Inspired by such stories of heroism, the national commander of this elite group, Richard Rinaldo, FCRH ’63, compiled the anthology Courage in Combat: Stories by and about Recipients of the Nation’s Highest Awards. Casemate Publishers will release the book in March 2017.

“Their awards are our nation’s highest military decorations, given to only one in 20,000 combatants,” Rinaldo explained, adding that the Legion of Valor is the oldest military service organization in the country, with only 400 living members. To qualify for membership, individuals must be recipients of the Medal of Honor, a Navy Cross, a Distinguished Service Cross, or an Air Force Cross.

Rinaldo is a retired Army lieutenant colonel who earned a Distinguished Service Cross in 1969 for his heroic service in Vietnam.

He was leading a company of soldiers to take a strategic hilltop when they were attacked by enemy fire. After suffering nine casualties, they secured half the hilltop but were once again under siege, and 17 more soldiers were injured. Though Rinaldo was wounded, he refused medical aid, called for support, and encouraged his company to forge on.

According to Rinaldo, Courage in Combat explores the nature of courage through personal accounts and reflections by and about sergeants, generals, past presidents, paratroopers, aviators, spies, prisoners of war, and candidates for sainthood. He wrote the book to honor the ghosts that surround him all the time.

“Some are real men dying beside me crying for their mothers,” he said. “The sanctity of their memories demands recognition.”

One chapter of the book is an excerpt from Navy Cross recipient Karl Marlantes’ New York Times bestseller, What it Is Like to Go to War. Another is an essay about Vietnam by Navy Cross recipient and politician James Webb. Two Fordham alumni, Father Vincent Capodanno and Philip Conran, are also included in the anthology.

Courage in Combat is Rinaldo’s second book, following Meatballs & Stickball (McNally Jackson, 2012). This self-published anthology explores a different type of camaraderie: growing up in Little Italy in the 1950s. Rinaldo, who now lives in Newport News, Virginia, says it is a tribute to his youth.

“It is always a wonder to go back there and listen to the whispers of the past,” Rinaldo said. “I remember the music of the feasts, the barking iceman, Chinese laundries and linoleum floors, pushcarts and pizza with anchovies.”

He also remembers watching movies at the iconic Bleecker Street Cinema with his buddy from the old neighborhood, Martin Scorsese.

“Even back then, he loved the movies!” Rinaldo recalled.

After graduating from Fordham College at Rose Hill, Rinaldo enrolled at Fordham Law but soon realized that a military career was his calling. Today, he is an active member of the Fordham Veterans Alumni Chapter and the Fordham Southeast Virginia Alumni Chapter, and participates in charitable efforts such as Toys for Tots and social get-togethers. “I really enjoyed the trip to Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast two years ago with Fordham Alumni,” Rinaldo said. “Great trip, great folks!”

In addition to receiving Distinguished Service Cross, Rinaldo earned the Legion of Merit, a Purple Heart, and a Bronze Star. He was inducted into the Fordham and New York City ROTC Hall of Fame in 2015, and taught military history at Hofstra University, where he earned a master’s degree.

—Claire Curry

By Richard Khavkine

Patrick Murray credits dedication and good coaching for his record-setting  campaign as the football team’s place-kicker last year. But personal inspiration also played a significant part.

Murray dedicated his season to a childhood friend, Vincent Crotty, who was killed in a car accident in March 2010 as Crotty, 18, drove to baseball practice at Suffern High School in Rockland County.

With the Rams primed to improve on 2011’s one-win season, Murray had extra incentive to excel during his senior year in the Bronx. Before the start of every game last year, Murray wrapped his left wrist with tape, on which he would mark the initials “VC” in his friend’s honor.

“I wanted to make it special . . . to know there was a bigger reason to play for,” he said of his final year of college ball. “I definitely know Vincent was there watching over me.”

In the best-ever season for a Fordham kicker, Murray led the football team in scoring with 105 points, was named Patriot League Special Teams Player of the Week seven times and earned consensus All-America honors as well as numerous student-athlete accolades. The team went 6-5, its first winning season since 2007.

Murray, 21, will graduate with a degree in finance this spring. Meanwhile, he is immersing himself in the minutiae of portfolio management and global investing to keep up the near-4.0 GPA he is carrying in his major.

Poised and focused, Murray has also found time to volunteer in the community, where he and teammates work in a Fordham Road food pantry and visit local elementary schools to talk with kids about college.

His breakout season has put him on professional scouts’ radars, a tantalizing outcome for Murray, who in his youth was drawn more to soccer and to Gaelic football from his father’s native country.

During a winter-break conversation in the Mahwah, N.J., house in which he grew up, Murray recalled the nearby playing fields, where his father, Aidan Sr., helped hone his kicking.

“That’s where we spent hours upon hours every day,” he said of his neighborhood friends and his brother, Aidan Jr., who aspires to follow in Patrick’s footsteps at Rutgers University. “That’s where we grew up.”

Murray thought he would play soccer in high school, until a family friend suggested he had the skills to succeed as a football kicker.

“It turned out to be the best decision we could have made,” he said.

In 2008, during his senior season at Don Bosco High School in Bergen County, N.J., Murray’s nationally televised 20-yard field goal with seconds left beat De La Salle, of Concord, Calif., one of the country’s most storied high school football programs.

The next year, while considering where to attend college, he ambled onto the Rose Hill campus, where the football team was practicing, and introduced himself to then-head coach Tom Masella. 

“We know who you are,” Murray recalled Masella telling him a few minutes later. “Show up tomorrow. We’ll get you in the school.”

Already the team’s outstanding punter, he took over the place-kicking duties full-time in 2012.

Murray made 25 of 30 field goals, including four of six from 50 or more yards. His punts averaged 46 yards, more than eight yards longer than the opposition’s average.

Murray is thinking about attending law school, but might have to defer his lawyerly ambitions: his coaches have told him that just about every National Football League team has inquired about him.

Although the finer points of finance occupy much of his time, so does preparation for Pro Day, in March, when several NFL scouts will come to Fordham to watch Murray go through his paces. The draft follows, at the end of April.
“I just have to stay focused,” he said. “I know I’ll get my shot.”

HALL OF FAME: On Jan. 26, Fordham University inducted some of the greatest athletes in University history into its Athletics Hall of Fame. The athletes were recognized at a halftime celebration during the Fordham Rams game against Rhode Island.

From left to right, are Dave Roach, director of Fordham Athletics; Tom Penders, basketball coach; Frank McLaughlin, FCRH ’69, athletic director and basketball; Wayne McGuirt, FCRH ’65, basketball; Michelle Maguire Kennedy, FCRH ’03, swimming and diving; Sara Marie Kinney, FCRH ’07, softball; Kerstin Maike Greene, FCRH ’07, track and field; Michael W. Debany, FCRH ’54, tennis; Paul Darrigo, FCRH ’89, baseball; Matteo A. Cucchiara, FCRH ’65, track and field; and Jennifer Akerley, GSB ’01, rowing.

Photo by Bruce Gilbert

The ceremony at the New York Yacht Club will honor bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark, FCLC ’79, grand marshal of this year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Manhattan; William J. Flynn, GSAS ’51, chairman emeritus of Mutual of America, and champion of the Irish peace process in his role as chairman of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy; and diplomat Jean Kennedy Smith, who received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Fordham in 1995 (the same year Mary Robinson, then president of Ireland, delivered the commencement address).

Honorees Denis Kelleher, founder and CEO of Wall Street Access, and Chuck Feeney, Irish American billionaire philanthropist, also have close ties to the University. They are being honored along with James Watson, Ph.D., co-discoverer of the double helical structure of DNA (for which he received a Nobel Prize in 1962), and Michael Flatley, choreographer and dancer, and the creator of The Lord of the Dance.

The Irish America Hall of Fame honors “the extraordinary achievements of Irish-American leaders — from their significant accomplishments and contributions to American society, to their personal commitment to safeguarding their Irish heritage and the betterment of Ireland.” Irish America magazine has been in print for more than a quarter century, and is a leading publication of Irish interest in North America.

Courtney, who is among the greatest track athletes Fordham ever produced, will be honored along with eight other Olympic Gold medalists in track & field. All honorees have competed in the Millrose Games, which take place on Friday, Jan. 28, at Madison Square Garden.

While at Fordham, Courtney was on two-mile team, which set the World Record in California in 1954. The next year, he graced the cover of Sports Illustrated in his Fordham gear.

After graduating from Fordham, Courtney made the Olympic team and took first-place, winning the gold medal and setting an Olympic record in the 800 meter run at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. He also anchored the 4 X 400 relay for a second gold medal.

Courtney went on to set many other world records in 1956 and 1957 before retiring from competition. He later became assistant track coach at Harvard for one year before obtaining his M.B.A. from Harvard Business. Courtney was inducted into the Fordham Athletics Hall of Fame in 1971.

Fellow alumnus, Norbert Sander, M.D., (FCRH ’64), will host the reception along with officers from the New York Athletic Club. Sander, the 1974 winner of the New York City Marathon, is the architect of a modern initiative that brought running back to life at Manhattan’s 168th Street Armory, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2010.

A significant contingent of one of Fordham’s greatest Track & Field squads, Classes 1963-65, will hold a reunion at the 104th edition of the Millrose Games at the Garden on Friday night to celebrate Fordham’s rich history of success in these historic Games.

Four Fordham graduates were inducted into the University’s Army ROTC Hall of Fame on March 6 in a ceremony that honored their distinguished service as military officers.

Three of them gave decades of service, and one made the ultimate sacrifice as a young officer in Vietnam, just after graduating from Fordham.

“Those of us who still wear the uniform look to those of you who have gone before us with admiration and gratitude,” said Lt. Col. Randy Powell, chairman and professor of military science at Fordham. “You have taken the idea of a free nation and turned that into a reality.”

The Hall of Fame recognizes Fordham’s military veterans and graduates from ROTC programs in the New York area. The reception and military ball, held at the Marina del Rey in the Bronx, honored the four officers and the 27 members of the New York City Army ROTC Class of 2009. The program is based at Fordham and trains students from a number of colleges in the region.

The first Hall of Fame inductee was 1st Lt. Frank Deusebio (CBA ’66), a Fordham graduate who was commissioned through its ROTC program. He died in combat against the Viet Cong in 1968 at the age of 22 while commanding an armored reconnaissance unit, earning the Silver Star posthumously.

“1st Lt. Deusebio’s extraordinary heroism in close combat against a numerically superior Viet Cong force was in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflects great credit upon himself, his unit and the United States Army,” according to a prepared ROTC statement. The honor was accepted by Deusebio’s brother, Nelson Deusebio.

The next inductee was Maj. Gen. Michael Scotti (FCRH ’60), who passed away in 2007 after serving 30 years as an Army officer, including a year in Vietnam as a battalion surgeon in active combat. He earned the Bronze Star for his front line service in Vietnam. In his later years he served in the Persian Gulf War and organized international humanitarian aid. The honor was accepted by his wife, Susan Scotti.

The third inductee—retired Air Force Col. William McGuth (FCRH ‘56)—earned the Distinguished Flying Cross during combat service in Southeast Asia and served in other fields including logistics and contract maintenance. In his remarks, he said Fordham’s Jesuit values dovetail with the values conveyed by the ROTC program.

“The commitment to live our lives with integrity comes from the opportunities to which we’ve been exposed in our formative years—the foundation of the moral values of Jesuit education and the development of those values in the disciplined environment of a military organization,” he said.

The fourth inductee—retired Army Reserve Col. Daniel Cremin (FCRH ’65)—served in various intelligence and counterintelligence posts during 30 years of service and supported the Defense Intelligence Agency during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, earning various awards including the Army Commendation Medal.

He gave the graduates advice on how to handle their first commands. He told them to seek the input of noncommissioned officers in their units when making decisions, and told them to pay attention to the needs of rank-and-file soldiers, among other advice.

“If you take care of your soldiers, they’ll take care of the mission,” he said.

Four University graduates were inducted into the hall after distinguished careers on and off the field of battle: Col. Robert E. Hildner, FCRH ’59; Col. Edward H. Winkler, FCRH ’67, LAW ’72; 1st Lt. Dominic Ternan, O.F.M., FCRH ’27; and Maj. Gen. Charles J. Timmes, FCRH ’28, LAW ’30. Ternan and Timmes were inducted posthumously.

Gorgeous and magnificent were superlatives used by some of the roughly 200 attendees of the military ball to describe the winter wonderland effect created by the snow and ice outside the banquet hall reflecting the lights of the city. The event traditionally marks the start of the final training period for senior cadets.

Brig. Gen. Guy Sans-Pingot, GSAS ’95, commander of the 353rd Civil Affairs Brigade, addressed the guests, saying that however much some things may have changed in today’s Army from years past, certain things—honor, duty and pride—will never change.