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.

“My particular mission is to wander the length and breadth of the city in search of different kinds of places: Chinese, African, and Polish, the unexpected and undersold,” she said in her talk, titled “Off the Rails in Hungry City: Confessions of an Accidental Food Writer.”

She said the food she reviews could come from a restaurant, a stall, a cart, or a truck, and, more than likely, it’ll be from an outer borough. It could be a Brooklyn pizzeria with a “sideline” in Egyptian pastry, she said, or Tibetan soup served from the back of a T-Mobile store.

“These are places where you might eat standing up or sometimes there’s only one person at the stove for whom cooking is less art than urgency,” she said.

She added that the “gig isn’t glamorous.” She often spends more time on the subway than on the meal.

“Still, I won’t lie, this job is exactly as cool as everybody thinks,” she said. “What makes it cool isn’t just the food; it’s the stories I hear. When I go to these places I’m getting entrée not only to a cuisine, but to a part of the city and the world that I wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to know.”

She described a journey that began with a childhood in Hawaii drinking Tang and eating Kraft mac and cheese “gussied up with frozen peas and crispy strips of Spam—an underrated meat product.” Her father had a wartime habit of rationing for himself the treat of canned peaches and cottage cheese. Her mother, who survived the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, didn’t know how to make a pot of rice when she arrived in the U.S., which was common for an educated woman in her country. Both her parents were sitting in the front row for the lecture and nodded knowingly; also in attendance were her husband and daughter.

Mishan began her career after graduate school at an ad agency, with no thoughts of food writing. She eventually moved on to become a book synopsis writer at the New Yorker, where she didn’t get a byline. There, she asked her editor if she could write restaurant reviews, a subject that didn’t have the same cachet a decade ago than it does now. Eventually, a New York Times editor contacted her to say, simply, “I like the way you write.”

“If I have any advice to give to you, the students here who are standing at the threshold of your adult lives, it would be this: Whatever your achievements, whatever your talents, you may not yet know what you’re really good at, but whatever path you imagine lies before you … there really is no path.”

As she waxed poetic about skewered beef tenders sold beneath the Manhattan Bridge, audience members took copious notes on their event programs.

The places she reviews are often so overlooked, she said, that when she tells them they are going to be reviewed by The New York Times, they’re often in shock.

“One chef hugged me on the spot, one chef cried,” she said.

The event drew students, members of the Department of English faculty, and University alumni, who participated in a Q&A following the lecture. One student observed that a good review has the potential to change a neighborhood, and not always in the best way for locals. She asked Mishan for her thoughts on the economic opportunities her columns foster, as well as the downside of regulars no longer being able to afford increased prices. Mishan acknowledged the issue. She said she’s written about places and seen them close because of rising rents. She wondered aloud if her column created “pressure” on the market. However, she said, she tends to focus on places so far from central Manhattan that only the diehard food fans show up and that’s good for owners who aren’t making that much money.

“It’s such a benefit for people who run the restaurant to have that crowd, even though they’ve lost their regulars,” she said. “I feel that it’s in their [the owner’s]  court, they need to make people feel welcome and find a way. I don’t begrudge them the higher prices because it’s subsistence.”

Many of New York’s immigrant chefs, she said, have fled war, persecution, and famine. She noted that as many middle-class New Yorkers abandoned the city during the 1970s, they were replaced by 850,000 immigrants who called New York home. The number of sidewalk vendors doubled between 1979 and 1982, she said.

“The government was championing free trade around the globe, but New Yorkers were living it on the curb and at the corner bodega … and we still are.”

“None of this is new,” said Grossman, current holder of Fordham’s Mary Higgins Clark Chair in Creative Writing. “Shakespeare trafficked in all manner of ghosts, so did Dante and Milton, they were all fantasists dealing in emotional reality.”

The book is the cornerstone for Fordham College at Lincoln Center’s Year of Magic, a series of events for first-year students that look at magic through a variety of academic disciplines. The novel has also inspired an ongoing SyFy network television series, which examines the practice of magic in the real world.

Grossman said that the creators of the television show—which examines the practice of magic in the real world—often consult with him on the script, but they have indeed “made it their own.” He said that many of the book’s characters and settings remain the same, though the storyline often veers in directions distinct from the book.

“Stories on screen are shaped very different from books, they have looping plots, and those loops have to fit together for the season and to make seasonal arcs,” he said.

“In TV, the plot surfaces, but in novels you can move back and forward in time and space,” he said. “There’s no one more powerful than a narrator of a novel; it’s absolutely the most magical thing there is.”

On the subject of magic, he said that he was, like most young people, attracted to fantasy from an early age.

“It’s really the lingua franca for kids, but I didn’t write about until I was in my mid-thirties,” he said. “By the mid-aughts, it had become so central to our culture, with Lord of the Rings, Twilight, and Harry Potter.”

He said that he read fantasy “compulsively.” In his book, he describes characters who do magic compulsively, even addictively—like a drug. They live secret lives in shambled homes akin to crack houses. But that’s not to say fantasy is about escapism, he said. It’s about facing the truth.

“Fantasy is a way at getting at real issues,” he said.

In his Mary Higgins Clark Chair in Creative Writing Lecture on Oct. 15, Grossman said he’ll explore a variety of themes, from magic to the professional lives of writers and even changes that have occurred since he wrote the book in 2009. Several students have already commented on the lack of diversity in the novel and issues related to gender portrayal.

“I hope students will feel comfortable bringing that up personally at the Q&A at the lecture,” he said.

Because everyone seems to have an option on writing these days, literary critics have had to find a new role, Grossman said, particularly at time when Amazon reviews usurp traditional book criticism.

“Literary criticism has become about how to read and less about thumbs up or thumbs down,” he said. “Today’s critics look at ways of analyzing texts and ways of being aware when reading text, which makes reading more exciting.”

He said that the times also demand different entrées into books. At the lecture, he’ll also discuss particular tools in writing, such as how to write a catchy opening.

“When you’re writing nowadays, you have to remember that people buy based on an excerpt or from the first page,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of a slow burn, it helps to hook and grab. I like to focus on these little moments.”

He said that the title of his lecture, “I Did It Wrong,” hints at the hard-knocks path of getting published, adding that he had no meaningful success until he was 40. Preparing for the lecture made him think about how long it took for him to feel like he was having any success as a creative person.

“There isn’t any right way to do this and everybody thinks they do it wrong, so I want them to understand what’s ahead,” he said. “My lecture will be much more personal; I want to talk about the experience of trying to be a creative person in the world and the kinds of compromises and challenges and you have to deal with.”

Writing can be a very lonely business, he said, and rejection doesn’t help. The reality is that the feeling of personal rejection is part of the business.

“The world will try to convince you that you are not a creative person and the trick is to make sure it doesn’t succeed.”

The Richard A. Cook Gold Medal Award, which was presented to Fordham President Joseph M. McShane, S.J., at a ceremony at the University Club, has been granted every year since 1930, except for five years during World War II.

Previous winners have included civil servants like E. Virgil Conway and Ray Kelly, mayors Fiorello LaGuardia and Rudy Giuliani; entertainers such as Oscar Hammerstein and Tony Randall; corporate stalwarts such as the Rockefellers; and icons such as Carnegie Hall and the Museum of the City of New York.

Paul and Diane Guenther, who served as the association’s 2017 Gold Medal Award Dinner Chairs, introduced Father McShane. Paul Guenther, FCRH ‘62, a former head of the Fordham Board of Trustees, noted that since Father McShane became president in 2003, Fordham has transitioned from a well-respected, regional Catholic school to a prominent national university. Applications have more than tripled since then, average SAT scores have risen 100 points, and in 2014, Father McShane oversaw the completion of a $500 million capital campaign.

Last year, the University had its best fundraising year in its history, raising $75.9 million. Just as impressive, Fordham students have performed more than a million community service hours annually.

“He is not just the University’s president; he is Fordham’s pastor and its most capable ambassador in living memory,” Guenther said.

In accepting the award, Father McShane called himself merely the latest curator of the University.

“Institutions have a weight that we as individuals cannot hope to match, and indeed the best leaders in our 175-year history have put Fordham first and their own ambitions a distant second.”

It is true, he said, that Fordham has given much to the city, particularly through the achievements of its immigrant population, which included Fordham founder Archbishop John Hughes. But Fordham has received much as well, from the “intellectual, cultural, financial, and spiritual ferment of New York.”

“Our individual institutions are stronger because they are so intimately intertwined with one-another’s history and day-to-day lives. Those institutions that have crossed the 100-year mark carry this wisdom with them into the current day. Fordham is proud of its history and its connection to New York City, and grateful to accept the honor the 100 Year Association bestows upon it tonight,” he said.

Clint W. Blume III, president of the 100 Year Association, encouraged attendees to visit the list of awardees, which he said reflects the bedrock of the cities’ civic culture.

“Fordham fits well with and enhances the standing of this list, not only because of its distinguished faculty, that has educated generations of leaders for 175 years, but also because of its focus on community service, and an ethical society as informed by its Jesuit tradition,” he said.

“Most of all, because it embraces New York, making its home a dynamic resource for its students.”

mother’s—and she’s nearly 90,” said A.S. King. “Emotions are emotions, it’s just our culture that mixes it all up.”

King, a bestselling author of young adult (YA) books and the 2017 Mary Higgins Clark Chair in Creative Writing, made her remarks at an Oct. 2 lecture on the writing process. The author of nine YA novels said that, even as a teen, she wanted to write books that help teenagers and adults understand each other better.

“To assume that teenagers and I aren’t having the same emotions is to underestimate both teenagers and emotion,” she said in her talk, Writing Novels—Trust the Process, Work Often, Die Happy. “To assume that we must regress to find the voice that fits the child or teenager is some sort of weird adult idea that our emotional processing changes over the course of time, and I don’t believe it does.”

“Pantster” Not “Plotter”

King said she has little interest in fame and writes because she wants to help people. Regarding the nuts and bolts of her writing process, King called herself a “pantster” as opposed to a “plotter,” meaning that she writes by the seat of her pants.

“When I’m working in fiction, I’m much like a kid who hasn’t done her homework but who also doesn’t care about not having done her homework,” she said. She likened her creative process to “a walk off the trail with no compass on a cloudy night, with no Polaris.”

Her own characters speak to her and unfold over the course of writing a story, she said,—sometimes even to her surprise. Once, one her characters revealed a secret to her that left her pacing through the rooms of her home. She called such cathartic moments “plotgasms”: surprising plot turns that elicit identical emotions in both the writer and the reader as they unfold.

An accountant’s daughter, King described a free-form process of writing akin to stream of consciousness, which she then offsets with a variety of strategies to hone the plot. Her organization tools range from keeping a daily diary to recording notes on the Siri app to using color markers that correspond to characters.

Making Time for the Work

As writing is hard work, King said she carries her laptop with her daily to steal away time to write.

“I have two grown kids, orthodontist appointments, band camp, and midnight trips to Target to buy that thing that I forgot when I was at Target last,” she said. “But nothing stops me from writing, even if it’s a half hour before bed.”

She said that, when people tell her that they’d write a book if only they had more free time, she balks.

“I do not have free time. Our bank accounts, in the bank of time, all read the exact same number. None of us are poor or wealthy.

“When I’m done with all the things I have to do to take care of my family and my community, I choose to write books,” even if that means no television, not enough sleep, and a limited social life, she said.

“Writing is the best buzz I’ve ever had—and I’ve tried a few,” she said. “Writing is the best one yet.”

The evening, titled “The Social Value of Crime Fiction,” celebrated the impressive work of both best selling mystery author Higgins Clark, FCLC ’79, and crime fiction legend Lee Child.

Child is the author of the famous Jack Reacher novel series. His bibliography includes over 20 novels, all centered on Reacher, a character who is a drifter and assassin with a strong moral code. Child has also published more than a dozen short stories and has worked on movie adaptations of his books. His 21st Reacher novel, Night School, will be released in November.

Child said that when he began writing, he moved from the United Kingdom to New York and was astounded by the support he received from Higgins Clark, already a famous name in the genre. Her support of the crime writing community, said Child, changes authors for the better.

“Mary will let you know she is on your side,” he said. “Through her friendship, you learn how to become a better writer and feel you are associated with a legend.”

Child lectured on the instinctual power of storytelling and why stories—in particular crime fiction—mirror the human condition and give readers confidence. Crime fiction allows the audience to release frustrations and confront unfairness that they would otherwise not be allowed to in a civilized society.

Watching normal people surviving danger and peril also gives others courage, said Child. Through fiction, the audience is empowered to survive life’s challenges.

“There is a reason stories are older than art and music,” said Child, noting that language has been around the longest. “It’s because they are necessary for our survival.”

In his introduction of Child, Leonard Cassuto, Ph.D., professor of English and American Studies, said that Child’s service is what sets him apart from fellow writers.

“He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and the International Thriller Writer Associations—service that he didn’t have to do,” said Cassuto. “He is a committed member of his community . . . one of the good guys.”

Higgins Clark, who turns 89 in December, was also in attendance. Since her graduation in 1979, she has become one of the University’s most noted alumni, acting as a member of the Board of Trustees, endowing scholarships, and challenging students with her insight and experience.

“Signing up for my first class was one of the happiest days of my life,” said Higgins Clark. “Graduating at 50 years old was also a happy day. It is a continuing joy that I am able to still be a part of this wonderful University.”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University, likewise admitted to being star-struck by the talent in the room.

“I have to admit, I came here to see Lee as a fan,” said Father McShane, who confessed to taking the Reacher series on his flights to fundraising trips. “But I leave a student. I thank both of you for showing us the art, the magic, and the holy involved in storytelling.”

–Mary Awad

The latest novel by the “Queen of Suspense” follows budding young New York City TV reporter Delaney Wright as she covers the trial of a wealthy New Jersey widow accused of murdering her husband. While the trial progresses toward a seemingly inevitable guilty verdict, Delaney is preoccupied by her own search for her birth mother as well as her new relationship with Jon, a newspaper reporter investigating a local drug ring. As their individual searches escalate, Delaney’s world seems to shrink. Clark’s latest whodunit weaves together multiple narratives to bring her readers toward a suspenseful and satisfying ending.

The Steel Kiss by Jeffery Deaver, LAW ’82 (Grand Central Publishing)

Jeffery Deaver’s law training and deep knowledge of New York City are on display in his 37th novel, the 12th featuring two of his most popular characters. Former fashion model turned NYPD detective Amelia Sachs is hunting a killer. But her usual partner, Lincoln Rhyme, a famed quadriplegic consulting forensic detective, has retired. As Sachs’ case becomes more and more complicated, Rhyme finds he can’t avoid getting pulled into her investigation, and the two must work together to unravel a web of mysterious connections. The characters’ internal witty asides add a lightness to this psychological thriller that takes readers into the terrifying mind of a killer long before learning his identity and his motives.

Zero K by Don DeLillo, FCRH ’58 (Scribner)

Don DeLillo’s haunting 16th novel begins as the narrator, Jeffrey Lockhart, a mid-30s New Yorker who spends his “days in middling drift,” approaches the Convergence—a mysterious facility in the steppes of southern Kazakhstan, where the dead and dying are cryogenically preserved in anticipation of a time when their minds and bodies can be “restored, returned to life.” Videos of natural and man-made disasters are shown in the facility’s hallways, reminders of what the techno faithful are leaving behind. Jeffrey’s father, Ross, a billionaire financier, is deeply invested in the utopian project. He’s brought his son to the remote facility to say goodbye to Artis, Ross’ terminally ill second wife, before she makes the “transition to the next level.” When Ross informs a skeptical, increasingly angry Jeffrey that he intends to join his wife on the journey, father and son move toward their own fateful convergence—and readers are moved toward a sense of wonder at the fragile beauty of our daily lives amid the “intimate touch of earth and sun.”

A few years ago, she met Millard (Mickey) Drexler, CEO of J.Crew, and learned he grew up on her block. “Which building?” she asked. Turned out they’d both lived in the 96-apartment Mayflower, so they hatched a plan to return together. When she entered the lobby, Alda writes, “I heard myself as that ten-year-old girl again, tossing my beloved Spaldeen ball.”

The visit inspired her new book, Just Kids from the Bronx: Telling It the Way It Was: An Oral History. More than 60 Bronxites, from former Secretary of State Colin Powell to hip-hop pioneer Melle Mel, recall their early years growing up in the borough.

“Children of Jewish, Italian, and Irish immigrants giving way to children of African American, Puerto Rican, and Dominican newcomers,” Alda writes, “and I felt moved and connected to them all.”

Appropriately repping the Bronx—and Fordham—the alumni featured in the book come from diverse, humble backgrounds and have made indelible contributions to the city (and beyond) in the arts, sports, medicine, even spirits.

In her chapter, best-selling suspense novelist Mary Higgins Clark, FCLC ’79, praises the Bronx’s beauty to anyone who dares doubt it: “Not only is Fordham University there, but there’s also Mosholu Parkway, Pelham Parkway, and the Botanical Garden, for heaven’s sake.” She recalls her father’s tragic death from a heart attack when she was just 11. “I’ve missed him all my life,” she says. The family moved away when they lost their house for “lack of just a few hundred dollars.” When her mother would go back to visit, she says, “She’d come back with her eyes glistening, saying how beautifully the roses had grown.”

Higgins Clark lost her own husband as a young mother. She supported her five children by selling novels and taking other writing gigs, attending Fordham after she’d had some success. To date, her books have sold more than 100 million copies in the United States alone.

“The Irish have a gift of storytelling,” she tells Alda, recalling a quotation from Yeats: “‘Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.’ I have that framed on my desk,” she says. “I absolutely love it.”

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Dion DiMucci grew up a block away from the Bronx Zoo, not too far from Higgins Clark’s former home. “I’d jump over the fence on Southern Boulevard and meet giraffes and hippopotamuses. I mean, it was wild,” says the hitmaker.

He speaks proudly of the honorary doctorate he received from Fordham in 2013. “[I]t felt like it came around full circle. I was born in Fordham Hospital,” he says. “It connected so much for me. … Getting that honorary degree was one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

Michael Brescia, MD, FCRH ’54, also received an honorary degree from Fordham—in 1994, four decades after his student days at Rose Hill. The executive medical director of the Bronx’s Calvary Hospital recalls growing up in an Italian family of six and sleeping in the living room on a branda—a foldout bed. “My father would put his heavy coat on top of me when he came home from work,” he says. Hit hard by the Depression, Brescia’s father wanted him to become a plumber so he’d have job security.

But one day, a big black car pulled up in front of their building. An elegant doctor emerged  to visit an ailing boy, and “it was then that I got the idea to be a physician,” Brescia says. During the 1960s, he co-invented the Cimino-Brescia fistula, a revolutionary hemodialysis procedure, and under his leadership, Calvary has become a national model for palliative care programs. He says his success “spawned many other doctors in the family whose fathers said to them, ‘Forget about being a wallpaper hanger! If Mickey could do it, then you could do it!’”

New York Yankees play-by-play broadcaster Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, also came from humble beginnings. As a kid, he didn’t always have the money to see his beloved Bronx Bombers, but when he could scrape together a buck fifty he’d buy a ticket and sit “right behind home plate in the upper deck, last row. I tell people that I now have the same seat, but a lot closer,” he says.

Kay recalls two “phenomenal” teachers who knew how much he loved the Yankees. On April 6, 1973, the day Ron Blomberg would become the first-ever designated hitter, the teachers wheeled a TV into Kay’s sixth-grade classroom. They said, “‘All right, Michael, you can see this.’ Blomberg walked with bases loaded, they unplugged the TV, and walked out.” When Kay got to Fordham, he developed his broadcasting chops at WFUV, the University’s radio station. Today his voice is synonymous with the team he’s always loved.

Renee Hernandez, MD, FCRH ’94, saw a different side of the Bronx growing up. “Where I was in the South Bronx, buildings were burning, and there was a crack epidemic, HIV,” he says. But his close-knit Puerto Rican family surrounded him with love. “I had a couple of aunts living floors above us and a couple of uncles living below us.” He eventually set up his internal medicine practice in the old neighborhood. “I wanted to create an environment that was very different from what my mother used to go to, which was more like a Medicaid mill,” he says.

Not far from his medical office, Hernandez opened Tirado Distillery, the first legal distillery in the Bronx after prohibition. He credits a 2009 trip to the Bacardi factory in Puerto Rico and his Fordham degree as his inspirations.

“My background was in organic chemistry at Fordham University and I did a lot of research there. In that research we used a distillation apparatus,” he says. “Once I saw what Bacardi was doing, I knew that I could do it too.”

Hernandez never touches alcohol; his father is his taster. But he sells his rums and corn whiskeys throughout the city and beyond, exporting a little bit of that Bronx flavor that’s always made him proud.

—Nicole LaRosa is the associate editor of this magazine.

“I have said when I die, make it a party. I enjoy parties so much, if it’s good enough, I’ll climb out of my casket to go to it.”

Watch the full interview here.

Before the campaign, the University counted 26 endowed chairs; as of September 2013, that number stands at 67, with many created through the generous investments of individual and institutional donors. These investments offer resources to attract noted scholars to the University to teach and interact with students and carry out research.

Although some of the newly established chairs have yet to be filled, the sheer number and variety of fields they encompass, from business and law to religion to the arts and sciences, are a true testament to the generosity of the Fordham family.

The following are a few chairs funded as a result of the campaign.

Anne Anastasi Professor of Psychometrics and Quantitative Psychology

David V. Budescu, the Anastasi chair.

Established with a bequest created in Anastasi’s name, this chair enhances the legacy of the former Fordham professor whose book,Psychological Testing (Macmillan, 1954) is considered by many to be the definitive text in the field of testing.

Anastasi was a member of the Fordham faculty from 1947 to 1985 and chair of the Department of Psychology. In 1987, she received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan.

David V. Budescu, Ph.D., a psychologist who has researched the effects of uncertainty on human judgment and decision-making, was installed in the chair in December 2008.

Edward and Marilyn Bellet Chair in Legal Ethics, Morality, and Religion

Established in 2005 by Sally J. Bellet, LAW ’76, the chair was named for Bellet’s parents. Bellet’s grandfather, Louis Stein, Law ’26, in 1976 founded the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham Law, which has achieved enormous success in matters related to public service and ethics.

Russell Pearce, the current holder of the chair, joined the Fordham faculty in 1990, and currently teaches, writes and lectures in the field of professional responsibility. He is also the co-director of the Stein Center.

Barbara Hilkert Andolsen, the Buckman chair, with benefactor James Buckman.

James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics

Established through a gift from James Buckman, FCRH ’66, former vice chairman of York Capital Management, and his wife, Nancy M. Buckman, this theology chair was established as a way to strengthen philosophy and theology, areas in which, James Buckman said, Jesuit universities “act as the lights of the world.”

Barbara Hilkert Andolsen, Ph.D., a feminist theologian and ethics scholar, was installed in the chair in a ceremony in February 2009.

Mary Higgins Clark Chair in Creative Writing

Mary Higgins Clark, FCLC ’79, whose 42 books have sold more than 100 million copies in the United States alone, pledged in 2013 to create the Mary Higgins Clark Chair in Creative Writing.

The gift will make it possible for Fordham to hire a professor of creative writing within the Department of English. The chair will be a visiting appointment for a limited term, offered to a distinguished writer drawn from a variety of genres, to lead writing workshops and teach seminars and master classes to upper-level undergraduates or graduate students.
The first holder of the chair will be announced in the spring of 2015.

Iftekhar Hasan, the Corrigan chair.

E. Gerald Corrigan, Ph.D., Chair in International Business and Finance

E. Gerald Corrigan, Ph.D., GSAS ’65, ’71, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and managing director at Goldman Sachs, established the chair in 2007 with a gift to increase the Graduate School of Business Administration’s (GBA) talent in global finance and economic issues. The Corrigan gift further endowed the E. Gerald Corrigan Endowed Scholarship Fund at Fordham College at Rose Hill, which has provided financial support to minority students for nearly a decade.

Iftekhar Hasan, Ph.D., whose expertise is in the areas of corporate finance, entrepreneurial finance, and capital markets, was formally installed as the inaugural holder of the chair in February 2012.

Archbishop Demetrios Chair in Orthodox Theology and Culture

This chair was created thanks to a February 2009 gift from the Jaharis Family Foundation, Inc., a philanthropy that provides grants to arts, cultural, and religious institutions, and Mary and Michael Jaharis. It marked a milestone for Orthodox studies in the Western Hemisphere and ensured resources for a chair in this discipline in perpetuity at Fordham.

The new chair was celebrated by members of the Fordham and Orthodox Christian communities at the November 2013 installation ceremony for Aristotle Papanikolaou, Ph.D., a professor of theology and the senior fellow and co-founder of Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center. A second chair will be installed in 2015.

Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Chair in Catholic Theology

A gift in November 2009 from Vincent Viola, PAR, chairman of Virtu Management, LLC, and his wife, Teresa, created an endowed professorship in honor of Cardinal Dulles, who was the first American to become a cardinal who was not a bishop, and the only cardinal to teach on Fordham’s staff.

In January 2011, the chair was filled by Terrence W. Tilley, Ph.D., professor of theology and then-chair of the department. At the installation ceremony, he delivered “Sentire cum Ecclesia: Thinking With and for the Church.” His talk explored ways to understand St. Ignatius Loyola’s “Rules for Thinking with the Church” in the context of Cardinal Dulles’ influential book Models of the Church(Doubleday, 1974).

Gabelli Professor of Security Analysis

As part of his 2011 transformative $25 million gift, Mario Gabelli, GSB ’65, devoted funds toward a new faculty position that will be tasked with heading the new Gabelli Center for Global Security Analysis.

In addition, Gabelli’s matching gift challenge resulted in five additional chairs for the business school, enhancing its strength across a range of disciplines:
• Grose Family Endowed Chair in Business
• William J. Loschert Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship
• Robert B. McKeon Endowed Faculty Chair in Business
• Edward M. Stroz/Sara A. Spooner Endowed Chair in Accounting
• Toppeta Family Chair in Global Financial Markets (see below)

Saul Cornell, the Guenther chair, and Martin Flaherty, the Leitner chair.

Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History

Paul Guenther, FCRH ’62, former president of the investment firm PaineWebber, and a trustee emeritus of the University, established the chair in 2008 through gifts made by him and his wife, Diane. The Guenthers were born and raised (and met) in Inwood, Manhattan, while Saul Cornell, Ph.D., the chair’s inaugural holder, was born and raised in the Coney Island area of Brooklyn.

For his inaugural address, Cornell kept the New York City connection alive with “The Perils of Popular Constitutionalism: Riding the D Train with James Madison,” which detailed the Anti-Federalists of Colonial times.

Leitner Chairs in International Human Rights

A gift from James Leitner, LAW ’82, in 2007, allowed the law school to establish two chairs in international human rights. Martin Flaherty and Thomas Lee are holders of the Leitner Chairs.

Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies

A gift from Eugene Shvidler, GBA ’92, made in February 2013 provided for the establishment of the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies in the Department of Theology.

Shvidler, the chairman of Millhouse LLC, an investment and asset management company, received a master’s degree in mathematics from the Gubkin Institute of Petrochemicals and Natural Gas as well as an M.B.A. and master’s degree in international taxation from Fordham’s GBA.

A search is currently under way among academics with distinguished records of research and scholarship in Rabbinic and/or later religious developments within the Jewish tradition.

James R. Lothian, the Topetta chair.

Toppeta Family Chair in Global Financial Markets

Answering the matching challenge of Mario Gabelli, William Toppeta, FCRH ’70, and his wife Debra provided the funds for this chair, which in April 2012 was awarded to James R. Lothian, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Finance in the Fordham Schools of Business. Toppeta is a senior advisor at Promontory Financial Group.

Lothian, who joined the Fordham faculty in 1990, researches international finance, monetary economics (including monetary policy), financial history—both U.S. and international—and the incidence and international transmission of economic disturbances.

Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theatre

Joe Morton and Phylicia Rashad, Denzel Washington chairs.

In March 2011, the contributions of Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington, FCLC ’77, endowed both a chair in theater and a scholarship fund for undergraduate students studying theater.

The revolving chair has already been occupied by Tony Award-winning actress Phylicia Rashad, best known for her role as Clair Huxtable on the classic sitcom The Cosby Show; Tony-nominated veteran stage, television, and film actor Joe Morton; and Tony Award-winning set designerChristine Jones.

Stanley D. Waxberg and Nikki Waxberg Chair

A gift from the Waxberg estate led to the creation of a chair at the Fordham School of Law in 2008 that was awarded to Joel Reidenberg, Ph.D., the founding Director of the law school’s Center on Law and Information Policy (CLIP).

Reidenberg has held numerous administrative leadership positions for Fordham University and has become a leading voice for privacy. CLIP’s most recent report detailed the ways in which schools endanger students’ privacy through connections with private data collectors.

The gift will make it possible for Fordham to hire a professor of creative writing within the Department of English. The chair will be a visiting appointment for a limited term, offered to a distinguished writer and drawn from a variety of genres. The chair holder will lead writing workshops and teach seminars and master classes to upper-level undergraduates or graduate students.

The first holder of the chair will be announced in the spring of 2015.

This is not the first gift from Higgins Clark, who served as a University trustee from 1990 to 1996, delivered the University’s commencement address in 1997, and received the Fordham Founder’s Award in 2004. In the late 1990s, she helped fund the construction of the William D. Walsh Family Library.

“I always knew I wanted to make another gift to Fordham,” she said. “At my age, at 85-and-a-half, if I don’t decide to do it soon, who knows?”

Higgins Clark said that some years ago there had been a suggestion that she establish 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,’” said Higgins Clark, who said she just signed a deal to write three more novels. “But I thought, ‘A chair in creative writing?’ Yes, damn it! I’m a good storyteller.”

“This wonderful gift from Mary, in an area that is both an academic priority for Fordham and perfectly aligned with her remarkable career as the ‘Queen of Suspense,’ is something we are profoundly grateful for,” said Roger A. Milici, Jr., vice president for development and University relations. “She joins a very elite list of alumni and friends who have made an investment to establish an endowed professorship. We are proud to forever link her name with Fordham, and we are doubly proud to consider her one of our own.”

Higgins Clark grew up in the Bronx not far from the Rose Hill campus, and never dreamed of going to college when she was young because she wanted to help support her Irish-Catholic family. Instead, she attended secretarial school and worked as a stewardess on Pan American Airlines. After raising five children on her own (she was widowed in 1964), she enrolled at Fordham and took classes at night for five years.

“I had two children in law school, one in Mount Holyoke, one in Dartmouth, and one in Immaculate Heart, and I thought, ‘I don’t want to be the only one in the family who doesn’t have a college degree,’” she said.

She wrote two books while at Fordham: A Stranger Is Watching (Simon & Schuster, 1977), and The Cradle Will Fall (Simon & Schuster, 1980). Both became bestsellers. Her most recent book, The Lost Years (Pocket Books, 2013) features the University prominently.

The idea of a revolving chair was appealing, she said, because creative writing encompasses myriad writing styles that all depend on strong storytelling skills.

“There are plenty of nonfiction writers who are as dry as a bone, and then there are the David McCulloughs and Doris Kearns Goodwins. They know how to tell a story so it reads like a novel,” she said.

Mary Bly, Ph.D., professor of English and herself a bestselling author, who hosted Higgins Clark in her creative writing classes last year, called her a “genius” when it comes to creating narrative drive. Bly said that having a chair that features experts in different writing genres will be a testament to Higgins Clark’s considerable success in not only writing well, but also cultivating a readership.

“It would be wonderful to have a children’s book writer one year, maybe a food writer the next year, a genre fiction writer like Mary the year after that. There’s so much flexibility,” she said.

Robert R. Grimes, S.J., dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, called Higgins Clark a “natural-born teacher.” He recalled that her 1997 commencement speech, in which she instructed graduates to think of their lives as their own suspense novels, was one of the best. The intellectual vigor with which she pursued her studies even as she was writing full-time makes her an ideal role model, he said.

“Having this revolving chair where we bring in writers of distinction from different genres means that over the course of four years, students can be exposed to four very different distinguished writers,” Father Grimes said.

Higgins Clark said she has a great affection for Fordham, and is excited by the goal set by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University, to make it the premier Catholic university in the country.

“I think Fordham has the tightest alumni you could find anywhere. You’re part of the Fordham family, no matter how old you are,” she said. “I have found it to be a wonderful, enriching experience.”