the investment management firm Renaissance Technologies LLC in 2008, where today he is chief operating officer.

He has served on Fordham’s Board of Trustees and on various Fordham College at Rose Hill alumni committees, among other roles, and is a double alumnus of the University, having earned his M.B.A. from the Gabelli School of Business in 1998.

At the Gabelli School, he learned business principles that are applicable “to almost everything,” he said. And that includes philanthropy: Harnessing the benefits of competition, he founded and funded the Great Ignatian Challenge, in which 27 Jesuit high schools (so far) in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions strive to collect the most food for the hungry during the holidays, with the winning schools receiving funding to help provide financial aid to their students.

“It’s been very rewarding to do this,” Rowen said, “because you can see an Ignatian teaching supercharged with some basic business principles, and you make an impact in the lives of thousands.”

Why was it important to you to support the McShane Campus Center project?
The campus center is important to the University on so many levels, physically and emotionally and psychologically. Both for folks who live on campus and those who commute, it’s extremely important to have that place to hang your hat. I just feel that it’s good for the University’s culture. And there’s also such a “wow” factor—when you see that new building, with its big open spaces and how inviting it is, it sends a very strong message to faculty, current students, potential students, and parents that the University is vibrant and it’s growing. And ultimately, the direction of the University is extremely important to me.

Why is it appealing to be the namesake for the Career Center?
Not coming from a white-collar background, many of the items of preparing to look for a job were foreign to me. The only work experience I had when I was in the college was working in a hardware store. I had no idea how to write a resume. I found that the faculty was extremely helpful in sharing their views and advice and helping me with the types of questions asked in interviews. Today, the competitive pressures for jobs continue to go up, and many students may not come from households that are that familiar with it either. The Career Center becomes extremely important for how to present yourself and what the expectation is when doing interviews. Interviews are evolving, and Fordham has to be ahead of the curve while sticking to its traditions.

The Ignatian teachings of being in the service of others are a differentiator for our students. The moral compass is a critical element of Jesuit education, and also the ability to employ critical thinking and discernment. I think you’ll find most employers are looking for that ability to de-engineer a problem and make recommendations for solutions. That’s what the Jesuits do—they’ll be there to help, but they don’t want to give you the solutions. They want to help you foster the skill to come up with a solution.

Do you have a career lesson for today’s students?
Don’t rush to judgment; things aren’t always what they seem. I find that when employees didn’t meet expectations, often, when you do a little digging, you’ll find out that there’s something more serious going on, and that’s when the Ignatian-based attitude of “how can I help?” becomes important. We need to understand the circumstances of the individual first before making any recommendations or changes. During the COVID pandemic, we’ve had exceptional employees who struggled, and when you peel back a little, you find out a child is sick, a parent has passed away, a health issue in the family has gotten worse, a loved one has been laid off. It’s not a function of, “Oh, they’re not working well at home”; they have a real paradigm shift in their life. So I think we’ve done a pretty good job of just checking in on employees to make sure that if there are issues, they know they have a safety net. We’re there to help.

Is there a person or experience that was pivotal in your education?
At Fordham Prep, Father Stan O’Konsky would help us with our college essays in junior year, and one day in homeroom he walked around and said, “Hey, Jim, why aren’t you working on a college essay?” I said, “Well, I chatted with my mother during the summer; we don’t have money to send me.” So I wasn’t going to do any applications. He looked at me and walked off, and at the end of homeroom he came back and said, “You know what? We’re not going to let you off easy. I’ll tell you what, I want you to write an essay. You apply to Fordham, and if you get in, we’ll make sure you find a way to go. We’ll find the money.” So at that point I started working on my essay and he helped me. We compared my commute from Long Beach, Long Island, on the Long Island Railroad and the subways, to the adventures in Virgil’s Aeneid. He was very helpful in saying, let’s do a creative essay around something that’s really unique about your time at the Prep, which was my commute.

Basically, he said don’t give up. Apply, and if you get in, we’ll figure it out, right? It was a typical Jesuit approach—let’s think about it, let’s discern, let’s come up with alternatives. If there are problems, there are solutions. That has always resonated with me, to this very day, and has been a cornerstone of what I would consider any success I’ve had.

How were the folks at the Prep prepared to help you attend Fordham?
They offered financial help if it was necessary—I think they would have found ways for me to earn money—but I found a way, through student loans and scheduling my classes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and working Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at my uncle’s hardware store while commuting to Fordham.

Looking at the world today, what are you optimistic about?
I’m optimistic about evolution and how things have changed. You can see it in the strides that we are making with artificial intelligence and understanding the genome. There are many diseases and afflictions that I assume are likely to be cured in the next decade. Plus we’re becoming more globally connected. You can see it in how so many countries and individuals have rallied to help Ukraine. So I do think interconnection, globalization, and automation are going to create so many opportunities and a better quality of life for people.

What have you enjoyed most about staying involved with Fordham as an alumnus?
It’s the ability to be a steward of the things that I hold important about Fordham. I love the debate and discussion—what will the world look like in 20 years, and how will Fordham students be able to manage that? It is just really interesting to be part of a group of caring individuals who want the University to continue on its mission and try to figure out how the mission will be most impactful as the world evolves. You meet individuals from all walks of life who have one thing in common: They’ve had the Jesuit experience, they want to continue to be in the service of others, and they have decided to do it through stewardship of the University. It’s nice to have that kind of relationship.

You graduate from college thinking, okay, this is a chapter that’s closing. It closed for a little bit, but when it opened up, it opened up in a way that I could never have fathomed. It is just so much bigger and broader than I could have ever anticipated.

To inquire about supporting the McShane Campus Center project or another area of the University, 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.

Those who knew him described a man who was as humble as he was accomplished, someone who was enthusiastic about science and who readily pitched in to advance the graduate school and help support the education of its students.

“He was so giving, so open to helping people,” said Jay Breyer, Ph.D., GSAS ’81, who served with Thampoe over the past two decades on the leadership committee, formerly known as the dean’s advisory board. “He was always the first person in the room I would go and talk to, because he was just a terrific person, very friendly, open, warm, generous.”

Thampoe was an immigrant from Sri Lanka who earned not only undergraduate and graduate degrees in science from Fordham but also a Juris Doctor degree from Fordham Law School. He lived with his family in Mahwah, New Jersey, and worked at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in Tarrytown, New York, as executive director and assistant general counsel for intellectual property portfolio development.

Accomplished, Yet Humble

He served as president of the New Jersey Intellectual Property Law Association, and chaired and spoke at many biotechnology patent law conferences in Boston, London, Munich, New York, and San Francisco, according to an obituary from his family. In 2018, he was a recipient of the Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business Award, bestowed by the Asian American Business Development Center.

A tennis enthusiast who had managed the squash and tennis teams as a Fordham undergraduate, he was a player captain of U.S. Tennis Association adult teams and led more than 10 teams to the national championships and won a Captain of the Year award in 2017.

And yet, he was quiet—even bashful—about all he had achieved, said his daughter, Emily Thampoe. She added that her father’s Catholic faith “was very important to him and an integral part of his life.”

“I think the fact that numerous people have asked to have him as their child’s godfather is a testament to the kind of person that he was,” she said.

An Immigrant Story

Thampoe came to America to attend Fordham Preparatory School on scholarship, and went on to earn three degrees in biology from Fordham with support from scholarships and assistantships: a bachelor’s degree from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1980 and master’s and doctoral degrees from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) in 1982 and 1986, respectively. He was a postdoctoral research fellow and research associate in tumor immunology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering before returning to Fordham for his law degree, which he completed in 1994.

After working in a few law firms’ patent law and intellectual property areas, he served as in-house patent attorney at Schering-Plough and managing intellectual property counsel at Merck before making the move to Regeneron.

He made an impression as a member of the GSAS Dean’s Leadership Committee, a group of alumni leaders, parents, and friends of Fordham who serve as advisers to the dean and as the University’s ambassadors and advocates.

Leadership and Enthusiasm

“It was a real pleasure working with him,” said Tyler Stovall, Ph.D., who became dean of GSAS in July 2020. “He was always very enthusiastic and had lots of solid ideas. He was very interested in bringing more people of color into STEM, and he had a particular commitment to improving the mentoring of graduate students. This is a very sad loss for us; we will miss him greatly.”

Thampoe spoke often to to students in the Graduate School of Arts and Science, in Fordham Law School, and in the undergraduate and graduate programs in biological sciences, and was committed to helping students continue their education through graduate school so they could realize the possibilities for STEM careers, said Michelle Clarkin, director of development for Arts and Sciences.

In 2007, he created a scholarship named for Edward Benedict, GRE ’67, and Robert Hawthorn, FCRH ’53, both of whom were Fordham Prep faculty members, and the latter of whom was coach of squash and tennis at Fordham for more than 50 years. The scholarship benefits undergraduate and graduate students in biology who demonstrate academic merit and financial need.

Breyer recalled a Zoom meeting of the committee in March 2020, as the newly arrived pandemic and its impact on children were weighing on the members. Thampoe lifted their spirits, Breyer said, by describing work being done at Regeneron, which would later develop a breakthrough monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19.

“He spoke up and said, ‘Well, let me tell you what my company is doing,’” Breyer said. “It was exhilarating to hear him speak about it, and he was really excited about it. And that excitement, I think, lifted the whole group.”

“He at least gave us hope that … there were scientists that were working on this, and there was light at the end of the tunnel,” Breyer said.

Thampoe was very much involved in the University’s biological sciences department, Breyer said; once, during a trip to the Louis Calder Center, Fordham’s biological field station in Armonk, New York, he could tell Thampoe was “in his element.”

“He loved it, looking at all the research that was going on,” Breyer said.

Thampoe was one of five children, and remained close to his family throughout his life, Emily Thampoe said.

One of his siblings, Dr. Basti Thampoe, described his brother as “the one always there to take care of any need that comes about.”

“[You] can’t ask for a better brother,” he said.

Fordham will be notifying its community about an event focused on memorializing Thampoe, to be held this fall, Michelle Clarkin said.

Thampoe is survived by his wife of 26 years, Virginia; his children, Michael and Emily; his parents, Anna and Joseph Thampoe; his uncle, Bishop Emeritus Thomas Savundaranayagam; his siblings Vijitha, Basti, Indra, and Lalanthi; and many nieces, nephews, and other extended family members.

Visitation will be held Sunday, June 27, from 2 to 7 p.m. at the Van Emburgh-Sneider-Pernice Funeral Home in Ramsey, New Jersey. A funeral Mass will be held on Monday, June 28, at 10 a.m., at Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Mahwah, followed by a private interment.

Joe Moglia, FCRH ’71, blazed a trail of ascent at Merrill Lynch and then at the helm of TD Ameritrade over 24 years until, in 2008, he decided to return to the most rewarding work he knew—coaching football.

A New York City native, Moglia served as a baseball and football team captain while attending Fordham Preparatory School and then coached football at the Prep while working his way through Fordham College at Rose Hill. After graduation, he coached and taught at a Catholic boys’ school near the University of Delaware, where he earned a master’s in education, and later helped Dartmouth College win two Ivy League championships as defensive coordinator.

In 1984, after 16 years of coaching, family responsibilities and his interest in business led him to join the MBA training program at Merrill Lynch—as the one football coach among 25 MBA holders. “Everybody said, ‘This football guy is never going to make it here,’” he recalled. But he excelled, becoming the firm’s top worldwide producer and rising to high-level posts before joining TD Ameritrade as CEO from 2001 to 2008.

When he stepped down in 2008, shareholders had enjoyed a 500% return. In 2009 he became chairman of the board. Recently, TD Ameritrade announced that they would be acquired by Charles Schwab. The combined company will be worth $100 billion and have client assets of $5 trillion; When Moglia first arrived, these numbers were $700 million and $24 billion.

Prior to 2019, he was the head football coach at Coastal Carolina University, and in his first five seasons he led his team to the national playoffs all five years and to four conference championships, posting an overall record of 56-22 and a winning percentage of .718. In his last 11 years of college coaching, he has been a part of eight championship teams. He has also received multiple Coach of the Year honors, including the Eddie Robinson National Coach of the Year award, and was the recipient of the Vince Lombardi Award, and inducted into the Lombardi Hall of Fame.

His career is the subject of the 2012 book 4th & Goal: One Man’s Quest to Recapture His Dream, by Monte Burke. And Moglia has authored books on both coaching and investing—The Perimeter Attack Offense: The Key to Winning Football in 1982 and Coach Yourself to Success: Winning the Investment Game in 2005. This year he plans to start writing a third book, on leadership.

In advance of the Founder’s Dinner, Moglia sat down with FORDHAM magazine to talk about lessons learned in boardrooms and on the gridiron, as well as his struggles with a speech disorder that always draws surprised reactions whenever he tells people about it.

What was it like going from coaching football to the world of business when you joined Merrill Lynch?
While I didn’t have an MBA at all, I did have the background and skill set and characteristics that would make for an effective transition. I really believed that my 16 years of experience as a coach made me a better businessman. As a coach, it’s absolutely critical to be able to handle yourself under stress. You’ve got to be able to understand people, think strategically, and make decisions quickly. While it’s helpful for a coach to be reasonably charismatic, he or she has got to be a great communicator, a good teacher. And as a coach you’re very often representing a community at large, whether it’s a university, a community, a state, or a town.

What’s some other common ground between coaching and business?
You have to be sophisticated and smart enough to have a well-developed strategy that has contingency plans. It’s much easier to adapt and adjust it if you’ve got a well-thought-out concept behind it, and if it’s simple enough to execute. I’d say based on game plans and business plans that I’ve seen from my competitors, if they have a fault, it’s that they’re not simple enough. It may sound smart, it may sound great in a speech and in the board room, but if the 50 people who work for you don’t know it that well, they won’t be able to execute it.

In either field, knowing the strengths and the weaknesses of any part of your organization is critical. So if you want to expand in China and you have no competitive advantage in China, you should think that through. But many businesses will say, “You’ve got to expand in China! How can we not?” But if you don’t understand your core competencies, if you don’t know how to lever those competitive advantages, that’s probably not a smart idea.

You also have to adjust based on your people’s strengths and weaknesses. In football, when the first-string quarterback goes down, for instance, the second-string quarterback is often expected to know the same system. But he doesn’t have the same skill set, so you don’t ask him to do the same thing as the other guy. The second- or third-string quarterbacks will practice certain plays that the team has in common, but they should also practice the plays they know they’re pretty good at. And in business, for instance, there are certain skills a chief financial officer is supposed to have, but one might really have an understanding of marketing, and another might be stronger at strategy. So I will shape the job differently for one CFO than I would for another.

How did you come to return to coaching?
I stepped down as CEO of TD Ameritrade because the timing was right. But then I got a call from a group of alumni at Yale telling me there was a chance the football job would be open at the end of the 2008 season, and would I be interested? No transition like this had ever happened in college football. But I thought about it; I’ve always looked at the game like chess, with 22 pieces moving at once with a lot at stake, under serious time constraints with everybody watching, and I’ve always found that intellectually stimulating. And as a coach, I got so much satisfaction from working with the players. Having an impact on them was very, very important. That was my mantra my entire business career. My people mattered and I knew I had an impact on them. That’s what drives me.

So going back and representing the university, the community, the alumni, the faculty, and the students, but also having an impact on a 20-year-old, helping him really truly grow up—I didn’t think anything else could give me greater satisfaction in life.

Among your awards and honors are some related to stuttering, including the Hero Award from the Stuttering Association for the Young. Can you talk about your own struggles?
I have a pretty serious stutter. In grammar school through college, if I knew the answer to a question in class, I wouldn’t raise my hand, because I was afraid I couldn’t get my words out. And then I decided that I wanted to take this assistant coaching job at Fordham Prep. Well, of course a coach has to communicate. So I would practice in front of a mirror again and again. I had to speak at the Fordham Prep football banquet for three minutes; I can’t tell you how nervous I was, but I prepared 10 hours for that three minutes and I got through it. There is seldom a time in my life where I don’t have a fear that I’m not going to be able to talk.

I’ve spoken in a lot of different places and I am so incredibly well prepared. I know I’ve got something to say and I’ve probably said it 150 times already. So I have a confidence level with that. But sometimes when I’m tired or stressed, I really struggle to get my words out. Sometimes I would bridge to another word quickly—I can’t get out “banana,” but I’d say “fruit.” I’d trick myself, just to get “fruit” out there. I’ve done a good job of controlling it over the years, but stuttering is still a very, very real thing for me.

How would your life be different if you hadn’t gone to Fordham?
A big part of whatever success I’ve achieved across two career paths is because of Fordham. I’ve always said that. I’ll say it again.