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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was Nicholas “Nick” Jabari Booker.

On Sept. 27, Booker died at St. Barnabas Hospital with his mother at his side after suffering what doctors believe was a severe asthmatic attack. He was 18.  

Booker was the captain of the football team and a star student at John Burroughs School, a selective prep school in St. Louis. At Fordham, he had made a new home for himself in Martyrs’ Court. In the days following his death, Booker’s Fordham friends spoke with Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., vice president for mission integration and planning. “What was Nick like?” he asked them.

“They all, without skipping a beat, talked about his laugh. When I asked them to imitate his laugh, no one dared. But it was infectious, they said, and warmed the room,” said Father McCarthy at a memorial Mass for Booker at the University Church on Oct. 2.

If Booker was alive, they told Father McCarthy, they would let him know that Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter V studio album finally came out. And if Booker could hear them, they would tell him that they miss him.

A memorial service to celebrate Booker’s life is tentatively planned for late December at John Burroughs School. But since it is unlikely that many of his Fordham friends will be able to fly to Missouri, the University celebrated his life with a Mass at Rose Hill.

They all came: his friends, the emergency room doctors from St. Barnabas who tended to Booker, the University’s Student Affairs and Campus Ministry staff who stayed with his family in the hospital until his death, members of the Jesuit community, and over five hundred more. They filled the pews, sitting side by side and often wiping away tears. Near the church altar, propped above a white tablecloth, sat a large, framed portrait of Booker.

Booker’s roommate, Joseph Russo, stood at the pulpit and spoke about his first friend at Fordham.

“He comes from a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, and I am from Central New Jersey. Coming from different parts of the country and having different backgrounds, I thought we would simply coexist in the room together,” he said. “Even stepping into our room, there appeared a stark contrast between us. On my side were posters of the Rat Pack and Mobsters and a large tapestry of New York. On his side were posters of rappers that I have only vaguely heard of. But on the first night, I realized those were just superficial.”

They bonded over their mutual love of brown sugar-cinnamon Pop Tarts, which they stocked up on at the P.O.D. Market, Rose Hill’s grab ’n go store. When they weren’t eating Pop Tarts, they were munching on chips that Booker had brought from home. They were so popular among his friends that, two weeks into college, Booker received a huge package in the mail: a big box packed with more chips, said Russo.

Booker loved all kinds of music, too: rap, dance, Spanish, rock.

“Before going out one night, we were both in another room with our friends, and Nick decides to play his Spanish playlist. He put it on and just started dancing,” Russo said. “It was so pure, a moment of pure bliss.”

And Booker’s style was not to be trifled with. He was a man who took pride in his hair, his Chuck Taylors that looked like he had drawn on them—but, Russo adds, Booker “insisted that’s how they came”—and pairing the perfect shoes with his outfits.

Russo lamented only knowing Booker for a short time. “While I only scratched the surface of his character,” Russo said, his voice breaking, “it was more than enough for me and everyone around us to realize how truly amazing Nick was.”

And because of Booker, two strangers are now able to see.

“Even in his death, because Nick was an organ donor, he chose to give others life, and that was one of the few consolations his mother has had in the last few days,” said Father McCarthy. “That because of Nick’s clear eyes, those who were blind can now see. Let his way of being in the world teach us to see as well.”

Booker is survived by his parents, Britt and Satonya Booker; his siblings, Christopher and Carmen Booker; his grandparents, Andy and Peggy Newman; his great-grandmother Mary Gregory; and many other relatives.

“Nick’s grandfather told us in the hospital that he had many chances and many choices and many options. He chose New York, and he chose Fordham,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “He was a New Yorker by adoption. So I think it is right for us to give him a proper New York farewell.”

The crowd broke into applause.