After teaching business and economics at Marymount for 29 years, Sister Marion joined the Fordham faculty when Marymount closed and became part of Fordham. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she was appointed assistant dean for advising adult business students in the evening program, according to the R.S.H.M. obituary.

When Marymount closed, Sister Marion offered this reflection on her time teaching at the college: “In my contact with hundreds of students over many years, I was delighted and privileged to be with them,  hopefully imparting knowledge, but assuredly learning from them.  The richness of their backgrounds,  the variety of their talent,  and the tenacity of their pursuits enriched my understanding,  elicited my best effort, and incited a  joyful hope within me. We indeed were in it together.”

Read the full obituary for Sister Marion on the R.S.H.M. website.

Due to COVID-19 concerns, attendance at the vigil and funeral Mass is limited to R.S.H.M. sisters and the immediate family. All are requested to wear a mask and show proof of vaccination.

Thursday, Jan. 20: Vigil Service, 7 p.m.

Friday, Jan. 21: Mass of Christian Burial, 10:30 a.m.

She will be buried at Mount Calvary Cemetery in White Plains. Gifts in her name may be made to Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, 50 Wilson Park Drive, Tarrytown, NY 10591.

Roach taught for 38 years at Marymount, which merged with Fordham in 2000 and was closed in 2007.

A funeral Mass was held in Hyde Park, New York, for close family and friends on Dec. 11, followed by entombment at the mausoleum at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Read the obituary in the Poughkeepsie Journal.

“I saw how much pain and suffering people’s financial lives are causing [them],” she said, despite their efforts to stick to a budget and “create financial security.”

Tisdale, a 1988 graduate of Marymount College (the Tarrytown, New York, women’s college that was part of Fordham University from 2002 until it closed in 2007), said she felt many financial experts were overlooking—or underestimating—the “psychological and emotional toll of financial stress.” She saw a disconnect between consumers’ good intentions and “how our economic system works.”

She wanted to get down to root causes, so she spent six years researching consumers’ financial behavior, interviewing experts such as clinical psychologist James Prochaska, Ph.D., and collaborating with financial adviser Paula Boyer Kennedy to write a book, The True Cost of Happiness: The Real Story Behind Managing Your Money (Wiley, 2007).

One of the things she found is that our financial decisions can “really reflect … where you are—and if you’re not living in step with your priorities.”

“Money’s almost like a palm reader,” she said. “You learn a lot about someone if you look at their financial choices, their financial life.”

Tisdale wrote The True Cost of Happiness to help people bring their decisions in line with their priorities. She plans to share some of that wisdom during the fifth annual Fordham Women’s Summit, to be held virtually on Wednesday, Oct. 20. (Update: Watch Tisdale’s address at the Summit.)

She also wants to draw on her personal story to help attendees examine the various experiences and influences that have shaped their financial lives.

“For me, experiences that I’ve had—being born a Black woman, growing up with a privileged life and finding myself a lot of times in racial isolation, and trying to build career as a Black female financial journalist—I didn’t really feel like I fit into any group, and so I had to look deeper into dimensions of myself,” she said, to understand how all of those things affected her approach to money and to making financial decisions in line with her priorities.

The True Cost of Happiness was published in late 2007, right at the start of the Great Recession, which inspired many people and groups to contact Tisdale for advice. The White House asked her to develop a behavior-based financial education program for students at historically Black colleges and universities.

“That’s maybe where my lightbulb went off,” she said, and she began to feel a call to “educate and teach.”

Shortly after her book was published, Tisdale took that calling to the next level. With fundraising help and support from NFL Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott, she launched Winning Play$, a program that aims to teach students how to create positive relationship with money and how to manage it effectively. The program won an Excellence in Economic Education from the U.S. Department of Education in 2010.

Tisdale is also the founder and CEO of a multimedia company, Mind Money Media, that aims to educate people about the complex psychology of money, including how socioeconomics, gender, race, age, sexual orientation, and culture affect our financial experiences.

“People don’t get much education in how to navigate those deeper aspects of ourselves, and that’s what I hope to show people how to do,” she said.

Fordham Magazine spoke with Tisdale in advance of her keynote address at the Women’s Summit.

How did you get interested in financial behavior?
When I worked on Wall Street, I really saw how the financial system worked and how that integrated into the community, into our lives. And my first job in journalism was at The Wall Street Journal. That really immersed me into how businesses work, from the inside out. When I went to CBS, it was a total 180: I was immersed into the financial experience of human beings. Having seen all that intersectionality, I saw how much pain and suffering people’s financial lives are causing them—money is the leading cause of depression, the leading cause of substance abuse, the leading cause of divorce.

Why did you want to do all this research into financial behavior?
Money works very simply: Don’t spend more than you have. Don’t borrow more than you can afford to pay back. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose. But I can also see this disconnect between the intentions of consumers to create financial security and how our economic system works. They don’t coincide very well, largely because people place a big focus on the monetary side of money when the psychological and emotional toll of financial stress is really causing problems.

What did you learn from your research?
The problem became clear: We live our financial lives largely through conditioning—I call it the “money script.”

There really are three major areas: the childhood script—the way we saw money handled, or not, managed or not, growing up; social scripts—the messaging we see that our brains literally process and that we get our sense of identity from; and social messaging around gender and race—what our behaviors are “supposed to be.”

I was able to identify real skills to navigate this positioning, to help people learn to see what those messages are that we tell ourselves about money, so that we can rewrite scripts where they don’t serve us. That means having a visceral connection to what your true goals and priorities are, and what is important to you. When you connect your financial behavior to that, you’ll generally see that you spend a lot of time and money on things that are not authentically important to you, and you will find that you have a lot more resources for what really matters.

How did your time at Marymount influence you and your career path?
It was just such a supportive environment and an environment where it was so natural for women to be all that they can be. I came to Marymount after a pretty traumatic experience—I had been a figure skater, and I was vying for a spot on the U.S. national team. I left home when I was 11 years old to go live and train with coaches. And I got into a car accident, which ended my skating career. I went straight to college, to Marymount. It was just such a transitional time for me, so to be in such a safe and nurturing place where learning was fun, relationships were forged—that was what I needed.

What do you hope to share during your keynote speech at the Fordham Women’s Summit?
I think just taking responsibility. When we think of philanthropy, we tend to think of what we want to affect, but [it’s also about] taking responsibility and owning your power when it comes to outcomes.

We have, I think, the biggest mass exodus from the U.S. workforce in history. It started before the pandemic, but since the pandemic, a lot of people are just walking away from their jobs. They’re calling it the Great Resignation, but it’s also the Great Realization. When people were really forced to be in their lives, they saw how they spend their time, their priority, and how they were living was not adding up. So we’re saying a collective “no,” and the change that that’s causing in the workforce is amazing.

So, when people think about giving [and how they can use their financial power for good], I want them to think more about how can they be more demanding in terms of what they want to see happen.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Kelly Prinz, FCRH ’15.

Watch the Fifth Annual Fordham Women’s Summit. Tisdale’s keynote address begins at 16:30.

“I didn’t think I was even going to go to college, because I thought I couldn’t afford it,” said Gurreri. “And I never thought I could graduate from a place like Fordham University.”

Gurreri noted that she didn’t come from an affluent background. Like so many of her high school friends, she said, limited exposure to higher education limited her aspirations. Her mother came from a rural part of Puerto Rico and her father was from a rural part of the Dominican Republic. Neither had the opportunity to go to college. When her older brother and sister graduated from high school, they went straight to work.

Gurreri credits a series of mentors with exposing her to options. The first was Martha Graham, an executive at Chase Manhattan Bank who mentored teens at Roosevelt High School.

“I told her, ‘I don’t think I can go’ and she said, ‘Absolutely not, of course, you can,” recalled Gurreri.

‘Zero In and Focus’

With Graham’s encouragement, Gurreri got accepted to Marymount, where she experienced a bit of culture shock. Compared to the Bronx, she said, the Tarrytown campus might as well have been California. There, a nun named Sister Fahey issued a stern charge to “zero in and focus,” a habit Gurreri kept to this day. She worked a part-time job in retail that became full-time after graduating. But in quick order, she got her real estate license; married the love of her life, Jimmy Gurreri; moved to Yonkers; and had the first of her three daughters.

Learning the Complexities of New York Real Estate

Her ongoing education continued with a paralegal certificate, which helped her land a job with real estate lawyer Ira S. Goldenberg. After her father passed away, Gurreri asked her mother to move in with her to help raise the girls and to help the family deal with his passing. Goldenberg soon took on the role of mentor and as a father figure in her life.

“She was without a doubt the best paralegal I’ve ever had,” said Goldenberg, who chairs the Real Property Law Section of the New York Bar Association and teaches real estate law as an adjunct at Brooklyn Law School. “She made me a better lawyer.”

At Goldenberg & Selker, LLP, Gurreri zeroed in on the transactional aspects of real estate, recalled Goldenberg.

“At the beginning, she was a jack of all trades, but at some point, she didn’t want to do the litigation, she wanted to do the transactions and she really perfected it,” he said.

For 10 years the office was a perfect fit for Gurreri, but Goldenberg noted that she was beginning to grow beyond her role.

“New York real estate is complex,” he said. “I think she began to see that she understood that complexity—and some can be dismissive of that. But she was not that way. I knew she needed to move on to a bigger firm, but I was devastated when she left.”

Gurreri said she shed more than a few tears on leaving.

“It was a difficult decision for me to have that conversation with Ira because I could have stayed there for the rest of my life,” she said. “But he told me, ‘I’m very proud of you; you’re always pushing yourself further.’”

Using New Knowledge on the Job

Today, Gurreri is with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP, an international full-service law firm with a dedicated focus on real estate and construction. To grow in her career, she knew she’d once again needed to return to Fordham, this time at the Real Estate Institute, where she decided to concentrate on finance and development. Goldenberg happily wrote her a letter of recommendation.

Much of what she learned in the classroom deepened her understanding of her day job, she said. It also exposed her to ethical dimensions of the industry, such as eco-friendly development.

“If you build you want to make sure that you’re building something that has a good impact, not only on where it’s situated in the neighborhood, but in the natural environment,” she said.

With her master’s complete, Gurreri said she’s already being pulled onto projects at work that she’s familiar with because of her coursework.

“Fortuitously, it just so happens I just got put on a project that involves a giant wind energy and solar power acquisition,” she said.

She said the material is familiar now, but it wasn’t always.

“Since 2002, I worked toward things I wasn’t sure about. I’d say, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work.’ But you know what, you never know in life until you try,” she said.

More than 80 alumnae gathered on June 6 to raise a glass to outgoing Marymount College Alumnae Board leaders Samantha MacInnis, MC ’00, and Julene Caulfield, MC ’02, and welcome three new members of the executive committee—Paula Mahayosnand, MC ’93, Michelle McAllister, MC ’96, and Heather McWilliam, MC ’88.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, addressed the group to open the reception, and in her own remarks, MacInnis referred to Marie Joseph Butler, R.S.H.M., who founded the women’s college in Tarrytown, New York, in 1907.

“As Mother Butler said, ‘The world has never needed women’s intelligence and sympathy more than it does today,’” MacInnis, the outgoing board president, told the group. “I’m proud to have been part of continuing this tradition.”

Mahayosnand, who succeeds MacInnis as board president, also cited the legacy of Mother Butler.

“Today, together, we are bonded by Marymount yet come from diverse backgrounds,” Mahayosnand said. “Father McShane often refers to Marymount women as storytellers. As a community, we are vocal, and from these stories, we are able to share in the rich history of what it means to be a Marymount woman and the importance of continuing the legacy of Mother Butler.”

The reception also honored the three recipients of the alumnae board’s annual awards.

Ottilie Droggitis, MC ’78, won the Gloria Gaines Memorial Award, the alumnae board’s highest honor, in recognition of her service to her church, her community, and Marymount. She has served on the Marymount Alumnae Board since 2016 and been an alumnae class agent for many years. She has worked for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and as a teacher for the Montgomery County Public School System in Maryland. She is also an avid volunteer in her community, having served on the Capitol Hill Hospital Women’s Auxiliary Board and on the board of the Walter Johnson High School Education Foundation.

Carmen Garver, MC ’85, won the Alumna of Achievement Award. After a 15-year career in therapeutic intervention, clinical administration, and health education, in 2004 she and her husband, Bob, founded Wicked Joe Organic Coffees, Bard Coffee, and Wicked Leaf Organic Teas. Carmen and Bob were recognized in 2017 as Maine’s Small Business Leaders of the Year.

Jean Wynn, MC ’80, won the Golden Dome Award in recognition of her efforts to advance the Marymount community. Her background in strategic account management and international banking spans the U.S., Asia Pacific, and Europe. She retired in March as a managing director at BNY Mellon, where she had spent her entire career after graduating from Marymount in 1980. She was a founding member of BNY Mellon’s Women’s Initiative Network (WIN) and the Wall Street Women’s Alliance. She served for two terms as the vice president of the Marymount Alumnae Board; is a consistent donor to the Marymount Legacy Fund, an endowed scholarship fund that supports women students who carry on the Marymount tradition at Fordham;  and is a member of the Fordham President’s Council and Parents’ Leadership Council. She has also been an active participant and supporter of the Fordham’s annual Women’s Summit.

The day began with 75 hardy souls taking part in the annual Ram Run, which sent runners on a 5K loop around the campus.

While they passed beneath the boughs of stately elm trees lining the campus, other revelers passed beneath the arches of Rose Hill’s Southern Boulevard entrance, heading to the parking lot where they set up for tailgate parties. The lot drew fans of both Fordham and the College of the Holy Cross, whose Crusaders ultimately won the Homecoming matchup 49 to 27.

Joe Jordan, GABELLI ’74, a Fordham Football Hall of Fame inductee who received the 2019 Mara Family Award, joined former teammate John Lumelleau, FCRH ’74 at the lot. Jordan was a freshman when football was reinstated as a Division I varsity program in 1970, after it was stopped in 1954 and revived as a club in the 1960s and then a Division III team in the NCAA.

“They brought back varsity on a shoestring, really,” said Lumelleau, who is also a member of the Fordham University Board of Trustees. Still, there was excitement on campus for the program, particularly a game their freshman year against Georgetown, soon after legendary coach Vince Lombardi, FCRH ’37, passed away.

“At halftime, they had the six surviving Seven Blocks of Granite,” Jordan recalled, citing the nickname given to Fordham’s fearsome linemen, including Lombardi. Wellington Mara “[current co-owner of the New York Giants]. was there, Marie Lombardi was there. There was no Lombardi Center—that’s when they dedicated it.”

The pair and many of their teammates still get together every year as a part of the “Rams of the ’70s” group that Lumelleau, a 2015 Walsh Family Award winner, helped start.

Reuniting Under the Big Tent

In the center of campus, beside the field where the Holy Cross Crusaders would face off with the Fordham Rams for the 57th time, several thousand alumni, students, families, and friends flocked to massive tents on Edwards Parade for burgers, pulled chicken, and libations. Several tables offered information about various alumni affinity groups, while the Fordham University Alumni Association (FUAA) collected four boxes of goods that attendees donated for POTS, a nonprofit that helps individuals facing poverty in the Bronx.

Outside the tent, Giant Jenga games lured guests on the west side of the parade, while face painting, a bouncy castle, wall climbing, and corn hole enticed families by the steps of Keating Hall.

Elsewhere on campus, members of the Mimes and Mummers Alumni Association celebrated their annual “Collins-coming” at Collins Auditorium, and former Fordham Law School Assistant Dean Robert J. Reilly, FCRH ’72, LAW ’75, guided a group of 30 on a walking tour of the campus titled Hidden in Plain Sight: Discover the Jesuit Presence at Rose Hill. Among the tidbits he shared was the fact that the statue of St. Ignatius of Loyola next to Hughes Hall was commissioned by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, who requested that the founder of the Jesuits be depicted facing directly up at the heavens.

“If you Google St. Ignatius of Loyola, you will not find that except for one place. This is a very, very unusual statue,” he said.

A Welcoming Community

Seated at one of the blue tables in the tent reserved for Marymount College alumnae was Teresita Abay-Krueger, MC ’80, who studied biology and chemistry and went on to work at IBM. For several years, she served on the Marymount alumnae board.

“Fordham has been a very welcoming community to the Marymount alumnae … You’ve really been cheerleaders for [our]  legacy in many respects. And we not only appreciate it, but we respect that,” she said.

“It’s just been a natural melding of the two communities. And what better place to have it than Homecoming, where we get to celebrate a nice football game on a beautiful campus with plenty to eat and drink?”

A Bond Among Jesuit Schools

The event also drew families for whom loyalties between the Rams and the Crusaders were split. Bob and Rose Shea, natives of West Hartford, Connecticut, who graduated from the College of Holy Cross in 1985 and 1986, respectively, were sporting dark purple garb, while their daughter Fiona Shea, FCRH ’19, wore a hat that said simply, “Bronx.” Rose said they love the camaraderie between alumni of Jesuit schools. She’s also confessed to being obsessed with New York Botanical Garden, and noted that they became members during Fiona’s freshman year. Arthur Avenue is a must-stop for them every time they visit.

“Being from Connecticut, we’re more familiar with Boston, and of course we’re familiar with New York, but having Fiona here, it opened a whole new world to us,” she said.

A Time for Families

Multiple generations of Rams took part in the day’s festivities. Lynn and Ryan Flaherty, both FCRH ’00, watched their children Nolan, 9, Reagan, 7, and Ainsley, 5, take their turns on the bouncy castles; they said there was never a question that they’d make the drive from Amityville, New York, for the day.

“We love bringing the kids here, and showing them where mom and dad went to school,” said Lynn. “They really do try to do something for the kids. Ryan’s parents join us, so we make it a big family thing.”

Jerry Breslin, FCRH ’59, likewise said he treasured the memories of his time on campus. He started returning after his son, John, graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1991. When he was an undergraduate, he said, he befriended the priest who was then the dean of men, and the priest officiated at Breslin’s wedding. Most of his former classmates had good friends who were Jesuits, he said.

“In the springtime, after dinner we’d come out and play softball. There’d be a hundred Jesuits standing around, watching the game. You’d make an error or something, and they’d yell, ‘Breslin, you’re just as bad at softball as you are in the classroom,’” he said, laughing.

Chris Healy, on the other hand, never graduated from Fordham, but nonetheless feels at home at Rose Hill. He’s been coming here since he was seven, when his father, Richard Healy, FCRH ’50 and uncle, Stan Bloomer, FCRH, ’50, brought him to his first homecoming.

“My family has such a history here,” said Healy, wearing a Fordham jacket more than three decades old. “To me, it’s tradition and history that embellishes this University.”

His daughter, Brittany Healy, GABELLI ’17, was celebrating in the main tent, too. Growing up, she and her two older brothers frequently watched football games at the Rose Hill campus. Years later, she majored in business administration and marketing at Fordham—just like her grandfather.

“My friends and I always talk about how Fordham is really like no other place on the planet,” said Healy, who is now an account executive at a public relations agency. “The community feel and the love that we have at this college is just different than anywhere else.”

For self-proclaimed “Fordham fanatic” Maggie Wimmer, FCRH ’16, this year’s homecoming had extra resonance.

“I love coming to homecoming. Whenever I get the chance to come back, I really enjoy it. And now that he’s in the program, it’s even more of a reason,” she said, motioning to her boyfriend, Matthew Glaser, a Ph.D. student in philosophy at Fordham.

“I haven’t even been to my undergraduate homecoming before, so this is a new experience for me,” said Glaser, who lives near Arthur Avenue.

Wimmer said she loves running into people she knew at Fordham, even if they were just acquaintances at the time.

“When you see them, it’s so exciting to relive those memories. It’s like you all have something to come back to,” said Wimmer, who majored in psychology at Fordham and now works in public health outreach at Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan.

“When we were graduating and Father McShane said, ‘This is your home, stay long and visit often’—you just connect with that, because when you walk on campus, it feels like home, like a breath of fresh air.”

View more photos from Homecoming.

Taylor Ha, Kelly Kultys, and Nicole LaRosa contributed reporting.

“Sister Mary was much loved at Fordham, and by everyone who knew her,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “She was a guiding light to our alumni, especially the Marymount alumnae, and of course a dear friend and confidant to her fellow sisters of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. The Fordham family mourns with Sister Mary’s loved ones and friends, and with the many alumni who knew her company, our grief leavened with the knowledge that she surely rests with the Lord today.”

Sister Mary was known for her service to others. As Marymount alumnae chaplain at Fordham, she tended to the spiritual, social, and educational needs of her fellow alumnae. She went wherever she was needed to support those in crisis, traveling as far as Zambia and Zimbabwe. And she did it all with warmth, humor, and patience, said her colleagues and loved ones. 

“In this day and age, we’re quick to find faults in people,” said Michael E. Griffin, Fordham’s associate vice president for alumni relations and executive director of the alumni association. “Mary was somebody who always found the good.”

Sister Mary, previously known as Sister M. Gailhac, was born on August 6, 1940, in New York City to Carl and Florence Heineman Heyser.

As a child, she was shy, athletic, and “a bit of a tomboy,” said her older sister, Sally Heyser Ryan, MC ’58. They lived on the Long Island Sound, where Sister Mary enjoyed swimming and playing tennis. When they grew up and Ryan had five children of her own—and, eventually, 14 grandchildren—Sister Mary was very fond of them, Ryan said. 

“She was my only sister,” Ryan said. “I’m going to miss talking to her weekly and hearing about all the good work she was doing.” 

In 1962, Sister Heyser graduated from Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, where she received a bachelor’s degree in social studies/science and economics. At age 24, she entered the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary in Tarrytown. She spent the next four decades working in ministries across the globe, from her home state to the African continent. From 2003 to 2009, she served as a provincial councillor of the Eastern American Province of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. 

From 2009 to 2018, she served as the Marymount alumnae chaplain in the Development and University Relations (DAUR) division. 

“She would always start the day by coming to our section of the office and saying hi to everybody,” said Shannon Quinn, associate director of alumni relations. “She would bring up something or other that she knew about you and check in on you.” 

Quinn recalled Sister Mary’s great collection of “snazzy” floral blazers, her opportune sense of humor, and her penchant for Planter’s Punch cocktails. She said Sister Mary taught her three lessons: to assume good intentions in others, incorporate joy in all things, and lead a balanced life. 

“The best thing—and something that probably a lot of people would say about Mary—is that knowing her made you a better person. Because you couldn’t be around Mary … without taking to heart her kindness of spirit,” said Quinn. 

She was a “bright light” who loved the color pink and saw the positive side of things, said Jane Bartnett, MC ’76, former president of the Marymount Alumnae Board. At alumnae board meetings, she delivered thought-provoking prayers that were relevant to world events. And she was a “healing factor” for many Marymount alumnae, including those who were still unhappy that the college, located on the Hudson River in Tarrytown, had to close in 2007.

“She really helped bring Marymount into the Fordham family,” Bartnett said. 

At Fordham, she delivered the opening prayers for many big events, including 2015 Commencement and a Washington, D.C. alumni chapter event honoring Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor that same year. At the 2015 Marymount Founder’s ceremony at the Rose Hill campus, the school’s alumnae board honored her with the Mother Butler Leadership award in honor of her service. 

Sister Mary’s service extended beyond Fordham. In a 2019 story posted by her religious order, she described what it was like to assist refugees at the Annunciation House, a volunteer-run sanctuary in El Paso, Texas. She drove to local bus terminals and an airport, where she helped refugees receive their tickets. She made peanut butter jelly sandwiches, packed food bags for the refugees, and served meals on site. Although she wasn’t fluent in Spanish, she struck up conversations through a Google translation app. Sometimes, she worked as long as 11 hours. 

“Mary was a woman who was passionately committed to ministry. She was willing to go anywhere and do anything,” said Catherine Patten, R.S.H.M, MC ’61, a fellow sister and a friend. “She had this great sense of mission and great care for the poor, immigrants, and people who are most in need, wherever she was.” 

Sister Mary also spearheaded grassroots efforts against human trafficking. She was featured in the book If Nuns Ruled the World: Ten Sisters on a Mission (Open Road Media, 2014) that described how she, along with six sisters from other New York congregations, formed a powerful coalition in 2005. 

“[She] became the glue for the group that would be known as NY-CRC-STOP: New York Coalition of Religious Congregations to Stop Trafficking of People,” wrote the book’s author, Jo Piazza, an award-winning reporter and editor. 

The group organized two Fordham conferences on human trafficking. Through the STOP Coalition, she helped raise funds for LifeWay Network to open its first safe house and assisted in opening two more safe houses in the New York City region. She served on the LifeWay Board for eight years. 

Last year, she moved to Immokalee, Florida, to begin a new ministry in immigration advocacy. Shortly before her death, she returned to the Marymount Convent in Tarrytown, where she received hospice care.

“She brought so much strength and joy to her role in building the bond between the Marymount College and Fordham University communities,” said Samantha MacInnis, MC ’00, current president of the Marymount Alumnae Board, in an email. “It was impossible not to feel that love and commitment when you were around her.”

She is survived by her sister, numerous nieces and nephews, and the members of her religious community. 

All services will be held at the Marymount Convent Chapel, 32 Warren Avenue, Tarrytown, NY. The wake is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 6, from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m. Vigil service begins at 7:30 pm. The Mass of Christian Burial will be Thursday, Nov. 7, at 10:30 a.m. The burial will be at Mount Calvary Cemetery in White Plains. In lieu of flowers, gifts in her name may be made to Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, 50 Wilson Park Drive, Tarrytown, NY, 10591.

In his welcome address at Tognino Hall, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, urged alumni to not only enjoy their time with old friends but also take pride in their alma mater.

“Be proud of Fordham, and tell the story,” Father McShane said. “What story? Your story. Where you came from. Why did you come from here? What did you get? How did you turn out? Who are you now? And how do you trace who you are now to who you were then?”

The classes celebrating this year raised more than $83 million since their last Jubilee five years ago.

A Tale of Two Love Stories

Todd Brooks, FCRH ’94, met his wife on the second Sunday of their freshman year. Four months into their relationship, he recalled, he told his then-girlfriend he loved her for the first time.

“She looked at me and she goes, ‘That’s nice,’” Todd Brooks said, while his wife Stacie Kloepfer-Brooks, FCRH ’94, GSE ’95, gently protested. But two years later, she wrote him a handwritten poem about their time together—a memento he’s kept for more than 20 years.

“We kind of grew up together, right? When we started dating, I was 18 and you had just turned 19,” Todd said, turning to Stacie. “And now we’re 46, 47 years old.”

Seated beside the Brookses on Martyr’s Lawn were their classmates, Ann Marie Denning, FCRH ’94, LAW ’97, and P.J. Denning, GABELLI ’94, ’01, both of whom were first-generation Irish-American college students. Today, Ann Marie works in development at Fordham Prep and P.J. is a public relations partner who has served as an adjunct professor at the Gabelli School of Business.

In 1998, the Dennings were married by two Fordham Jesuits: Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., former president of the University, and Richard J. Dillon, S.J. And like the Brooks, the couple has five children—the oldest of whom just finished his first year at his father’s alma mater.

“It was a great time,” P.J. said. “Fordham was good to us.”

Reliving Milestones from the ’60s and ’70s

The Sixties were marked by many milestones, including the military draft and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, said alumnus Michael Piellusch as he reflected.

“We were the first class to be drafted,” recalled the Golden Ram. “I ended up joining the Coast Guard, and I’m still working for the military. As it turns out, it was one of the best things I ever did. But some of our classmates didn’t survive.”

During that same decade, students at Marymount College, which became a part of Fordham before it closed, weren’t allowed to wear pants outside the dormitories, said an alumna at the Jubilee cocktail reception.

“We had a strike in May 1966 or 1967 that we be allowed to wear pants from 9 until 1 on Saturdays,” said Anne Goett, MC ’69. “We marched in our academic gowns.”

Marymount alumnae celebrated at a gathering and awards ceremony in Butler Commons on Friday night, where Christina Favilla, MC ’89, GABELLI ’97, was given the Alumna of Achievement Award and Marilyn O’Connor Dimling, MC ’74, was given the Gloria Gaines Memorial Award. Brigid Driscoll, R.S.H.M., GRE ’02, former Marymount president who passed away last October, was also recognized.

At Saturday’s picnic, Adriana Delia Collins, FCLC ’74, and Joseph Gursky, FCRH ’74, marveled at how much they’d been through together since they first met in Walsh Hall.

“We would meet in the stairwell and chat. We were just confidantes,” Gursky said. “She told me everything; I told her everything.”

Collins said the two remained connected. “Over the years I got married, raised my family, moved around the world,” she said, “but we would always stay in touch.”

They still remember gathering on Martyr’s Lawn, the very spot where the picnic was being held, to watch the last Third Avenue elevated train depart along the tracks next to campus on April 29, 1973. The line was demolished not long afterward.

Although Collins, who now lives in San Francisco, has returned to campus over the years, it was Gursky’s first Jubilee, and only his second time back in the 45 years since graduation. He joked that he majored in “social life” as an undergraduate, but it was also a tumultuous time for him, he said; he had been coming to terms with his homosexuality. Last Saturday, he served as a Eucharistic minister at a Mass at the University Church.

This year’s Jubilee was extraordinary for another Ram from the Seventies: Joan Garry, FCRH ’79, a previous GLAAD executive director who helped persuade the New York Times to include same-sex couples in its wedding coverage.

“This is my first time seeing a rainbow flag anywhere on this campus,” Garry said, gazing at the colorful cloth waving across the Walsh Family Library’s terrace at the Affinity Chapters Open House, where the Rainbow Rams were one of several groups represented. “It’s not just moving, but it’s also for me, a recognition that this institution is ready to accept people and students and faculty for exactly who they are.”

For the younger generation of Rams, Jubilee was a chance to cherish their college years. Jennifer Rivera, FCRH ’14, a communications and Spanish language and literature double major who lived in four different Rose Hill dormitories and studied abroad in Granada, now works at MTV as a coordinating producer. But when she returned to campus last weekend, she rekindled a feeling that never really left her.

“As soon as I walked on campus, I was so overcome with joy,” Rivera said. “I’m so happy that I was able to go to Jubilee because it really just made me appreciate Fordham all over again.”

Hiding a Live Ram in the Backyard

For nearly five decades, the Rose Hill campus was home to more than 20 live rams. Before a big sports game, Fordham’s rival, Manhattan College, would try to kidnap the animal and dye its wool green—Manhattan’s school color.

Sometimes, the rival school succeeded. But one year in the late ’50s, the University temporarily hid its ram in a residential backyard that belonged to Joe Mansfield, FCRH ’59, a commuter student.

“I didn’t tell my parents. My mother did discover it though because she kept asking, ‘What’s that noise?’” said Mansfield, a retired university fundraiser who lives in North Carolina. “And the noise was the ram saying, ‘Ba-a-a-a.’”

A Harvard-to-Fordham Transfer

Richard Grant was one of seven black students in the class of 1965. They called themselves “the Fordham Seven,” he said. But his life almost panned out differently. Shortly before his first semester at Fordham, he learned Harvard had accepted him from its waiting list.

“My parents insisted that for the legacy of black people in America, I could not turn down Harvard,” Grant said. “They said, ‘If you don’t go to Harvard, we’re not going to pay [for your education].’”

He attended Harvard for one year. But he wanted to live in New York, and he wanted a Catholic education. While his parents attended graduate school, he had been raised by an Irish Catholic woman who baptized him and showed him what it meant to be a Catholic.

“That’s how I came to be at Fordham,” he said with a smile.

—Patrick Verel, Gina Vergel, and Ayesha Akhtar contributed reporting.

America, as Seen on TV: How Television Shapes Immigrant Expectations Around the Globe

In her latest book, Clara Rodríguez examines the “soft power” of American television in projecting U.S.-centric views around the globe. She analyzes the strong influence TV exercises on both young Americans and recent immigrants with regard to consumer behavior and their views on race, class, ethnicity, and gender.

The book is based on two studies: one focused on 71 immigrant adults over 18 who had watched U.S. TV in their home country, and one focused on 171 U.S.-born undergraduates from the Northeast. Many in the foreign-born group were surprised to find that their experience of the U.S. proved more racially and economically diverse than the mostly white, middle-class depictions of American life that they had seen back home on TV. And substantial majorities of both groups shared the sense that American TV is flawed in that it “does not accurately represent or reflect racial and ethnic relations in the United States.”

Still, Rodríguez notes, TV is “a medium in flux; it has changed greatly in the past decade, and the only thing we can be certain about is that it will continue to change.”

Back from the Brink: Saving Animals from Extinction by Nancy F. Castaldo, MC ’84 (Cornell University Press)

In Back from the Brink, Nancy Castaldo recounts the survival stories of seven species—whooping cranes, alligators, giant tortoises, bald eagles, gray wolves, condors, and bison.

“All of these animal populations plummeted,” she writes, “and yet, all of them survive today.”

She describes how each species got in trouble; relates the often controversial restoration efforts and their results; explains the need for apex predators; offers calls to action for young readers; and pays tribute to a group of “eco-heroes” (including President Richard Nixon, who in 1973 signed the Endangered Species Act) who “look out for the needs of creatures that cohabit this planet, even when these needs may conflict with our short-term economic goals.”

Feminism’s Forgotten Fight: The Unfinished Struggle for Work and Family by Kirsten Swinth, Ph.D., associate professor of history and American studies at Fordham (Harvard University Press)

From failed promises of women “having it all” to the contemporary struggle for equal wages for equal work, Kirsten Swinth exposes how government policies often undermined tenets of second-wave feminism during the 1960s and 1970s.

She argues that second-wave feminists did not fail to deliver on their promises; rather, a conformist society pushed back against far-reaching changes sought by these activists.

“My focus is on the story of a broad feminist vision that wasn’t fully realized,” Swinth notes. “There were a lot of gains generally, but the movement also generated an antifeminist backlash so that most of the aspirations, like a sane and sustainable balance for work and family, were defeated.”

She examines activists’ campaigns and draws from them “a set of lessons that we need to inspire us” to continue the fight “with a new energy.”

Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia by Steven Stoll, Ph.D., professor of history at Fordham (Hill and Wang)

To better understand the history of the United States, one should include the people who were displaced from lands they once called home, argues Steven Stoll. That story includes not only Native American tribes evicted by English and later American settlers but also poor whites who once called the mountains of Appalachia home.

In Ramp Hollow, he visits an area just outside of Morgantown, West Virginia, to explore how the people who once lived there were pushed out and forced to surrender a self-sustaining, agrarian life in exchange for a wage-based living tied to coal mining companies and lumber mills.

Brooklyn Before: Photographs, 1971–1983 by Larry Racioppo, FCRH ’72 (Cornell University Press)

New York City photographer Larry Racioppo honed his art and craft during the 1970s by taking pictures of family, friends, and kids in his working-class South Brooklyn neighborhood.

This collection of his early work highlights families—most of them Italian American, Irish American, and Puerto Rican—as they go about their daily lives, celebrating Catholic sacraments and holidays, playing stickball and congas on the sidewalk, hanging out on stoops and fire escapes, posing with boom boxes in front of graffiti-tagged walls, and taking part in patriotic parades and religious processions.

“I did not know it at the time, but I was recording a part of Brooklyn that would soon be remade by gentrification,” Racioppo writes.

“Through personal contact, or travel, or even stories, we are all expanding. We are caring as a people, and we are so blessed here in the United States. We can make life better for our southern neighbors,” Sister Kelleher said on December 2, when she received the Mother Butler Leadership Award at the Marymount College Alumnae Association’s annual Founder’s Day celebration on Fordham’s Rose Hill campus.

Sister Kelleher, a Catholic nun and an attorney, has been on the front lines of immigration issues and asylum requests for more than 30 years. She speaks passionately of her clients at Legal Aid Services of Collier County in Immokalee, Florida, a heavily agricultural area just north of the Everglades. There she mostly supports impoverished migrant farmworkers who were victims of crimes in their home countries in Central and South America.

In one case earlier this year, she advocated for a woman who had fled an abusive relationship with a gang member who was threatening her life. She said he had left him in Honduras and returned to her family in El Salvador, but he pursued her and continued physically and emotionally abusing her. She was unable to leave the relationship without risking her life, she said, so she sought asylum in the U.S. With Sister Kelleher’s help, she was able to stay.

“I could not have won that case later in 2018,” Sister Kelleher told her fellow Marymount alumnae and guests at the luncheon in Butler Commons. “Such victims of domestic violence no longer qualify” to be protected, she said, citing a recent memo issued by then Attorney General Jeff Sessions (a policy which was struck down about two weeks after the event). Many women who are victims of violence and sexual assault will most likely be sent back to countries where their safety is at risk, she said.

“The [long-term] solution to this issue and so many others lies in nations with capacity collaborating with honest stakeholders in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to invest so as to make change in these countries,” she said.

In response to an audience member who asked how they could help, Sister Kelleher encouraged attendees to take “hold of the power that women have.”

“Use your pen, use your voice, and, frankly, get in touch with organizations that you feel at home with” she told them.

After receiving the award, Sister Kelleher, who was one of only three nuns worldwide to serve as an auditor at the Catholic Church’s 2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family, spoke about how meaningful it was to be honored by her fellow Marymount alumnae—especially since both her mother and aunt had attended the college before her. “We’re very much a Marymount family,” said the 1960 grad, who also earned a master’s degree in English from Fordham in 1969.

It was while teaching high school religion and reading about various social movements that Sister Kelleher was first inspired to act on behalf of vulnerable populations, she said. And when she saw how integral the legal system was to advancing causes in ministry, she decided to attend law school at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Her motivation is simple. “I can only say that, when my neighbor’s house is on fire, I can hardly say it’s no concern of mine,” she said.

Brigid Driscoll, R.S.H.M., GRE ’02, president of Marymount College during a turbulent period and a leader who lifted women through education, died at Marymount Convent in Tarrytown, New York, on Oct. 29. She was 84.

“We have lost an inspired and inspiring educator, a fierce advocate for women, and a leader of great integrity and decency,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, in an email to Marymount alumnae. “Her energy and great devotion to the proposition of women’s empowerment through education were second to none.”

Sister Driscoll (who was universally known as Sister Brigid) was many things: a mathematician, a Ph.D. with five honorary doctorates, and, for two decades, the leader of a liberal arts women’s college who helped hundreds of young women navigate the path toward adulthood. What made Sister Brigid different from Marymount’s other presidents, friends and former students said, was her devotion to not only expanding women’s educational opportunities, but also aiding women from all walks of life: girls intrigued by the STEM fields, women balancing both a full-time job and a bachelor’s degree program, and even inmates at a maximum-security prison.

“She was a true champion of women’s education,” said Jane Bartnett, MC ’76, former president of the Marymount Alumnae Board, in an email. “Serving as Marymount’s president really meant the world to Sister Brigid.”

Sister Brigid was born Joan Driscoll on November 20, 1933, to Daniel and Delia Duffy Driscoll. As a child, she was unusually reticent until she turned three years old, said a longtime friend, Margaret Karl Geraghty, MC ’69.

“When she was little, her parents were very, very concerned about her because she didn’t speak. All of a sudden, her father was putting her shoes on, and he kept saying, ‘Push, push!’ And the first word she spoke was, ‘Daddy, my pushies are too tight!’” she said, laughing as she recalled a story Sister Brigid told her several years ago. “Every flower blooms at a different time. She was late talking, but she knew everything.”

A native New Yorker, Sister Brigid graduated from Marymount Manhattan College with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1954. That same year, she joined the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, an international congregation of nuns. But when her mother dropped her off at the convent, the older woman’s face was covered in tears. Delia didn’t want her daughter to join the convent, recalled Geraghty. But Sister Brigid had made up her mind.

“She said, ‘This is what I really wanted to do in life.’”

Mathematician, Scholar, and Staunch Supporter of All Women

She continued to pursue her passion for numbers, later earning a master’s degree in mathematics from the Catholic University of America and a doctorate in mathematics from the City University of New York. In 2002, she received a master’s degree in religious education from Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education.

Her career at Marymount College began in 1957, when she began teaching mathematics at the all-women’s school. Fourteen years later, she became associate academic dean, and, soon enough, director of continuing education. In 1975, she introduced a program called Weekend College—one of the country’s first full bachelor’s degree programs that allowed working women to earn a college education solely through weekend classes.

In 1979, Sister Brigid became president of Marymount College, a position that lasted for two decades.

“During that time she oversaw Marymount’s transformation from a homogenous liberal arts college exclusively for women to an institution that also served an inclusive population of adult and international students from diverse backgrounds,” wrote her alma mater, Marymount Manhattan College, in a statement.

As president, she promoted programs like the Marymount Institute for the Education of Women and Girls and the Girls’ Summer Science Program, which introduced laboratory experiences to “girls who might otherwise shun the field.” But her job wasn’t always easy, Sister Brigid later admitted.

“The 70’s were a tough time for women’s colleges,” she told The New York Times shortly before she retired in 1999, adding that the number of colleges for women in the United States had dropped from approximately 300 to 80 in just a decade—from 1979 to 1988.

In light of Marymount’s dwindling enrollment numbers and the increasing financial costs that many small liberal arts colleges faced during that time, Fordham acquired Marymount in 2000. When Marymount College closed in 2007, Sister Brigid remained by her students’ side.

“She really wanted to support alumnae and make sure that we were still able to connect,” said Samantha MacInnis, MC ’00, current president of the Marymount Alumnae Board. “She was very good about that … being able to honor the past, but also look to ‘This is where we’re at now. This is where we need to go.’”

The Personality Behind the President

Alumnae describe Sister Brigid as an intelligent woman of quiet strength, a barely 5-foot-tall lady who could “hug you like a bear,” and a feminist who supported women in all roles—and taught her students to do the same thing. She was a president who invited the entire 1990 class—more than 200 women—to her home, a modern, boxy house that bordered the edge of their campus, for a picnic. And to many Marymount alumnae, she was more than their past president—she was a close friend.

“When I told someone, ‘I’m having lunch with the former president of my college,’ they just looked at me like, what? That’s so unusual,” said Rena Micklewright, MC ’90, former member of the Marymount Alumnae Board. “Granted, it was a small school. But for someone at her level to even want to have those relationships, I think it just speaks to who she was.”

Throughout her life, she sat on multiple boards of educational, civic, and professional organizations at national, state, and local levels, including the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. Sister Brigid was also an R.S.H.M. nongovernmental organization representative at the United Nations and a consultant to the Beacon Institute—a not-for-profit environmental research organization dedicated to rivers and estuaries—where she chaired the advisory committee that created their initial strategic plan. Until recently, she also worked with LifeWay, an anti-trafficking network, and taught mathematics to inmates at Marymount Manhattan’s degree-granting Bedford Hills College program at the Bedford Women’s Correctional Facility in Bedford Hills, New York.

She was generous behind the scenes, too. When the family of Maria Esperanza Healy, MC ’78, immigrated to New York from Nicaragua in 1979—the beginning of a bloody revolution that wreaked havoc across her native country—Sister Brigid sent them beds that her four siblings could sleep in. And she always pushed Healy, her old statistics student, to do better.

“These are things that, for me, for the rest of my life, I will always have in my heart,” said Healy, a member of Fordham’s President’s Council who went on to found her own financial firm. “She was one of the greatest people I’ve ever met.”

Read more memories about Sister Brigid here.