Long postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mass was concelebrated by 15 Jesuit priests, including current Fordham president Joseph M. McShane, S.J., and Joseph M. O’Keefe, S.J., provincial of the Jesuits’ USA East Province. It marked the first public remembrance of the University’s longtime leader, whose multitudinous achievements included the construction of the William D. Walsh Family Library and the building of the first student residence hall at the Lincoln Center campus. 

In attendance were several members of the O’Hare and Scesney Families, which include Father O’Hare’s nieces and nephews; Fordham trustees; faculty and staff members; and several Jesuit leaders, including Fordham vice president for mission integration and ministry John J. Cecero, S.J., former provincial of the USA Northeast Province, and America magazine editor-in-chief Matthew F. Malone, S.J.

“Joseph Aloysius O’Hare was a leader not only at Fordham University for 19 years, but also for other Catholic and Jesuit universities as well as for his native place, the City of New York,” said homilist Patrick J. Ryan, S.J., the Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society. 

Tracing the life and august academic career of Father O’Hare from his time as a student at Regis High School in Manhattan through his nearly two-decade-long administration of the Northeast’s oldest Catholic university, Father Ryan, who first met Father O’Hare in 1962 at a now-closed seminary in Shrub Oak, New York, provided personal recollections of a visionary pastor with patrician sensibilities and a wry, irreverent wit. 

“He was never a ‘king of the Gypsies,’ but he could dance very well without stepping on women’s feet, a virtuoso technique I never mastered,” said Father Ryan. “Joe danced so well that he took a future Rockette to his Regis senior prom.” 

From 1975 until 1984, when he assumed the presidency at Fordham, Father O’Hare served as editor-in-chief and frequent columnist at America magazine, a New York-based Jesuit publication focused on politics, faith, and culture. As president of Fordham, he led multiple building projects, including the creation of four new residence halls; helped to triple the number of undergraduate applicants; helped grow the University endowment from $36.5 million to $271.6 million, and launched a successful $150 million fundraising campaign.

“Though he was undeniably proud of the many ways Fordham flourished publicly during those years, he was also privately gratified by his work with faculty, staff, and students to live out the principles of peace, justice, and respect for all people,” said Gregory Scesney, a nephew of Father O’Hare, during the eulogy. 

Father Ryan called Father O’Hare the “University’s consoler-in-chief” during times of crisis. As Fordham’s president, he shepherded its community through difficult periods of shock and mourning, including the sudden death of undergraduate football player Bill Tierney in 1996 and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

“The presidency of Fordham is not just a type of corporate leadership. The president of Fordham holds the shepherd’s crook to guide the flock into green pastures beside restful waters,” he said. 

Father O’Hare’s influence extended beyond the verdant fields of Fordham and into New York political life during his tenure as founding chairman of the city’s Campaign Finance Reform Board, which he led for 15 years under mayors Edward I. Koch and Rudolph W. Giuliani. A member of numerous civic organizations, he facilitated the board’s first public funds payment in 1989 and caught the ire of Mayor David N. Dinkins when the board fined his campaign $320,000 for illegal overspending. 

“Joe O’Hare was simply the most famous Jesuit in the capital of the world, a man who could tame wild beasts and mayors with the flick of a pen,” said Father Ryan in his homily, noting that New York politics maintained “a reputation for financial skulduggery, especially in mayoralty campaigns.” 

For his moral leadership, Father O’Hare won the friendship and lasting respect of his colleagues at the Campaign Finance Board, including current Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor, who called him “one of my heroes” at the time of his death. Several of those colleagues were in attendance. 

Scesney said the family “learned early on that Uncle Joe was a man who listened to all sides and spoke from an educated position.”

Born into an Irish American family in the Bronx during the early years of the Great Depression, Father O’Hare entered the Society of Jesus in 1948 and was ordained at the Fordham University Church in 1961. The son of a New York City mounted police officer and a public school teacher, O’Hare spent time as a Jesuit scholastic in the Philippines, where he later taught at the Jesuit-established Ateneo de Manila University and met influential political figures ranging from Benigno S. Aquino Jr. to Imelda Marcos. (As head of Fordham, he awarded Philippine President Corazon Aquino an honorary doctorate in 1986.) 

At the conclusion of the Mass, Father McShane encouraged congregants to honor the memory of Father O’Hare in a way he would approve: Not with mourning and tears, but with stories and laughter. 

Ryan Di Corpo, a former O’Hare Fellow at America, is a freelance journalist and co-coordinator of Pax Christi New York State. 

It was born in 1964 as a division of the Graduate School of Education, focused on preparing leaders in religious education, with a graduating class size of 24 and three Jesuit faculty members. Five years later, GRE became its own graduate school within Fordham University. Since then, it has taught more than 2,300 students with unique backgrounds and goals, from a Muslim imam who commutes to class from Florida, to a local pediatrician who tends to his patients’ spiritual needs, to a pastor who has helped integrate Protestant churches in the Northeast. 

“The Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education is really at the heart of Fordham’s mission, and therefore its 50th anniversary is a milestone for the entire University,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “GRE is Fordham in microcosm: a school dedicated to inward reflection upon our values, and yet deeply engaged with the community. It is an institution at the confluence of faith, leadership, and service, enriching us all with its scholarship and teaching.”

In honor of the school’s 50th anniversary this academic year, Faustino “Tito” Cruz, S.M., the dean of GRE, is pioneering a new vision for the school. 

“Our 50th anniversary is not going to be just a single event, but rather an ongoing ritual that marks the reclaiming of our vision to be in relationship with the community,” said Dean Cruz, who recently initiated a new partnership with Aquinas High School, an all-girls Catholic school in the Bronx. “This initiative, as well as others, will I think allow us to remain relevant for the next 50 years.” 

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the initiative will take on a new shape. Dean Cruz said he is hoping to co-host video conferences with Aquinas to discuss issues and challenges the students may face, including food, housing, healthcare, and educational technology insecurities. 

He said he also wants to address the psychosocial and spiritual impact of the pandemic on the lives of faculty, staff, and students. 

“It is during an unprecedented time like this that the word ‘partnership’ must be authentically embodied and intentionally put into action,” Dean Cruz said.

A Universal Reach

GRE offers a dozen programs, both in-person and online. Over the past few decades, the school has also developed global partnerships with several schools, including Ateneo de Manila University and Catholic University of Croatia.

“Father Tito Cruz has provided outstanding leadership as Dean of the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. The school offers students a breadth of innovative degree programs—ranging from pastoral counseling and ministry to religious education and spiritual direction—all to prepare its graduates to lead lives of solidarity, service, and justice,” said Dennis C. Jacobs, Ph.D., provost and senior vice president for academic affairs.

The school’s alumni come from more than 20 countries around the world. GRE’s online students live as far away as Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. 

“I wish I had a stamp collection. We have literally placed the University’s name around the world,” GRE’s first dean, Vincent Novak, S.J., once said. 

Most students who enroll at GRE are already teachers, scholars, or practitioners. After receiving their Fordham degree, many of them return to their native countries to put into practice what they’ve learned, as was the case for Imelda Lam, a Catholic school curriculum developer from Hong Kong, and Maria Echezonachukwu Dim, IHM, a youth program director in Nigeria. 

“More than perhaps any other school of the University, [GRE] represents the University’s religious tradition and its wide-reaching international interest,” said the late Joseph O’Hare, S.J., president emeritus of Fordham, on the school’s 25th anniversary. “Its alumni/ae, although small in number, but growing, are at work in many corners of the world, carrying the Fordham tradition with them.” 

The school’s students and alumni also practice a myriad of faiths and spiritualities. Among the student body are Coptic priests, rabbis, and an imam. 

For Rachelle Green, Ph.D., an assistant professor of practical theology and religious education, it’s a one of a kind experience. 

“GRE has some of the most diverse classroom populations that I’ve ever had the opportunity to teach in or learn from,” Green said. “I’ve been in a classroom with Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and we’re learning that not in spite of, but because of our religious beliefs and differences and experiences, our learning environment is becoming enriched.”

The Changing Face of GRE

Green, an African-American woman and Protestant who has directed a theological studies program in women’s prisons, is among two new faculty members who were hired last year. The other is Steffano Montano, Ph.D., a first-generation Cuban American who specializes in anti-racist pedagogy and leadership. 

Their backgrounds have made a difference in the classroom, said students. 

“[Dr. Green is] an African-American professor from the Baptist tradition. That’s my tradition; that’s my culture. I absolutely can relate to her from that context, which I haven’t had at Fordham in the past,” said Janiqua Green, a minister and doctoral student in religious education who lives in Harlem. “It’s just a different voice that I’d never really been introduced to before.”

In addition to professors, students of color have grown in number. Among them is Joanna Arellano, an online master’s student in Christian spirituality who lives in Chicago. She works as a press strategist for the National Domestic Workers Alliance and serves as a board member of the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, a grassroots nonprofit that addresses local injustice. She first learned about GRE through her husband, a 2018 graduate of the doctor of ministry program. A few months after her husband’s graduation, Arellano and Dean Cruz connected over breakfast in Chicago, one of the many cities he visits to recruit students.

“Just hearing from Tito that he’s been on this path toward recruiting more professors and students of color—especially women of color—that, for me, resonates deeply,” Arellano said. 

Over the past five decades, GRE has developed courses that address a more diverse population: Ministry with Latinxs, Women Mystics, Meditation East/West. They are now part of a curriculum that is challenging GRE’s students to face the world, said Rachelle Green, an assistant professor. 

“What does it mean to teach in a world where, quite literally, the world was burning [in Australia]? Or to teach in a world where gun violence is common?” Green asked. “Our students are challenging us, and the world is challenging us to respond with the best that we have to our current crises and age, but also to prepare our students to respond for what we maybe can’t even predict will come.” 

Photos from reception celebrating GRE’s 50th anniversary on March 6

Clark’s page-turners—filled with relatable, often female protagonists—sold more than 100 million copies in the U.S. alone. Her first successful novel, Where Are the Children? (Simon & Schuster, 1975), told the tale of a young mother who changes her identity after she’s accused of killing her son and daughter, only to have her second set of children disappear after she finds a new husband and builds another family. It was the first in a lifelong stream of best sellers—56 in total.

Clark’s own life was itself novel-worthy. The sudden death of her father at age 11 plunged her once-comfortable Bronx family into a precarious financial situation; they lost their house for lack of a few hundred dollars. Then tragedy struck again when her husband suffered a fatal heart attack in 1964, leaving her widowed, at age 37, with five young children. But she continued to try her hand at the suspense stories she’d started writing as a young woman.

Shortly after publishing Where Are the Children?, Clark earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Fordham College at Lincoln Center after five years of night classes. The degree gave her a certain confidence that she had lacked.

“I had always missed the fact that I hadn’t matriculated,” she told FORDHAM magazine in 1989.

“I was hanging up the kids’ diplomas, and kept thinking that it wasn’t the same as having my own diploma in hand. I thought of Fordham. My husband had gone there, and I used to go to tea dances at Rose Hill.”

Overnight Success While at Lincoln Center

She attended Fordham College at Lincoln Center because of its proximity to her daytime job at a radio station. In 1978, while a student, she received a million-dollar-plus advance for the hardcover and paperback versions of her new suspense novel A Stranger is Watching (Simon & Schuster, 1977). She immediately replaced her old jalopy with a Cadillac—and she finished her degree.

A spring 1978 FORDHAM magazine piece featured Clark and her newfound success: “These days find her literally winging into her classes at Lincoln Center from all points of the U.S., where she is moving in and out of editorial rooms and television studios on interview and talk show tours to promote her latest piece of fiction. She has also moved in with the Beautiful People. Last week People Weekly chronicled her rise to literary fame and fortune in a two-page spread, and also quoted her ecstatic comment about her new apartment facing Central Park. (‘Every Irish-Catholic girl from the Bronx wants to have an apartment on Central Park South.’)”

Fordham Honors

Clark stayed close to her alma mater throughout her life. From 1990 to 1996, she served as a member of Fordham’s Board of Trustees. As a generous donor, she also became a member of the University’s Archbishop Hughes Society. She was presented with an honorary degree and served as Fordham’s commencement speaker in 1997. (“The plot is what you will do for the rest of your life, and you are the protagonist,’” she said.) She was feted with a Fordham Founder’s Award in 2004, was inducted into the University’s Hall of Honor in 2009, and was honored again in 2018 as a pioneering woman in philanthropy.

“It is very hard to say goodbye to Mary,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

“Though she lived a long and rich life, she left us too soon. To speak of Mary is to speak in superlatives: She was, of course, terrifically gifted and hardworking. She was funny, and kind, and generous with her time and talents. Her work touched the lives of millions, and in person she was a force of nature. There will never be another like her. I know the Fordham community joins me in sending her family and loved ones our deepest condolences.”

A Commitment to the Next Generation

Clark’s drive to tell stories was legendary; in her obituary in The New York Times, her daughter and sometimes writing partner Carol Higgins Clark confirmed that Clark was still writing up until very recently.

Her devotion to Fordham was just as strong. In 2013, she pledged $2 million to create the Mary Higgins Clark Chair in Creative Writing. At the time, she said she was adamant that it not be a “literary chair.”

“Frankly, I thought there would be scorn about that because a lot of people would say, ‘She’s just a popular writer,’” she said.

“But I thought, ‘A chair in creative writing?’ Yes, damn it! I’m a good storyteller.”

Mary Bly, Ph.D., a professor and chair of Fordham’s English Department, hosted Clark in her classes over the years. In a 2012 FORDHAM magazine article, Bly, who publishes under the pen name Eloisa James, wrote that like her, Clark possessed a split personality. How else could one explain how, as a young widow with five small children, Clark could transform feelings of love and protection into best-selling suspense?

Bly wrote that it was no surprise that Clark majored in philosophy at Fordham.

“Clark’s novels do not engage her readers merely as a matter of titillation and fear; hers are studies with high moral purpose, reflective of the importance of her Catholic faith.”

In an email just after Clark’s death, Bly said Clark would likely humbly reject the idea of having been a mentor to her, as they met at most once or twice a year.

“But every single time, she would listen with great interest to what was going on in my publishing life as Eloisa James, and invariably make a suggestion or comment that I would think of again and again. She probably played this role for many, many authors. She didn’t realize how kind she was, how giving, and how unusual,” she said.

“Her financial gift to Fordham when she established the Mary Higgins Clark Chair in Creative Writing, as well as a scholarship for young writers with financial need, will allow her legacy of generosity toward fellow writers to continue. We will deeply miss her.”

In addition to receiving awards, Clark also bestowed one particularly special one at Fordham, when her grandson Justin Louis Clark graduated from the Gabelli School of Business in 2014.

“My grandmother loved Fordham. I am proud to have worn the maroon and white alongside the person who inspired me to pursue my dream as she did hers. Receiving my diploma from her on Coffey Field is a memory I will cherish forever,” Justin said by email.

“She left Fordham a better school, the world a better place, and me a better person.”

Clark was generous with her time with fellow alumni as well. Lynn Neary, TMC ’71, who recently retired from National Public Radio, covered Clark’s 90th birthday celebration in 2017 and Veronica Dagher, GABELLI ’00, ’05, host of the Wall Street Journal podcast Secrets of Wealthy Women, interviewed her in 2018.

In her story, Neary quoted Clark on readers’ reactions to her stories: “That is the greatest compliment I can get,” Clark said, “when someone will say to me, ‘I read your darn book till 4 in the morning.’ I say, ‘Then you got your money’s worth.’”

For Susan Wabuda, Ph.D., a professor of history, Clark’s passing brought back memories of meeting her and Clark’s late husband John J. Conheeney, to whom she was married from 1996 to 2018, at a luncheon co-sponsored by Fordham’s Campion Institute.

“It was such an honor to meet Mary Higgins Clark at Fordham events. She was generous, enthusiastic, and an absolute delight. In addition to her suspense stories, her autobiography is riveting. She was a great lady, and the model of a successful writer,” she said.

“She and John enjoyed life, and they thought the world of Fordham.”

John Ryle Kezel, Ph.D., director of the Campion Institute, said Clark had a wonderful sense of humor. He recalled how she once arrived at a banquet for the Flax Trust, which promotes peace between Northern Irish Protestants and Catholics, sporting a cane that appeared to be made of swirled glass.

“When I commented on its uniqueness, Mary said with a glint in her eye that it had been a gift from the late Fred Astaire,” he said.

“As I admired it, Mary began to chuckle, and said ‘Oh John, it’s only plastic and I got it on the internet!’”

Leonard Cassuto, Ph.D., professor of English and American Studies, recalled a quote by another famous author that reminded him of Clark.

“E.B. White famously wrote that it is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer,” he said.

“Mary Higgins Clark was both, and her friendship to Fordham is something we’ll always be grateful for.”

Higgins Clark is survived by her children Marilyn Clark, Warren Clark, PAR ’14, and his wife Sharon Clark, PAR ’14, David Clark, Carol Higgins Clark, Patricia Clark, and her grandchildren Elizabeth Higgins Clark, Andrew Clark, a student at the Gabelli School of Business’ graduate division, David Clark, Courtney Clark, Justin Clark, GABELLI ’14, and Jerry Derenzo.