For the most part, we members of the Class of 1966 were sons of the middle class, eager and grateful for the opportunity to attend and live at a college for a full four years.

Once at Fordham, we realized that there was more in this world than we could ever learn, and we marveled at the speed of the news and new ideas. We lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and the tragic assassination of JFK. We experienced the changes of Vatican II. We saw the rise of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.; Fordham’s LaFarge Society, with its focus on interracial justice; and the civil rights movement.

Fordham’s first all-female school, Thomas More College, opened its doors when we were sophomores—the same year that Fordham football was resurrected by an enterprising group of students. The Beach Boys, Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers, and Ray Charles rocked our concerts.

Outside of Fordham, the Berrigan brothers and the Vietnam War tested our social consciences, challenging us to examine what we considered moral. When our country called, many of us answered—bravely and proudly—yet realizing that violence was not the solution. The war claimed several of our classmates. Ignatius, a soldier himself before he founded the Society of Jesus, had gotten it right when he urged us to understand one another better, rather than fight.

The Legacy of Father McMahon

We were particularly inspired by George McMahon, S.J., who became the dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill in fall 1962. We were his first class. More than anyone else, Father McMahon shaped us and helped define our spirit. His warm and engaging personality endeared him to us, as it would to future decades of students, and he quickly became “Father Fordham.”

“Service,” he would say, “is the rent we pay for our time on earth.” It was a paraphrasing of what others had said before, but he made it a special part of our lives.

In 1991, on the occasion of our 25th reunion, members of the Class of 1966 paid tribute to Father Fordham by establishing an endowed scholarship in his name. We hope the McMahon, as it’s fondly called, will continue Father McMahon’s spirit of service.

A Jubilee Panel

This is the spirit that drew our class together and sent us out into the world. And it was that same spirit that motivated us to plan our panel reflecting on our Fordham experiences a half-century later. Fordham gave us the strength and direction to thrive and grow in a world that was—and still is—changing ever faster.

In putting together our panel, we called upon classmates who could help us understand and process this era of great social change we have lived through.

Our panelists were and are teachers and leaders in industry, commerce, and education. They have inspired younger men and women, guiding them into the best educational disciplines for their individual skills and enriching the lives of all they touched. This small group of people represented our class, and reflected on our era—just as the late Father McMahon had in times past.

• Tony Moore is a former Jesuit and longtime administrator at Georgetown University.
• John Murphy logged more than 1,400 hours of air combat during his time as a U.S. Air Force pilot. He now champions major environmental causes.
• Jim Mitchell, a Fordham track star turned Latin teacher and Nike Coach of the Year, took Bronxville High School’s women’s track team to victory at the national championships.
• Lenny Masucci is one of the original leaders of Teach for America.
• Fred Gruel is a former president of AAA New Jersey and the chair of the board of trustees at William Paterson University.
• Gerry Byrne, a veteran Marine Corps officer who served in Vietnam, is now vice chairman of Penske Media Corporation. He has been a staunch supporter for veterans, going so far as to participate in the Invictus Games for wounded warriors.

  

More than 70 people attended our Saturday-morning panel last summer. Though we wish Father McMahon could have been there, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, honored us by introducing the panel with an insightful look at Fordham’s 175-year history—and its promise.

Many of us will be returning again this year, and we look forward to celebrating together and welcoming the Class of 1967 to their 50th reunion. We hope the next 50 years will prove just as exciting, and that future Golden Rams will take the time to create these kinds of exciting reunion events that will renew their class’ unique bond.

—Warren T. Gregory, FCRH ’66, is a licensed master social worker. As a member of the Dean’s Council for the Fordham School of Professional and Continuing Studies, he works extensively with veterans completing their education at the University. In 1969 he was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Combat Medal for his service in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He earned his master’s degree from the University of Houston in 2009.    

Learn more about this year’s reunions at Rose Hill and Lincoln Center!

The name may be familiar to members of Fordham’s Class of 1982, especially if they lived in Queen’s Court in the late 1970s and heard the guitar riffs, drumbeats, and boisterous banter emanating from a second-floor cluster of rooms in St. John’s Hall. That was where four guys who had a thing for musical mischief found themselves living as freshmen. After their room assignments happened to bring them together, they wrote a slew of songs and performed in Bishop’s Lounge, calling themselves the Richie Beakman Band.

“We were very surprised at how into it everybody was,” reminisced one of the band members, Bill Lobley. “We had, like, a following.”

Nearly 40 years later, the Beakman Band is back together, preparing to perform at Jubilee weekend—specifically, the multi-class cocktail party to be held at Dagger John’s Pub on the Rose Hill campus from 7 to 9 p.m. on Friday, June 2.

They’re still penning songs that have a tongue-in-cheek flavor, like “Listen to Beakman,” with its reference to middle-age musicians “rockin’ gray goatees / and reconstructed knees.” And their sense of fun persists from their days of dorm-room raillery, when the name “Richie Beakman” emerged as they made up possible names for someone shown in a photo.

“We were having such a good time,” Lobley said. “We gave ourselves different names, aliases, because everything was about parodying the band, and rock and roll in general. We had all different styles of songs—we had a country song, we had a song that mocked disco. We did a protest song; it was just called ‘The Protest Song.’ We kept saying, what don’t we have? We have anything funky? We wrote a funky song. Before we knew it, we had 10 or 15 songs, and we said, ‘We should do a concert.’”

The other band members are Mark Coughlin, a schoolteacher; Peter Morello, a cameraman; and Bob Kaufmann, who is retired from his former job as a bank’s vice president. Lobley is an actor, filmmaker, and comic. All are 1982 graduates of Fordham College at Rose Hill.

They’ve performed several times in Manhattan since getting back together in 2009. It’s not easy to keep the band going, given that they’re spread across the New York region—one of them as far away as Buffalo—and juggling busy careers, unpredictable schedules, and parenting duties.

But it’s always worth it when they manage to get together. “We just had this weekend where we were all in the same place, and it’s like getting back on the bike,” Lobley said. “It’s like, ‘You know something? We really play well together.’”

In addition to the Bishop’s Lounge concert, the band made a handful of appearances at the Ramskeller before the members drifted apart later in their time at Fordham, with some of them forming other bands. At Jubilee, they’ll play a mix of cover tunes as well as their own songs from back in the day.

“It’s great—we’re coming home,” Lobley said. “We’re just really excited about it. This is music for music’s sake, for the fun’s sake, but primarily it’s for the reunion. It’s the getting together again. I don’t know where we’d be without the Fordham connection. There’s so much joyful nostalgia.”