“Jerry was known as one of the most honest and wise men in international business,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, in an announcement to the University community about Corrigan’s passing. “He always said his Jesuit education equipped him to work through thorny finance questions and make good decisions. Thanks to him, our students and alumni are better prepared as well.”

Corrigan accepted a position as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1968, when he was a doctoral candidate at Fordham. He had taught at the University the year before, and although he planned to return to a career in teaching, he instead rose through the ranks of some of the country’s most prominent economic institutions.

In 1979, Corrigan left the New York Fed—where he had become vice president for planning and domestic open market operations—to serve as special assistant to Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker in Washington, D.C. The following year, he was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, where he served until 1984.

On January 1, 1985, Corrigan returned to the New York Fed as chief executive officer and vice chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee. When the stock market crashed on October 19, 1987—a day that would become known as Black Monday—Corrigan played a pivotal role in getting the market back on its feet by convincing bank lenders to provide liquidity for the financial system.

“Let me tell you, unless you’ve been there, you can’t begin to understand how difficult the decision-making is in those circumstances,” Corrigan told Fordham Magazine in 2009. “You have imperfect information. You have very little time. And you know that inaction is action.”

After nine years leading the New York Fed, Corrigan moved to the private sector in 1994, when he became a managing director at Goldman Sachs. He was named a partner at the firm two years later. Until his retirement in 2016, he wore many hats as a senior member of then-CEO Lloyd Blankfein’s executive team. Corrigan was chair of the company’s two deposit-gathering banks in New York and London, and he co-chaired several committees tasked with analyzing risk, including the Global Risk Management Committee.

In 2008, as a member of the firm’s Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group at Goldman Sachs, he helped develop what many saw as a blueprint for global financial system reform, and as co-chair of Goldman’s Business Standards Committee, he worked to strengthen relationships with clients who were reeling from the financial crisis.

In his 2014 memoir, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner described Corrigan “as a kind of John Madden of finance—big, gruff, old-school, a well-respected student of the game, with a similarly animated rhythm to his commentary.”

When Corrigan retired, Blankfein and Gary Cohn, then president of Goldman Sachs, wrote in a companywide memo, “We have benefited enormously from his leadership in the global financial community, experience as a central banker, extensive knowledge of the complexities of financial systems and exceptional judgment.”

An Ardent Champion of a Fordham Jesuit Education

Corrigan was born on June 13, 1941, in Waterbury, Connecticut, to an innkeeper and a librarian. He received his bachelor’s degree from Fairfield University in 1963, at which point he began his graduate studies at Fordham, earning master’s and doctoral degrees in economics in 1965 and 1971, respectively. While studying at Fordham, Corrigan lived off campus, in a walk-up on 183rd Street and Park Avenue in the Bronx, and balanced his classes with a job bagging groceries at an A&P on Webster Avenue.

At Fordham, he developed a strong bond with Joseph Cammarosano, Ph.D., an economics professor and administrator at Fordham who had served as an economist in the U.S. Bureau of the Budget. Together, they worked on an economic development study of the Bronx while Corrigan completed his master’s degree.

“He was a pied piper,” Cammarosano said of his former student, who recruited and led 50 students who took part in the study, knocking on doors in neighborhoods around the Fordham campus to get information. “Jerry was a very charismatic young man, and he had a can-do attitude. … Before I was through half a sentence, Jerry would know exactly what I wanted.”

In a 2009 interview with Fordham Magazine, Cammarosano also noted Corrigan’s humility, saying, “Jerry is a Jesuit product. He’s not one to promote himself openly. He promotes himself through what he does.” Cammarosano also remembered Corrigan’s competitive spirit, including his “sharp elbows under the basketball hoop.”

For his part, Corrigan credited his Jesuit education, both at Fordham and Fairfield, as instrumental to the critical thinking skills he brought to his career.

“The philosophy of education that’s been associated with the Jesuits for hundreds of years puts great emphasis on liberal arts and humanities,” Corrigan said. “But it puts even greater emphasis on simple, straightforward propositions of trying to teach people how to think. That’s the genius of it.”

And while Corrigan did not pursue a career in teaching, he stayed connected to Fordham in many ways and was one of its most ardent champions.

A member of the University’s Board of Trustees from 1987 to 1989, he made several generous gifts to benefit Fordham students and faculty. In 2000, he established the E. Gerald Corrigan, Ph.D., Endowed Scholarship Fund, which provides support to full-time Fordham students who demonstrate both academic excellence and financial need, with preference given to minority students. Seven years later, he made another gift to further support the scholarship fund and to create an endowed professorship, the Corrigan Chair in International Business and Finance at the Gabelli School of Business.

Along with the scholarship fund and endowed professorship, Corrigan’s name lives on at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, where the Lowenstein Center’s 12th floor was officially christened the E. Gerald Corrigan Conference Center in a 2013 ceremony. He was inducted into the Fordham University Hall of Honor in 2012, and one year later, he received the Fordham Founder’s Award, given to people whose “personal and professional lives reflect the highest aspirations of the University’s defining traditions, as an institution dedicated to wisdom and learning in the service of others.”

In addition to his gifts to the University, Corrigan was generous with his time, coming back to campus often to share his experience with students. In April 2005, he spoke to more than 120 students, alumni, and faculty of the Department of Economics. He delivered the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Gannon Lecture in 2006. And in a 2010 lecture titled “Leadership: Making the Right Things Happen,” Corrigan spoke to a Fordham audience about the criteria that make for truly great leaders.

“They recognize and embrace the proposition that there is a time when the public interest must come first—before the natural and appropriate responsibility to further the interests of shareholders and other private concerns,” Corrigan said.

“They understand that there are principles that should never be breached. They have the courage of their convictions and the drive to do what is right for its own sake. Lastly, they are men and women of superior integrity.”

‘Working Toward the Good of the World’

In addition to his devotion to the Fordham community, Corrigan supported many other institutions. He was a trustee of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, from 1981 to 1986, and he served two terms on the board of Fairfield University before being named a trustee emeritus of his undergraduate alma mater. In 2004, he established the Ernesto Zedillo Scholarship at Fairfield, and in 2007, he endowed a new professorship at the university, the Corrigan-Minehan Professorship in Political Science, named after him and his wife, Cathy E. Minehan, who served as president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston from 1994 to 2007.

He also funded scholarships at the University of Rochester, and among his and Minehan’s other philanthropic gifts was one to Massachusetts General Hospital in 2012 that supports innovation and research in the Corrigan Women’s Heart Health Program and throughout the Corrigan Minehan Heart Center. Along with Minehan, Corrigan was a trustee of the Challenger Foundation (formerly known as the Corrigan Foundation), which supports education, health and human services, and research in international economics and finance.

Corrigan was a member of numerous committees and associations, including the Bretton Woods Committee, the Group of Thirty, the American Economic Association, the American Management Association, the Joint Council on Economic Education, the Council of Foreign Relations (which he led as director from 1993 to 1995), and the Economic Club of New York. He was also named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In a life filled with professional success and accolades, those who knew Corrigan point out his love for quiet moments with his family or while fly fishing and golfing, as well as his honesty and grounded nature.

“Jerry was a person who solved problems,” Minehan said. “He would step into a situation, and his clear way of thinking—which I know he attributed to his Jesuit education—was always the gold star in terms of how to get through a crisis and how to prevent a crisis from happening again.”

She added that the Jesuit focus on the common good was something he took to heart.

“Being all about working toward the good of the world—that really spoke volumes to Jerry, and that’s what his life was about.”

Along with Minehan, Corrigan is survived by two children from a previous marriage, Elizabeth Corrigan and Karen Corrigan Tate; two stepchildren, Brian Minehan and Melissa Minehan Walters; a sister, Patricia Carlascio; and five grandchildren.

A private funeral Mass for close family and friends will be held on Monday, May 23, at 10 a.m.  and will be livestreamed on YouTube. A celebration of his life will be held in New York City at a later date.

“Dr. C,” as students and colleagues knew him, served as a professor of economics, the University’s first faculty senate president, and an executive vice president during his 60-year-plus tenure.

“Joe was the beating heart of Fordham. He was supremely competent, tough-minded, and unfailingly kind and generous. He cared for the Fordham community deeply and was intensely loyal to the institution and its faculty, students, and staff,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

“Until the end, he was deeply involved in University life, and kept in touch with us as much as possible in his gentle but forceful way. We will all miss his sage advice and goodwill.”

Over many years and many leadership roles, Cammarosano contributed to major changes in the University’s finances, governance, and physical expansion.

He enrolled at Fordham as a freshman in 1941 and used to joke that he “only missed the first 100 years” of the University’s history. In 1975, on the occasion of his stepping down as executive vice president to return to teaching, James Finlay, S.J., then the University’s president, said, “If Fordham is alive and flourishing today, it is due to no one more than to Joe.”

Cammarosano was born on March 12, 1923, and raised in Mount Vernon, New York. Although he enrolled at Fordham in 1941, World War II interrupted his studies, and he served as a member of the Army Signal Corps until 1945, when he returned to Fordham. He graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1947 with a degree in economics and went to work as a U.S. customs inspector. After getting a master’s degree at NYU, he returned to Fordham, where he began teaching economics in 1955. He earned a doctorate from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the subject in 1956.

Leadership During Turbulent Years

In 1961, he joined the Kennedy administration as an economist in the U.S. Bureau of the Budget, then moved on to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. When he returned to Fordham a few years later, he was elected as the first president of the newly formed faculty senate in 1965.

In 1968—a period of financial turmoil for the University—he was named executive vice president. He was one of the key figures in bringing Fordham back from the brink of bankruptcy. That year, the University was operating at $2 million deficit; by 1970, it had been transformed into a $2 million surplus, thanks in part to the advent of Bundy Aid (support for private colleges from New York state), the opening of what became Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and Cammarosano’s fiscal discipline.

Roger Wines, Ph.D., FCRH ’54, a professor emeritus of history at Fordham, served on Cammarosano’s budget committee at the time and worked with him as a member of the faculty senate.

“His committee … was told to cut the University budget 20% in three weeks,” Wines said at a 2015 dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Faculty Senate. “He succeeded in meeting that goal, freezing salaries and hiring, slashing administrative costs and a number of positions. Not one classroom teacher was fired. Financial crisis was averted.”

Wines said Cammarosano also played a central role in helping the University make the difficult transition from Jesuit oversight to governance by a board of trustees with several lay members.

“Joe played an effective central role, because he gained the trust of the faculty, of the Jesuit community, and the lay adviser members of the Board of Trustees,” he said.

“That trust was vital in guiding the University through the tumultuous years 1968 to 70, years when the University faced financial bankruptcy, student unrest, religious reform currents relating to the Vatican II Council, and protests against the Vietnam War.”

In an interview with Fordham Magazine in 2015, Cammarosano recalled how his office was occupied by students several times in 1969 and 1970 as protests against the Vietnam War roiled the country.

“The students took over the switchboard at one point, and when someone called for me, they said, ‘No, he’s no longer with us, we fired him.’ I almost wished they had fired me!” he said, laughing.

Monsignor Thomas J. Shelley, Ph.D., professor emeritus of theology and the author of Fordham: A History of the Jesuit University of New York: 1841–2003 (Fordham University Press, 2016), noted that Father Finlay was not engaging in hyperbole when he told the Jesuits’ Superior General, Father Pedro Arrupe, S.J., in 1975 that Cammarosano was “the person mainly responsible for the survival of the University.”

“At a time when we had so much trouble with finances and campus demonstrations, he was a rock of strength,” he said.

“I think it’s true that was the worst financial crisis the University ever experienced. It was a time when the South Bronx was burning, and it had made it up to Fordham Road, so that was another factor.”

A Dynamic Teacher with Boundless Energy

In 1976, Cammarosano was honored at the University’s faculty convocation as an “exacting taskmaster” who earned his students’ appreciation by preparing “meticulously” and lecturing “dynamically.” Cammarosano served as executive vice president twice; the second time was to assist the newly appointed president of the University, Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., who took office in 1984. But he returned to teaching once again.

E. Gerald Corrigan, GSAS ’65, ’71, a managing director of Goldman Sachs and a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, studied with Cammarosano during the 1960s, helping him produce economic studies of the Bronx and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“He’s a dynamo,” Corrigan told Fordham Magazine, recalling how his mentor would deliver “two-hour lectures nonstop at a fevered pitch.”

In 2017, when Cammarosano—then in his 62nd year as a member of the faculty—received an honorary degree at the University’s 172nd Commencement, his citation noted “the personal attention that he gives his students in the classical Jesuit model of cura personalis.”

Dominick Salvatore, Ph.D., a distinguished professor of economics who first met Cammarosano when he joined the economics faculty in 1971, remembered him as a gentleman, scholar, and all-around wonderful human being.

“The greatest compliment that students could pay to me was for them to tell me I reminded them of Joe Cammarosano,” he said.

“The students loved him and he was a rigorous teacher. He demanded things but was always jovial. I’m no young spring chicken myself, but very often I had to remind myself that I was talking to an over-90-year-old person because it was so easy to assume he was 65 or 70,” he said.

Mary Burke, Ph.D., a senior lecturer of economics, said that when one spoke to Cammarosano, he was so full of life and energy, one could be forgiven for assuming he’d be around forever.

“His office is next to mine, and every day he had classes, his office door would be open. He would be there until 5, 6, or 7 p.m. As long as there was a student who wanted to ask a question or just talk, he would be there for them,” she said, noting that conversations related to the Yankees could go on especially long.

“I met Dr. Cammarosano when I was a student. Now, I have known him as a mentor, advisor, and a dear friend.”

Cammarosano continued to teach well after many peers had retired, most recently in the fall of 2018. He submitted his formal letter of retirement in February. Matthew McCrane, GABELLI ’19, took Introduction to Macroeconomics with him, and recalled the boundless energy that belied his age.

“It was a privilege to have been taught by someone who has taught so many alumni before me. It was like I was experiencing a staple part of Fordham. In a way, it’s like I can connect with much older alumni as a result of having had him in class,” he said.

Making a Mark as an Administrator

Stephie Mukherjee, assistant dean and director of Fordham’s Higher Education Opportunity Program at Rose Hill (HEOP), called Cammarosano a “giant” and “Father of Fordham” for his outsized influence on the University. He was responsible for bringing HEOP to Fordham when the state program was created in 1969, and on numerous occasions, he stepped in to save it when funding was threatened, she said.

“He believed in the students, he believed in the underprivileged, he believed in people, and I’m grateful that he believed in me. He knew that this job is my passion, it’s not just a job,” she said.

“He was such a kindhearted, warm, wonderful person. He touched so many people’s lives.”

Sheldon Marcus, Ed.D., professor of educational leadership at the Graduate School of Education (GSE), recalls trying to get funds approved by Cammarosano in the 1970s to reimburse an administrator for weekend hours spent working. The paperwork for the request came back with Cammarosano’s bold script: “Rejected.”

When he went to see Cammarosano in his office, Marcus was greeted with more colorful language that seemed to indicate his case was lost. But then Cammarosano asked for the papers back, scratched out “rejected,” and added, “approved.”

Marcus said he started to leave, “happy to walk out of his office with my head still on.” But Cammarosano said, “Wait a minute.” He put his arm around Marcus and said, “Shelly, you’ve been working too hard, go home this weekend and don’t do another thing; get some rest.”

“He was just the most humane guy behind that tough rough exterior,” said Marcus. “It has been a pleasure to be at Fordham because of people like him; he just made it family.”

Family Above All

Cammarosano’s daughter Nancy Hartzband, FCRH ’77, LAW ’83, said her father was very connected to his own family, including his five grandchildren.

“I think it was such a good relationship because he dealt with young people his whole life, which he loved. He knew them one on one, he guided them, he was a very important figure in each of their lives,” she said.

“He set the bar really high for all of us in terms of morals. Whenever I’m in doubt, I ask, ‘What would my dad do?”

She too marveled at his stamina, noting that two years ago he published An Overview of the Development of Economic Thought (Lexington Books, 2018), the last of his three books about the ideas of economist John Maynard Kenyes.

“I mean, who does that? At that age, I’ll be happy to be sitting in my rocking chair,” she said laughing.

“But that was him. He always wanted to learn, he always wanted to do something new.”

Cammarosano still had an apartment in his native Mount Vernon, she said, but had recently moved in with his son in Island Park, New York.

She said her father was a devout Catholic who maintained his connection to Fordham for eight decades because he believed strongly in its Jesuit mission.

“We always knew we were very special because of the person he was at the University,” she said.

“He was just an incredible presence in our lives. He was almost larger than life.”

Cammarosano is survived by Hartzband and her three children as well as his son, Joseph R. Cammarosano, FCRH ’78, LAW ’81, Joseph’s wife, Mary, and their two children. Two of his grandchildren are alumni as well: Danielle Cammarosano, GABELLI ’19, and Alex Hartzband, LAW ’15. Cammarosano’s wife, Rosalie, died in 1991 and his son Louis T. Cammarosano, FCRH ’74, LAW ’78, died in 2014.

He was interred at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York, after a private funeral service. The University will also hold a memorial mass in his honor at a date in the future.

To hear Cammarosano talk about working and living in the Bronx over the years, listen to his interview with the Bronx Italian American History Initiative.

—Tom Stoeker contributed reporting.

It was 50 years ago that Zizzo helped lead the Fordham club football team to a national championship as co-captain, helping revive a sport that was a Fordham hallmark in the days of Vince Lombardi and the Seven Blocks of Granite but that had been absent at Fordham from 1954 to 1964. The 1968 club team’s victory gave Fordham football a brighter future—contributing to the University’s decision to bring back the sport at a varsity level in 1970 and laying the groundwork for more recent successes, including a Patriot League title in 2014.

At the annual Football Dinner in the week leading up to Homecoming on September 22, Fordham will be honoring the 1968 team. At least 35 of the 40 surviving team members are planning to attend.

“Keeping the team together has been a big thing in my life,” says Zizzo, a member of Fordham’s Board of Trustees since 2013. “It sounds strange, but I feel an obligation to do it, but I also want to do it. The striving together and relying on one another as a team has kept us together for so many years, so this is a great thing for us.”

Zizzo attributes the team’s triumphs and enduring camaraderie to their ability to rely on each other and put the Rams’ success over any one player’s individual ego. “No matter how good you are,” he says, “your team cannot excel unless the other players are excelling at the same time.”

In some ways, Zizzo says, those team dynamics reflect the strengths of Fordham’s rigorous Jesuit education, which, he says, “is about expanding your horizons and realizing there’s a whole world you have to be responsive to, that when you act, you act not only for yourself but on the basis of all humanity, to help others. You can’t be isolated and looking only to yourself.”

These are lessons that Zizzo, a retired real estate attorney, says served him well in life and in his profession. “You have to be able to work together as a group,” he says. “Everybody always asks how we should divide the pie up. But the better question is how do we grow the pie? It’s the growing of the pie that leads to bigger success, and you can’t do that with one individual’s effort.”

Last year, Zizzo joined forces with John Costantino, GABELLI ’67, LAW ’70, and John Lumelleau, FCRH ’74, to launch the ongoing Football Office Challenge to help raise funds for the renovation of the Fordham football offices. “The new offices will help recruiting and the operation, experience, and success of the current team,” he explains. “And the team’s success could enhance the face of Fordham to the rest of the world.”

It’s that larger goal that has driven him to not only stay involved with Fordham football but to continue participating in other alumni activities, like his trip to the Dordogne region of France with the Alumni Travel Program a few years ago.

“I mean, I enjoy the game and want to see football excel,” Zizzo says. “But the larger importance of football is to support the identity of Fordham and help people realize that Fordham is an important place to be.”

Fordham Five

What are you most passionate about? 
Other than the health, well-being, and happiness of my family (which is by far the most important thing in my life), my most passionate goal is to see Fordham University climb to the prominence it deserves—that is, to be considered one of the best universities in the country. As a relatively poor person from a relatively poor family who received a scholarship from Fordham, I appreciate that Fordham has done more than any prominent university I know to pursue its mission to educate all levels of our society in the intellectual rigors of the Jesuit tradition with a focus on the highest human values.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? 
There are two pieces of advice that have helped me lead my life and helped me professionally. First, my immediate family impressed upon me the importance of working as hard as I could in everything I did. Second, two of my professional mentors showed me through both their words and actions that being honest and never lying would lead me to a successful and rewarding career.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
By far the most incredible place in New York City is Greenwich Village. The vibe is tremendous: winding tree-lined streets, a diverse population, local theater productions, other cultural amenities, incredible restaurants and shops. To me, it’s the greatest area in the greatest city in the world. Maybe because it resembles New York City so much, Rome is my favorite city in the world. It has many of the great qualities of New York with two big pluses: First, Roman traditions and philosophy are prominent in Western history and are ingrained in many of us. Second, the people of Rome are as warm and welcoming as any I have encountered.

Name a book has had a lasting influence on you.
Atlas Shrugged has made a lasting impression on me. I have read it twice: once as a relatively young adult and again about 15 years ago. The basic principle of the book is that people must be given the incentive of possible profit and success in order to reap the rewards of the world and to help protect and support the family; I have many examples of this being true. I believe the book also makes it clear that the drive to success and security does not necessarily interfere with a person’s desire to help others, especially those that are willing to contribute to society or those who are not able to work.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
I have nothing but admiration for Joseph Cammarosano [professor emeritus of economics]. He has the unique ability to be helpful and warm, and he is a professional educator who is both an intellectual and a leader. I remember him as a great teacher and a great source of knowledge. He also greatly contributed to the University in two ways: His even personality and desire to help Fordham made him excellent at being a practical and successful liaison between the administration and the faculty in the 1960s, and in helping Fordham overcome financial struggles in the late ’60s and early ’70s.

“Where we see problems, it is best to see opportunities. People need experiences of salvation because we live in a turbulent world,” said his Eminence Óscar Andrés Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga, S.D.B., archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, delivering the keynote address (full remarks here) to an estimated crowd of 20,000 gathered at the Rose Hill campus for the University’s 172nd commencement.

“You have a whole world to discover. But you also face new risks: The one who’s paralyzed in front of risks loses opportunities.”

Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga, a key adviser to Pope Francis and a robust Catholic voice for addressing global poverty and social injustice, was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters during the ceremony on Edwards Parade. He encouraged the 5,077 graduates to “be present in public debate, in all the areas where humanity is at issue,” and to make God’s mercy and tenderness visible for every creature.

To be spiritual is to live life according to the Holy Spirit, he said, through “transcendent humanism,” a seemingly paradoxical tradition of Christian mysticism that is centered on both the search for God through Jesus, and on human experience in the search for fraternal love.

“Transcendental humanism acknowledges that the experience of God is inseparable from commitment to all that is human,” he said, including “the preferential love for the poor and the suffering.” He encouraged the graduates, therefore, to face today’s fragmented, polarized society “committed to work with courage and heroism for the cause of the human being.”

“Before a culture of violence and death this is what we propose: The culture of good.”

A Call to Live Well

In his address to those graduating in the University’s Dodransbicentennial year, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, sounded a cautionary note, acknowledging that the world today is difficult, discouraging, challenging, and often destructive. As Fordham students and New Yorkers “by birth or by adoption,” the Class of 2017 has been personally affected by current events.

“You learned that when a rock is thrown in the Gaza Strip, a heart is broken in a neighborhood in Brooklyn, and when a bomb goes off on the London tube, we shudder on the Number 4 line at Grand Central,” he said.

“When children starve in a refugee camp anywhere in the world, the streets of Manhattan stream with tearful demonstrators, and when there is political unrest in Korea, the news unsettles your friends whose families live in Korean communities all over the city.”

The key, he said, is to “embrace the motto ‘living well is the best revenge’ by becoming society’s standouts, guides, and [society’s] conscience.” He told the graduates to live lives “not marked by conspicuous consumption but conspicuous compassion.”

“Remember that the principles in your heart are worth nothing if they are locked away in your hearts,” he said. “Set them loose and let them direct your every action. You will transform the world with your gritty New York generosity; your hard won, discerning wisdom; and your daring compassion.”

New York Senator Charles Schumer, in brief remarks before Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga, likewise urged students to embrace the unknown, as he said their generation is uniquely qualified to tackle today’s challenges.

[doptg id=”85″]In addition to the cardinal, this year’s recipients of honorary degrees include:

Anne Anderson, Ireland’s ambassador to the United States;

Joseph Cammarosano, FCRH ’47, GSAS ’56, longtime Fordham faculty member;

Anthony P. Carter, former vice president for global diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer for Johnson & Johnson;

Michael Dowling, the president and CEO of Northwell Health;

Jane Iannucelli, S.C., president of the order of the Sisters of Charity;

Gregory Long, CEO and the William C. Steere Sr. President of the New York Botanical Garden;

and Eric T. Schneiderman, attorney general of New York State.

“Fordham University: Made in New York,” a panel discussion held on the Rose Hill campus as part of the University’s Dodransbicentennial celebration, touched on some of the University’s history, lore and legends, with reflections from a distinguished panel of alumni:

Joseph Cammarosano, FCRH ’47, GSAS ’56, professor emeritus of economics;
Patrick Foye, FCRH ’78, LAW ’81, executive director, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey;
Haeda Mihaltses, FCRH ’86, GSAS ’94, executive director of external affairs, New York Mets;
Patricia Peek, FCRH ’90, GSAS ’92, ’07, director of undergraduate admission, Fordham University; and
Msgr. Thomas Shelley, GSAS ’66, professor emeritus of theology and author of Fordham, A History of the Jesuit University of New York: 1841–2003 (Fordham University Press, 2016)

In recounting the history of the nine colleges that comprise the school, Msgr. Shelley attributed the success of the University—especially through its rough patches—to the Society of Jesus.

“The popularity of Jesuit education for the last four centuries has been due in large measure to one factor: The fact that it’s rooted in the Christian humanism of the Renaissance and the positive aspects of the Catholic reformation,” he said.

Among the twists and turns that took place over the course of the University’s history was its merging, in 1907, with Manhattan’s St. Francis Xavier College, a development that tripled the then St. John’s College (as it was still known) enrollment. Msgr. Shelley said this event transformed Fordham from a residential to a commuter college, a distinction that has been only recently reversed.

Cammarosano said Fordham had the City of New York to thank, specifically the Third Avenue elevated train, for making it accessible to New York area commuters.

“Was St. Francis [a] better school than Fordham? No, [but] they had local transportation. Fordham was up here in the boonies, and poor people couldn’t afford a car,” he said.

Foye said that in the 1960s, Father Laurence J. McGinley, S.J.,convinced city planner Robert Moses to sell the University land in Midtown Manhattan to develop the Lincoln Center campus—home for fully half the roughly 15,000 students enrolled at the University today. Foye noted that Fordham has conversely served the city by training its students to serve the public good. Among the Lincoln Center-based schools are law, social service, and education.

Ironically, one of Foye’s favorite memories from his time at Fordham was when Moses spoke to one of his classes at the Rose Hill campus. Moses’ reputation had already taken a hit with the publication of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker (Knopf, 1974). So it was additionally awkward, Foye said, when immediately before Moses spoke, the class heard a report on WFUV saying traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway was terrible.

“You had Moses, who’d built the Cross Bronx expressway, and engendered the wrath of [community organizer] Jane Jacobs, and here was a reporter . . . reporting on how bad the traffic was,” he said. “We were all transfixed.”

Panelists discussed how Fordham can stay true to its New York roots while also expanding its national footprint. Peek said the admissions office assigns recruiters who are responsible not only for Texas, Nebraska, Illinois, and other states, but also for the borough of the Bronx.

She also said that, as a Catholic university, Fordham strives to be a place where everyone feels free to discuss religious faiths in general.

“The idea of having a dialogue between faith and reason is important,” she said. “[Fordham] sets up a classroom and a community where it’s okay to talk about it.”

The panel was sponsored by Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture, as part of the University’s  Dodransbicentennial celebration, which continues through 2017.

“If Fordham is alive and flourishing today, it is due to no one more than to Joe.”

That’s what James Finlay, SJ, Fordham’s 30th president, said 40 years ago about Joseph Cammarosano, PhD, the economist, professor, and administrator whose steady hand helped guide the University through the turbulent late 1960s, when student unrest and fiscal troubles threatened to sink colleges across the country.

The 92-year-old Cammarosano—affectionately known as Dr. C—gave up his administrative duties in the late 1980s, but he’s still teaching. And next year, when Fordham begins a yearlong celebration of its 175th anniversary, he’ll be marking his 75th.

“I only missed the first 100 years,” says Cammarosano, who enrolled at Fordham as a freshman in 1941. “In those days, the squirrels outnumbered the students—and they didn’t pay tuition!”

Formed by Family

Cammarosano grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, just across the Bronx’s northern border. “My father was a contractor, and my mother was a very fine seamstress,” he says, recalling how his parents, who emigrated from Sorrento, Italy, worked hard to give him and his brother opportunities they themselves didn’t have. “My mom ultimately did the heavy lifting,” he says, “because my dad, although he was a great role model for me, passed on rather early in my life.”

War interrupted Cammarosano’s studies at Fordham. By 1943, he was a member of the Army Signal Corps, serving mostly in England and Belgium. “The war ended just before I was ready to load up and go to Japan,” he says, so he returned to Fordham instead, enrolling in an accelerated program. “It was hurry up and run. We’d already lost three years in the service.” He graduated magna cum laude in 1947 and went to work as a U.S. customs inspector. After getting a master’s degree at NYU, he returned to Fordham, where he began teaching economics in 1955, earning a doctorate in the subject the following year.

Fiscal Crisis Averted

In 1961, Cammarosano took a consequential sabbatical, joining the Kennedy administration as an economist in the U.S. Bureau of the Budget. A year later, he worked in the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. Bolstered by his government service, he was elected president of the Fordham Faculty Senate in 1965, the first to hold that position. And as the University started to encounter serious financial problems in the late 1960s, he was put in a place to help.

By June 1968, Fordham was operating at a $2 million deficit, and Cammarosano, who’d been chair of the faculty budget committee, was named executive vice president. Together with the University’s treasurer, Brother James Kenny, SJ, and the academic president, Paul Reiss, PhD, GSAS ’54, he fought to help Fordham avoid bankruptcy.

“How did I get into this mess?” he asks now. “Out of the Bureau of the Budget. I knew what budgeting was all about, and that’s what I put into practice. I learned something from President Kennedy. He put a strict limit on the budget. Everyone thought he was a spendthrift, and he wanted to prove the contrary.”

During the late ’60s, nobody could have accused Cammarosano of being a spendthrift. Tightfisted was more like it.

“I always wore a black hat, and Father Walsh, to the extent that he could, wore the white hat, although it was probably a gray hat,” he says, referring to Michael Walsh, SJ, president of Fordham from 1969 to 1972.

Cammarosano put a stop to all new construction. Maintenance was deferred. He even posted signs on the Xerox machines: “Why don’t you try carbon?” Like Cammarosano, the suggestion was unfailingly polite. He says it was more psychological ploy than cost-saving measure. “I wanted people to know we were in dire straits, and we had to pull ourselves out of this.”

By 1970, Fordham’s $2 million deficit had been transformed into a $2 million surplus, thanks in part to the advent of Bundy Aid (support for private colleges from New York state), the opening of what became Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and Cammarosano’s fiscal discipline.

“No one lost a single job,” he says. “I felt if we could hold expenses down, do no more than we did last year, and with a very modest tuition increase and the Lincoln Center campus coming on stream, we may make it in very short order. That was the formula.”

A Campus in Turmoil

As the fiscal crisis cooled, student protests intensified on campus. “It pretty much had to do with the Vietnam War and the ROTC’s presence on campus,” Cammarosano says of the wave of demonstrations in 1969 and 1970. “The students took over my office two or three times. I’d come in in the morning, and my windows would be smashed. There was a fire in the McGinley Center. They did a lot of damage.”

Cammarosano was surprised and disappointed by the students’ behavior (“it wasn’t the way they behaved in class”), but he could understand their grievances to a point. “I could relate to them, but don’t take it out on us,” he told them. “I would stop the war, but I had no control.”

Characteristically, he found some humor in the situation. “The students took over the switchboard at one point, and when someone called for me, they said, ‘No, he’s no longer with us, we fired him.’ I almost wished they had fired me!” he says, laughing.

To deal effectively with the unrest, he says, “You had to be reserved, to know when to hold back, when to move forward. We took a lot of hits, but I’m glad we were able to keep our perspective. And we survived.”

Not all of Cammarosano’s “old Fordham war stories,” as he calls them, are as heavy as the financial crisis or student protests. He also fought to transform Edwards Parade, which he says had become “a dog patch.” During the 1970s and ’80s, he initiated periodic “spring offensives for the re-greening of Fordham,” joining facilities workers as they seeded grass, pruned and planted trees, and constructed footpaths.

“I used to say, keeping that grass green means 100 students,” he says, referring to Edwards Parade’s appeal to prospective undergraduates. These days, he’s impressed by the landscaping prowess of the facilities team. “I keep an eye on it, and they’re doing a great job.”

The Dynamo

Some of Cammarosano’s greatest contributions to Fordham, however, have been more personal than institutional. At the Faculty Convocation in fall 1976, the University honored him not only for his administrative skills but also for his work in the classroom, calling him an “exacting taskmaster” who earned his students’ appreciation by preparing “meticulously” and lecturing “dynamically.”

E. Gerald Corrigan, GSAS ’65, ’71, a managing director of Goldman Sachs and a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, studied with Cammarosano during the 1960s, helping him produce economic studies of the Bronx and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“He’s a dynamo,” Corrigan says, recalling how his Fordham mentor would deliver “two-hour lectures nonstop at a fevered pitch.”

Cammarosano is quick to celebrate his many students and colleagues, including all six University presidents since the mid-’60s, each of whom has come to him for counsel. A firstborn son of Italian immigrants, he’s now the head of a three-generation Fordham family.

“All three of my kids are Fordham graduates,” he says. “My daughter’s son graduated from the Law School last May, and now I have a granddaughter in the Gabelli School of Business.”

And he is particularly grateful to the Jesuits with whom he has studied and worked for nearly 75 years.

“They’ve been a great influence on my life,” he says. “The way they deport themselves, you couldn’t help but emulate them.”

Roger Wines, PhD, FCRH ’54, professor emeritus of history at Fordham, served on Cammarosano’s budget committee during the fiscal crisis and worked with him as a member of the Faculty Senate.

“His whole life of service without pretensions is really a tribute not only to Joe but to the old-time Jesuits who were our dedicated teachers at Fordham,” Wines says. “They taught us by example about working selflessly for a good cause. Realistically, but selflessly.”

Last May, at a dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Faculty Senate, Wines delivered a tribute to Cammarosano, keeping it brief, he says, so as not to embarrass his friend, calling him “a mentor, a man of character, a good family man, husband of his late wife Rosalie, father, grandfather, and … a talented scholar and teacher.”

“There are not enough words to express adequately the appreciation owed to him by several generations of Fordham faculty and students,” Wines concluded. “Let us just say two: Thank you.”