Jim O’Grady – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu The official news site for Fordham University. Thu, 25 Apr 2024 16:59:13 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://now.fordham.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/favicon.png Jim O’Grady – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu 32 32 232360065 Remembering Ray Schroth, S.J. https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/remembering-ray-schroth-s-j/ Sat, 13 Nov 2021 17:22:14 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=154916 An essay by Jim O’Grady, FCRH ’82. Above: A prayer card and Mass program commemorating Raymond A. Schroth, S.J., a 1955 Fordham graduate and former Fordham professor and dean who died in July 2020. Photo by Bruce GilbertLook, the bones of accomplished Jesuits are scattered across the Earth, whether poet (Hopkins), paleontologist (Teilhard), or prophet (Berrigan). So what’s the big deal if 60 graying devotees got together at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus in late October to memorialize one more: Father Raymond A. Schroth (professor), who died in July of last year at the age of 86?

Because, we’d say, he was a fulcrum in the lives of those who formed themselves around him. Because he paid us the compliment of driving us hard as students and then, in the decades to come, sustaining us individually and collectively with the shared bread of his friendship—like one of the righteous souls that the Talmud is always mysteriously crediting with holding this world together.

At least that’s how it seemed to those who knew him.

So we gathered on a cloudy day during the lingering pandemic in a stone church with its vault of azure blue. We warbled out upbeat songs, singing of alabaster cities gleaming, undimmed by human tears; of a tender Lord who extracts us when we’re snared like a bird in a fowler’s trap; and of the biggest promise ever made: resurrection after death.

A black and white photo of a man standing, smiling, and holding a few papers
Father Schroth, as pictured in the 1975 Maroon yearbook. Photo courtesy of Thomas Maier

Most of us had begun as Ray’s students at one Jesuit university or another, Fordham included. He was blatantly magnetic, a man-about-campus with a playful smile and form-fitting Izod shirt. But his main devotions were interior: to intellectual pursuits and his vocation as a priest. He celebrated Mass with a marked sincerity and taught his classes with a passion. He published his writing—rigorous journalism with a disarming dash of memoir—in national publications. And in his music-filled apartment, next to the armchair, was an elbow-high stack of magazines and books. He would read them all, sometimes late into the night after a steak-and-martini dinner with friends at an Arthur Avenue restaurant, rebuilding the stack as he went.

Somehow, Ray made his life of the mind seem glamorous—like if you yourself couldn’t get in on it, you’d keel over from an acute lack of fulfillment. Then one day he’d tap you on the shoulder, so to speak, and allow that he saw something in you. This was both thrilling and nerve-racking for the way it made you want to measure up. It embarked you on what felt like an adventure of spiritual striving and cold ocean swimming, high literary endeavor and incessant bonhomie. The bonus was membership in a community not of his followers but his brethren.

Years later, at the memorial at Fordham, a few of us sang his praises. “Ray was not a Catholic apologist but he was also not an apologetic Catholic,” said Kevin Doyle, FCRH ’78, a lawyer who has applied himself to defending men on death row. “He ached to be generative,” added Anne Gearity, TMC ’70, GSS ’74, about Ray’s zeal for teaching. She herself is a therapist who teaches children to cope with trauma.

Author Eileen Markey, FCRH ’98, noted the absence of Ray’s prize student, Jim Dwyer, FCRH ’79, who’d been one of his closest friends. A Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of impeccably chiseled prose, Jim had been lined up long ago to deliver the eulogy. But before a memorial could be held, he died of cancer, a loss so devastating that it bordered on the absurd. All the more reason, Eileen observed, to gather at liturgy and find shelter with each other.

Afterward at a reception, there were mini muffins and comforting conversation, which is how I imagine the anteroom of heaven. Still, life haunts you. I kept dwelling on what Kevin Schroth, a professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health, had said at the Mass about the last two years of his uncle’s life: “Ray told me he was at peace with his condition, that he understood why he had to go through it.”

On a summer day in 2018, Ray was taking a walk on Webster Avenue when a stroke knocked him to the pavement. Remember those righteous men and women of the Talmud? This is how they quietly move among us, keeping chaos at bay through the practice of some discipline, until the chaos comes for them. Ray lost his ability to walk and write and gained a problem with swallowing that put him on a feeding tube. He entered a season of suffering. And yet, he clung to delight. He’d still beam at the sight of friends at his door, lifting his head as if lit from within. As if no loss in the world could keep him from loving you.

Father Raymond A. Schroth sits in a rocking chair in his room in Murray-Weigel Hall, surrounded by shelves of books, 2017
Father Schroth in Murray-Weigel Hall in 2017. Photo courtesy of Michael Wilson

—Jim O’Grady, FCRH ’82, recently joined NPR’s Planet Money as a host and reporter after more than a decade at WNYC, where he earned numerous honors, including two Edward R. Murrow Awards. He is also the host of the podcast Blindspot: The Road to 9/11, a co-production of HISTORY and WNYC Studios.

Read more about Father Schroth’s life and legacy in our full obituary, published on July 7, 2020: “Raymond Schroth, S.J., Who Taught Generations of Journalists, Dies at 86.”  

Scenes from the memorial Mass and reception held at Fordham on October 23, 2021. Photos by Bruce Gilbert

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Seen, Heard, Read: ‘Los Espookys,’ ‘Blindspot,’ and ‘Tea By the Sea’ https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/seen-heard-read-los-espookys-blindspot-and-tea-by-the-sea/ Thu, 17 Dec 2020 18:12:54 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=143706 Photos and artwork courtesy of HBO, WNYC, and Red Hen Press

Los Espookys
co-starring, co-written, and co-created by Ana Fabrega, FCLC ’13
Ana Fabrega, FCLC ’13, in a still from Los Espookys.

Ana Fabrega stars in the HBO Spanish-language comedy series Los Espookys, which premiered in 2019 and which she created with co-stars Fred Armisen and Julio Torres. The show follows a group of friends who stage elaborate horror scenes for clients in an unnamed Latin American country—think fake exorcisms and creating a haunted mansion to scare potential inheritors. Fabrega plays Tati, a naïve, accommodating guinea pig for her friends’ experiments, with deadpan earnestness. She also has a penchant for taking very odd jobs, like breaking in women’s shoes and counting people’s steps. “I really like characters who feel kind of lost and sort of slapstick-y in a Buster Keaton way,” she told Vanity Fair in 2019. Before embarking on the project, the Arizona native earned a degree in economics at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, worked at a credit-risk-management company, and made her name in comedy through stand-up performances and appearances on At Home with Amy Sedaris and The Chris Gethard Show. While Los Espookys had to break from filming its second season in Chile because of COVID-19, its renewal means fans can look forward to more haunted hijinks soon. —Adam Kaufman

Blindspot: The Road to 9/11
hosted by Jim O’Grady, FCRH ’82
The logo for WNYC's Blindspot.

“Time has flattened our understanding of the 9/11attacks. There’s this sense that they came … out of the clear blue sky of the day itself. But they didn’t,” WNYC reporter Jim O’Grady says in the first episode of Blindspot, an eight-part investigative podcast that brings fresh perspective to the complex tale of politics, power, and “deliberate moves across a global chessboard” that led to the 2001 attacks. The story begins in a Manhattan hotel ballroom in 1990, when the extremist rabbi Meir Kahane is assassinated by El-Sayyid Nosair, described by O’Grady as “the tip of the spear,” with links to cells in Brooklyn and Jersey City committed to violent jihad. O’Grady draws on archival reports plus dozens of interviews with law enforcement officials and others. And it’s not all about missed connections: he also tells the heart-stopping story of Emad Salem, an Egyptian immigrant and former army officer who, working with the FBI, infiltrated a local terror cell and in June 1993 foiled what could have been a devastating attack on multiple New York City landmarks. —Ryan Stellabotte

Tea By the Sea
by Donna Hemans, FCLC ’93

The book cover of Tea By the Sea.In her long-awaited second novel, Donna Hemans, the author of River Woman (2002), weaves a compelling tale of longing—to belong, to find family and a sense of home, to be fulfilled, and ultimately to discover the truth. Tea By the Sea is the story of Plum Valentine’s 17-year search for her daughter, stolen from the hospital at just one day old. The infant’s father, Lenworth, walks out of the hospital with the baby while Plum recuperates from a difficult labor, setting doctors, nurses, security, and Plum on high alert, but much too late. Readers follow Plum from Jamaica to Brooklyn and back, year after year, as she chases down leads from a private investigator and searches for Lenworth and her daughter. After getting married and having two more children—twin daughters—Plum finds the hint she’s been waiting for on a piece of newspaper she’s using to clean her windows. The pace increases then, as Plum formulates a plan to confront Lenworth and fight for the daughter she’s never met. —Sierra McCleary-Harris

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Jim Dwyer, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist and Voice of New York City, Dies at 63 https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/jim-dwyer-pulitzer-prize-winning-journalist-and-voice-of-new-york-city-dies-at-63/ Fri, 09 Oct 2020 14:44:44 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=141493 Above: In 1991, Fordham Magazine photographed Jim Dwyer at the Smith–9th Streets subway station in Brooklyn, with the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the background and an F train coming into view. (Detail from the cover of the summer 1991 issue)Jim Dwyer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times columnist, and 1979 Fordham graduate who was a critical conscience of New York City and a passionate celebrant of its residents, died from complications of lung cancer on October 8 at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. He was 63 years old.

“The angels have a bard. Fordham, and New York City, mourn the death of Jim Dwyer, who was truly the voice of average New Yorkers,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “One could write a book of several volumes extolling Jim’s virtues and his contributions to the city he loved and chronicled. He was a true son of Fordham, and of New York. Our hearts go out to Jim’s wife, Cathy, their daughters, Maura and Catherine, and their loved ones. I know the Fordham family joins me in prayer for them as they grieve Jim’s loss.”

Over more than four decades in journalism, Dwyer sought to tell the stories of everyday New Yorkers and give voice to those on society’s margins, including working-class immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and people convicted of crimes they did not commit. Through his reporting and writing, he worked to help the public understand the impact of major issues and events, most notably 9/11, as well as the inner workings of government agencies and how their decisions affect people’s lives.

“Dwyer had boundless energy, tremendous muscular intellect, and always great empathy for people,” said Thomas Maier, FCRH ’78, an award-winning journalist and author who worked with Dwyer at The Fordham Ram and New York Newsday. “He had a lot of brain, but he had an even bigger heart.”

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, FCRH ’79, one of Dwyer’s Fordham classmates, said his passing was “a great loss” for journalism and for the people of New York.

“He was … a great New Yorker and a powerful voice for many, many years,” Cuomo said. “Jim Dwyer was about the discovery of the truth, and he was brilliant. He was hard working. He also was a poet. He had … the ability to connect with New Yorkers, to take complicated subjects, find the truth, and then communicate it to New Yorkers in a way they understood.”

Jim Dwyer on the roof of his Upper Manhattan apartment building (Photo by Bud Glick)

Covering the Coronavirus

Last spring, in his final columns for The New York Times, Dwyer wrote about the coronavirus pandemic. In one piece, he illustrated how at the height of the pandemic in March, Elmhurst Hospital in Queens was overwhelmed, while “3,500 beds were free in other New York hospitals, some no more than 20 minutes from Elmhurst, according to state records.” In another piece, he delivered a farewell to an Upper Manhattan bar forced to shut its doors permanently: “Coogan’s was the promise of New York incarnate: multiethnic, friendly, welcoming, smart,” he wrote. “The premise of the business was the opposite of social distancing.”

And in a poetic final column, he wove together a tale of his own family history during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic with a chronicle of the thoughts and experiences of three New York City hospital workers responsible for feeding patients during the coronavirus pandemic. He related their ministrations to those of his great-grandmother Julia Neill Sullivan, who in her early 70s “marched pots of food from her hearth across a stony field on a remote peninsula along the west coast of Ireland” to keep her family alive when they were too sick to feed themselves.

“In times to come,” Dwyer wrote, “when we are all gone, people not yet born will walk in the sunshine of their own days because of what women and men did at this hour to feed the sick, to heal and to comfort.”

The Birth of a Big-City Journalist

Jim Dwyer was born and raised in Manhattan, the second of four sons of Irish immigrant parents. His mother, Mary, was a registered nurse at Bellevue Hospital, and his father, Philip, was a custodian in the New York City public school system.

His upbringing and education instilled in him a sense of justice from when he was young, his brother Patrick Dwyer, FCRH ’75, GSAS ’77, LAW ’80, said.

“I do credit Catholic school education for [his sense of justice],” he said. “He had a real conscience [and] he poked everybody else’s conscience. If you didn’t have a voice, he would figure out a way to make your story important to other people.”

He attended Loyola School, a Jesuit high school on the Upper East Side, where Patrick Dwyer said he got a taste for journalism, helping revive the student newspaper there. He said he recently received a call from the president of the Loyola School, who shared a story about a former president who complained about “what a pain” Jim Dwyer was for his work with the newspaper.

“Once a week, you know, [he would] get something out that was complaining about this injustice or that injustice, and what was a pretty fine prep school,” Patrick Dwyer said with a laugh.

He earned a full academic scholarship to Fordham, and initially intended to become a doctor.

In 1976, however, an encounter on Fordham Road changed the path of his life. Dwyer was driving when he witnessed a man having a seizure on the sidewalk. He and a few others stayed with the man and learned that he was a Vietnam veteran who had been having seizures since returning from the war.

Dwyer wrote about the experience for The Fordham Ram, and the article won a national award from the Society of Professional Journalists, due in part to his captivating lead paragraph: “Charlie Martinez, whoever he was, lay on the cold sidewalk in front of Dick Gidron’s used Cadillac place on Fordham Road. He had picked a fine afternoon to go into convulsions: the sky was sharp and cool, a fall day that made even Fordham Road look good.”

Bitten by the storytelling bug, Dwyer was helped along the path to a career in journalism by Raymond A. “Ray” Schroth, S.J., a communications professor at Fordham who became a lifelong mentor and friend, and even served as the family’s priest, presiding over weddings, baptisms, and funerals. Father Schroth, who died earlier this year, helped connect Dwyer with Maier, who was then an editor with the student newspaper.

“I would say it was probably my personal biggest contribution to journalism, getting Jim Dwyer onto The Fordham Ram,” Maier said with a laugh.

Jim Dwyer in the 1979 Fordham viewbook

By his senior year, Dwyer was editor-in-chief of The Ram.

“I lead a double life,” he said in a 1979 Fordham marketing brochure for prospective students. “I edit The Ram and I’m majoring in science. The newspaper takes 50 hours a week of my time, so if you ask me how I manage to survive academically, I couldn’t tell you.”

Jim O’Grady, FCRH ’82, a reporter, host, and editor at WNYC, joined The Ram as a staff writer during Dwyer’s senior year.

“I remember walking into the composing room for the newspaper—back then it was made by hand, and the strips of copy that would become columns in the newspaper were hanging on the wall, because they had to dry before they could be pasted onto the board,” he said. “So you can see people’s writing styles next to each other in these strips of paper. And we were all novices, so our writing styles ranged from inept to largely overwritten. But then you saw Dwyer’s strip of writing. And it was just different. It was crisp. It was polished. It was authoritative. And you knew this guy was going on to something big. This guy already got it.”

As an undergraduate, Dwyer began dating a Fordham College at Rose Hill classmate, Cathy Muir, and they were married at the University Church in 1981, with Father Schroth presiding. The year prior, Dwyer had earned a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he said he truly knew journalism was his calling.

“I would come back from an assignment, my notebooks full, ready to write, and a little smile would break across my lips,” he told Fordham Magazine in 1991.

Finding His Voice Underground

Dwyer got his professional start in journalism in New Jersey, working at The Hudson Dispatch, Elizabeth Daily Journal, and The Bergen Record before taking a job at New York Newsday, where he made the most of a new assignment—subway columnist. His goal was to tell stories of everyday people and how they were affected by the world’s largest transit system, and before long, the paper was billing him as “New York’s real transit authority.”

He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for “his compelling and compassionate columns about New York City.” He had also been part of a team that won the “spot news reporting” Pulitzer for its coverage of a 1991 Union Square subway derailment that killed five people.

Jim Dwyer on the summer 1991 cover of Fordham Magazine

Maier, a colleague of Dwyer’s at New York Newsday, said Dwyer’s reporting helped determine what really caused the derailment.

“It was Jim who had the sources and found out that the motorman had been drunk, and that was the front page of Newsday and that was what led to New York Newsday winning the Pulitzer Prize,” he said.

While at New York Newsday, Dwyer also became known for his work related to wrongful convictions, particularly the 1989 case of the Central Park Five, in which five Black and Latino teenagers were arrested for raping a white woman in the park. The teenagers confessed to committing the crime, but Dwyer pointed out that there was no forensic evidence linking them to the scene, and he questioned the police interrogation techniques that led to the confessions.

In one of his pieces on the case, referring to a police transcript, Dwyer wrote, “No New York jury is going to be convinced that this confession contains the language of a New York kid.” A jury convicted the teens, nonetheless. Four of them served more than six years in juvenile facilities, and one, tried as an adult, served more than 13 years in state prisons. In 2002, a convicted rapist confessed to committing the crime. DNA evidence linked him to the scene, and the teens’ convictions were ultimately vacated.

In the 2012 documentary film The Central Park Five, Dwyer reflected on the circumstances that led to the teens’ wrongful imprisonment. “This was a proxy war being fought,” he said. “And these young men were the proxies for all kinds of other agendas. And the truth and the reality and justice were not part of it.”

Patrick Dwyer said his brother pursued stories the same way he played sports in high school.

“As an athlete in high school, he was a bull,” he said. “And that’s pretty much the way he did his journalism. He would keep asking the questions until he got the truthful answer.”

Jim Dwyer with his family, celebrating his Pulitzer Prize in 1995. (Tony Jerome/Newsday)

Chronicling Personal Stories of Heroism and Lessons Learned from 9/11

After New York Newsday closed in 1995, Dwyer was a columnist for the Daily News, before joining The New York Times as a reporter in May 2001.

Four months later, he helped shape the paper’s coverage of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. He wrote a series of stories about objects from Ground Zero, like a squeegee a group of people used to escape from an elevator just before the south tower collapsed. And he worked with fellow reporter Kevin Flynn to chronicle in painstaking detail what happened in the twin towers from the moment the first plane hit the north tower until both towers had fallen. Their work, based on hundreds of interviews with survivors, was published as 102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers (Times Books, 2005), one of six books he would author or co-author.

In 102 Minutes, Dwyer and Flynn “stitched together a narrative that’s as compelling and suspenseful as it is excruciatingly sad,” Fordham Magazine wrote in 2005. They also documented failures of communication and missteps made by the city and the towers’ developers that came at a terrible cost on that tragic day.

Dwyer credited his science studies at Fordham with helping him tell stories that combined an understanding of technical concepts with a profound sense of human drama.

“If you’re not interested in the engineering of things … you become a servant of whatever people tell you is going on,” he told Fordham Magazine in 2015. “You’re at the mercy of experts.”

Beth Knobel, Ph.D., associate professor and associate chair for graduate studies in the communication and media studies department at Fordham, said that one of Dwyer’s biggest assets as a journalist was an ability to keep his subjects as the focus of his stories.

“He managed to keep himself almost invisible. While so many journalists sometimes make stories about themselves, Jim always kept his focus on the subject,” she said. “The way he used language and imagery spawned a lot of admiration and more than a little jealousy. I wish I had a dollar for every time I read something he wrote and thought, ‘Wow, how does someone put words together like that, with such precision and power?’”

A Commitment to Journalism That Saves and Salvages Lives

Kevin Doyle, FCRH ’78, met Dwyer when the two were undergraduates at Fordham, and they became lifelong friends, each eventually asking the other to serve as godfather to one of their children. “I was a dabbler in journalism [at Fordham]; he was a master of it even then,” said Doyle, a lawyer who has defended death-row inmates in Alabama and who led New York’s Capital Defender Office from 1995 to 2007, when the death penalty was abolished in the state.

He said that Dwyer used the “About New York” column in The Times as a platform to elevate people and causes that he felt needed attention.

“He understood the power that he had, by dint of his journalistic charge, but it never went to his head,” Doyle said. “It was always a tool rather than a prize for him.”

New York Newsday columnist Jim Dwyer holds his daughter Catherine as he celebrates winning the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1995. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

Doyle pointed to Dwyer’s 2012 story about Rory Staunton, a 12-year-old boy who died of sepsis, as an example of journalism that saved “thousands of lives.” Staunton went to NYU Langone Medical Center a few days after diving for a basketball and cutting his arm on a gym floor. He was feverish and vomiting, and he was discharged without being tested for sepsis. Within three days, he died. His parents, in part through sharing their son’s story with Dwyer, embarked on a campaign that eventually led New York to order hospitals “to quickly identify signs of sepsis and begin treatment.”

Five years after the initial story, Dwyer followed up and found that from 2011, before the regulations were implemented, to 2015, 4,727 fewer people died from sepsis.

“Jim wrote about this and as a result now they do [early testing], and you know, it’s saved many, many lives,” Doyle said. “He both saved lives and he salvaged lives with exoneration work.”

In late 2018, Dwyer returned to Fordham to celebrate the 100th anniversary of The Fordham Ram. The editors of the paper had invited him to serve as the keynote speaker at a centennial dinner held in Bepler Commons on the Rose Hill campus.

Jim Dwyer speaks in 2018 at the celebration of the 100th anniversary of The Fordham Ram. (Photo by Bruce Gilbert)

“If you’re a news reporter, you need to hope for humility,” Dwyer said that night. “And own your own mistakes.”

Knobel said that Dwyer’s address that night was a “love letter” to journalism.

“As in his reporting and column, Jim made it clear to the alums and young reporters there that journalism is really about telling other people’s stories and is one of the greatest ways to spend one’s life,” she said. “The talk was charming and self-effacing and powerful, just like Jim’s work.”

A Generous Colleague, Friend, and Mentor

Maier said that Dwyer was willing to help fellow journalists, whether by recommending a source for a story or even sending a story their way. He recalled that about two years ago, he got a call from an attorney representing a man named Keith Bush, who had been convicted of the murder of a Long Island teen in 1976, but always said he was innocent.

Maier worked on the story for about a year, publishing a 16,000-word investigative report on the case and putting together a documentary on it—all without telling Dwyer, because he didn’t want his friend and former colleague to write about it first.

“I reported out the whole story, that’s almost an entire year, fearful that Dwyer would scoop me on the story for The New York Times,” he said.

Only after Bush was exonerated, on May 22, 2019, did Maier find out that Dwyer was the one who told the lawyer to call him.

Doyle said that outside of work, Dwyer was also known as a loyal, caring, dedicated friend.

“He was always eager to help—he’d drop whatever he was doing. He was a problem solver, inside his family and to his friends,” Doyle said.

Three Ram editors-in-chief (from left): Louis D. Boccardi, FCRH ’58, former CEO of the Associated Press; Theresa Schliep, FCRH ’19; and Jim Dwyer. (Photo by Bruce Gilbert)

O’Grady said that while Dwyer’s passing is a loss for journalism and Fordham, his work and teaching live on in the young journalists he mentored.

“We’re losing a legendary reporter, who was still in his prime, but who spent countless hours mentoring future generations of journalists,” he said. “He’s still with us in the many Fordham students he spoke to and inspired, and people all across the profession who he helped and encouraged.”

Patrick Dwyer said that his brother and his voice will be missed.

“We were extraordinarily proud of him,” he said. “I spoke to a friend yesterday … and I said, ‘You know what, I actually feel that we got it right. The esteem we held him in was apparently shared by everybody else.’”

He is survived by his wife, Cathy Dwyer, FCRH ’79; his two daughters, Maura Dwyer and Catherine Elizabeth Dwyer; and his three brothers, Patrick Dwyer, Phil Dwyer, FCRH ’80, and John Dwyer.

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Fordham Community Mourns the Loss of WNYC’s Richard Hake https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/alumni-news/fordham-community-mourns-the-loss-of-wnycs-richard-hake/ Tue, 28 Apr 2020 14:04:09 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=135287 Richard Hake. Courtesy of WNYCConsummate journalist. Fearless in front of a live mic. Accessible and approachable. Warm and generous.

Those are just some of the ways colleagues and friends remembered Richard Hake, who died of natural causes on Friday at his home in Manhattan at the age of 51.

Hake, a 1991 Fordham College at Rose Hill graduate and a member of the advisory board for Fordham’s master’s degree program in public media, worked at WNYC for nearly 30 years. He was the host of WNYC’s Morning Edition, as well as a reporter and producer, and his work was featured on both national and local NPR programs such as Weekend Edition and All Things Considered.

“This is a hard punch in the gut,” said Chuck Singleton, general manager of WFUV, Fordham’s public media station. “Rich was one of my early students in my first role as FUV news director [in the late 1980s]. … He walked in the door and instantly decided what he wanted to do with his life—become a public radio journalist.”

Hake did just that. A New Yorker through and through, he was born in the Bronx, where his father, Richard James Hake, was a New York City police detective; his mother, Joy Mekeland, was a clerical worker and secretary. He began working at WNYC even before he graduated from Fordham in 1991.

Once at WNYC, Hake became known for “neighborhood and people portraits” and taking “listeners to the places they normally wouldn’t visit,” according to his bio.

He received multiple awards from the Associated Press Broadcasters Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the New York Press Club, particularly for his feature and documentary work, including his 1997 piece Coney Island Cyclone Anniversary, which he recorded while riding the world-famous roller coaster, describing the panorama for listeners during the ascent—the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and the Manhattan skyline, the Atlantic Ocean and the D train—before letting out a joyful scream during the ride’s 85-foot drop.

John Schaefer, FCRH ’80, host of the WNYC shows Soundcheck and New Sounds, remembered Hake’s love of the theater by replaying a piece Hake recorded in 2012 with actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein during a cab ride to the opening night performance of Fierstein’s musical Newsies.

But arts and culture features weren’t Hake’s only specialty. He also excelled at bringing breaking news stories to listeners with accuracy, clarity, and equanimity—from the September 11 attacks to Superstorm Sandy to the coronavirus pandemic. He was known for putting reporters and others at ease to create easy-to-understand, in-depth interviews. And as morning show host, he liked to say that he “woke up New York.”

“In his bones and in his heart, Richard cared about serving the public good. … He cared about getting it right, and he loved what he did,” WNYC reporter Jim O’Grady, FCRH ’82, said in his radio obituary for Hake.

As recently as last Wednesday, Hake had been hosting Morning Edition from his apartment near Mount Sinai Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He was no stranger to broadcasting in difficult times—when the WNYC generator failed during the 2003 blackout, he shared the news by telephone receiver and flashlight. But colleagues said he missed the camaraderie of the newsroom in recent weeks, as the coronavirus crisis has kept staff from their office.

“He was 28 years at the station and had the highest profile job in the building, but he talked to every newsroom intern, gave advice to new hires, and greeted guards in the lobby by name,” O’Grady said in the obituary, noting that Hake also served as a negotiator for the union representing WNYC employees. “His fellow workers often said, ‘He wanted you to know your worth.’”

The Humble Mentor

Julianne Welby, FCRH ’93, senior editor at WNYC, said that she attributes her career to Hake. She first crossed paths with him when she started working in the WFUV newsroom as a Fordham undergraduate. Chuck Singleton told her, “‘Go hang out with that guy, he’ll show you what to do,’ and it was Richard Hake,” she said, smiling. “[Hake] showed me how to write a newscast and he had to run back and forth because he was on the air.”

A few months after she started writing Hake’s newscasts, she got a call that changed her career path. Hake was sick, and she was asked to fill in for him on the air. “That was kind of an epiphany for me—I could be on the air. And so I say that Richard launched my career, because not only was he teaching me newscasting from that first day I was at WFUV, but he kind of inadvertently stepped aside and showed me the path for being a public media broadcaster,” Welby said.

Years later, Hake would help her launch the next phase in her career. “Richard was the one who opened the door for me at WNYC” when she joined the station in 2008, she said. “He lobbied really hard for me. I would not be in my job at WNYC without his advocacy.”

Annmarie Fertoli, FCRH ’06, now a digital audio journalist at The Wall Street Journal, worked alongside Hake during her time at WNYC from 2010 to 2017, and said he was always willing to help young journalists.

“Richard definitely was an enormous talent, but he didn’t come off that way,” she said. “He was an approachable person, he made himself accessible. … There were a lot of young producers who work on the Morning Edition team that he really looked out for.”

Welby said that Hake, with his humility, was the perfect mentor for young journalists.

“I’ve seen interns and young producers who just speak the world of Richard for making them feel so welcome,” she said.

A Man for Others

Beth Knobel, Ph.D., professor of communication and media studies at Fordham, recalled meeting Hake for the first time soon after she joined the Fordham faculty in 2007.

“If you were a public radio junkie, the way I am, and you get to meet someone like Richard Hake, it’s almost like a rock and roll fan getting to meet Mick Jagger,” she said.

Knobel said that Hake was a huge part of the Fordham community and “never said no” to volunteering to come speak to students or serve on a scholarship committee.

“When I saw the news about Richard on Saturday … I just burst out into tears because Richard was such a meaningful person for our journalism community at Fordham and for the New York, tri-state area,” she said.

George Bodarky, FCRH ’93, the news director at WFUV, remembered Hake as someone always willing to help out and mentor Fordham students.

“Richard was a consummate journalist and a kind and generous person. He never hesitated when asked to serve as a guest speaker in my journalism classes or to talk with the young journalists at WFUV,” Bodarky said. “I will sorely miss him and his trusted voice on the airwaves of WNYC.”

Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., chair of the communication and media studies department, said that she’ll always think of him when she’s having her morning coffee and listening to the news.

“I’m going to miss him every morning, I’m going to miss him—sometimes he would inject these wry little comments when he would [read the news at]the top of the hour, and I would sometimes say to myself, ‘Oh Richard,’” she said with a smile.

A Voice for New Yorkers

Knobel said that Hake was someone who had a special connection with listeners.

“When people hear people on the radio and see people on television, they kind of feel like they know them,” she said. “Richard was someone who millions of New Yorkers felt that they knew, felt that he was a part of their daily routine, and he was so good at what he did—and I don’t think he understood how good he was. It came so naturally to him. He was just an incredible journalist.”

Singleton said that Hake was able to develop that relationship with listeners because he excelled both in narrative storytelling and breaking news.

“Rich had a huge appetite for the kind of sound-rich, narrative storytelling NPR is known for, and he was also fearless in front of a live mic,” he said. “Those two talents aren’t always found in the same body—honing a carefully produced piece and flying by the seat of your pants when the clock says you need to go back to network programming in three seconds.”

In a message to the WFUV team on Saturday, Singleton recalled a time when he invited Hake and other young journalists over for dinner, and Hake, who had an “enormous appetite for New York City history and culture,” parked himself “next to a bookcase full of New York classics” by Joseph Mitchell, Robert Caro, Jim Dwyer, FCRH ’79, and others.

“He said, ‘I want to move in and just live next to this bookcase for a while,’” Singleton said. “I think Rich climbed inside those covers and is still in there somewhere.”

Hake is survived by his parents and his stepfather; his brothers, Ryan and Jack; and a sister, Christine Hake.

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