“Here you have on display the greatness of Fordham,” Father McShane said at the June 4 induction ceremony, part of the 2022 Jubilee reunion festivities. “This is something that Fordham rejoices in.”

Turning to the inductees, he added: “We will point to you when we want to tell students who we want them to imitate, what we want them to become.”

Established in 2008, the Hall of Honor recognizes members of the Fordham community who have exemplified and brought recognition to the ideals to which the University is devoted. The 2022 inductees are

• Reginald Brewster, LAW ’50, a Tuskegee Airman and World War II veteran who fought against racism and inequality, earning a Fordham Law degree after the war and practicing civil law for six decades
• Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J., one of the world’s most prominent and influential Catholic theologians, who served as a distinguished professor of theology at Fordham for 27 years and is a former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America
• Jim Dwyer, FCRH ’79, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who through his writing was both a critical conscience of New York City and a passionate celebrant of its residents, skilled at drawing public attention to wrongful convictions and the mistreatment of society’s most marginalized people
• Herb Granath, FCRH ’54, GSAS ’55, a former Fordham trustee and an Emmy Award-winning ABC executive who helped guide the television network’s expansion, developing flagship stations including ESPN and the History Channel
• Jack Keane, GABELLI ’66, a retired four-star general, former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, and 2020 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, who began his military career as an ROTC cadet at Fordham
• Joe Moglia, FCRH ’71, who has excelled in business and football, as CEO and chairman of TD Ameritrade and as head football coach at Coastal Carolina University, where he currently serves as the executive director for football and executive advisor to the president
• Peter Vaughan, Ph.D., a decorated Vietnam War veteran and pioneer in the field of social work who served for 13 years, from 2000 to 2013, as dean of Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service

“This year’s class, each person that has been inducted, represents really the best about Fordham, and they enrich Fordham,” Father McShane said. “Think about it. Very, very diverse backgrounds, very diverse interests. Excellence in all things.”

Three of the inductees—Brewster, Dwyer, and Granath—were honored posthumously at the ceremony, which took place on the lawn outside of Cunniffe House, the Rose Hill home of the Hall of Honor.

Sister Johnson, who retired from the Fordham faculty in 2018, said returning to Rose Hill to be honored at Jubilee felt “awesome, humbling, and beyond imagination.”

Father McShane called her the “most important feminist pioneer theologian in the United States.”

“She changed the way in which we thought about God, and therefore the way we can encounter God,” he said. “I said years ago, when she was honored before, that she dances with questions and she delights in the dance, and she teaches her students to do the same.”

Father McShane described Moglia as someone who “takes great delight in shattering expectations and stereotypes.”

“He is as much at home on the gridiron as he is in the boardroom, and that says a lot,” he said, calling him “a natural-born leader” who “leads with authority.”

The honor put Moglia in an especially select group: He is now only the fourth person in Fordham history—after Wellington Mara, William D. Walsh, and Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J.—to have received the Founder’s Award and been inducted into both the Fordham University Athletics Hall of Fame and the Hall of Honor.

“I give Fordham a lot of credit for any of the things that I’ve done in my life—whether it’s my personal life or professional life, whether as a football coach or in the business world—and so to be ultimately inducted into the Hall of Honor is something that’s very, very special to me,” Moglia said.

Peter Vaughan is “one of my greatest heroes,” Father McShane told the audience, describing him as “ an extraordinarily effective dean” and “a recognized authority that everyone in the profession looked to for wisdom—not only wisdom but heartfelt wisdom, as Peter is somebody who has always balanced heart and mind.”

Speaking of General Keane, Father McShane said that one of his greatest qualities is the care and understanding he has demonstrated for members of the military.

“This man, who was a Fordham ROTC cadet, is looked up to—wisely and rightly—by graduates of West Point, who recognized his wisdom, his courage,” he said.

Father McShane called Dwyer, who died in October 2020 at the age of 63, “the master of the written word” and “the master of his craft.”

“His great gift was seeing the grace and glory and goodness in the moment—the sacrament of the moment and the saint of the moment,” he said. “His last, last columns, they were simply extraordinary because they took the people of the city seriously and raised them to heroic heights, because in Jim’s heart, that’s what they deserved.”

Two of Dwyer’s three brothers, Patrick and Phil, attended the ceremony. For a time in the 1970s, each of them was enrolled at Fordham: Patrick graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1975 and went on to earn a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences two years later and a Fordham Law degree in 1980. Phil graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1980, one year after Jim, who was editor-in-chief of The Fordham Ram.

“Fordham was a great experience for all of us—and for Jim especially,” Phil said. “He did so well here, and he continued on to help a lot of people in a lot of different ways, so it’s nice to see that recognized.”

The induction ceremony will be held at Cunniffe House at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 4, just prior to the Jubilee gala.

Established in 2008, the Hall of Honor recognizes members of the Fordham community who have exemplified the ideals to which the University is devoted. This year’s inductees include a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a world-renowned theologian, and a retired four-star general and recipient of the Medal of Freedom.

Reginald T. Brewster served as a Tuskegee Airman during World War II, a group that included the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Armed Forces. In many ways, the Airmen were fighting two wars, he told Fordham News in 2018: one abroad and one at home. “The discrimination [in the United States] was sharp,” he said. “It was very critical and sometimes it was even hurtful.”

Upon returning to the U.S., he studied government and math at Fordham College before earning a J.D. from Fordham Law School in 1950 and embarking on a five-decade career as an attorney. When he died in 2020 at the age of 103, the Black Law Students Association at Fordham Law School said that through “his groundbreaking efforts,” he “served as a trailblazer for all Black students who attend Fordham today.”

Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J., who retired in 2018 after 27 years as a distinguished professor at Fordham, is a beloved teacher and one of the most influential Catholic theologians in the world, internationally known for her work in systematic, feminist, and ecological theology, among other fields.

In her particularly influential 2007 book, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, she examined how God is understood differently by men, women, poor and oppressed people, Holocaust victims, and people of a variety of faiths. “Faith,” she once said, “is hope that the world is good and that our efforts can make a difference.”

Jim Dwyer, who died in October 2020 at the age of 63, chronicled the life of New York City with conscience and compassion in a four-decade career as a journalist and author. A 1979 graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill, he sought to tell the stories of everyday New Yorkers and give voice to those on society’s margins, including working-class immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and people convicted of crimes they did not commit.

Through his reporting and writing—for New York Newsday, the Daily News, and The New York Times—he worked to help the public understand the impact of major issues and events, most notably 9/11, as well as the inner workings of government agencies and how their decisions affect people’s lives. He won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work and was widely regarded as a generous colleague, friend, and mentor.

Herb Granath, a two-time Fordham graduate and trustee emeritus, was a pioneering force in cable television. A former president of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, he started his career as an NBC page while he studying physics at Fordham. After graduating in 1954, he enrolled at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, earning a master’s degree in communication arts one year later. He steadily climbed the ranks of entertainment juggernauts, moving from NBC to ABC to ESPN and the Broadway stage. He became chairman of the board of ESPN after ABC purchased the cable channel in 1984, and he was responsible for the creation of several channels that are now household names, including A&E, the History Channel, Lifetime, and the Hallmark Channel.

Granath, who died in November 2019 at the age of 91, earned numerous awards, including two Tonys, an Emmy for lifetime achievement in international TV, and an Emmy for lifetime achievement in sports. He often spoke about the value of his Fordham education, noting that a course in logic was among the most influential he ever took. “It is amazing to me in American business how little a role logic plays,” he told Fordham Magazine in 2007. “It has been a hallmark of the way I approach business.”

Jack Keane, a retired four-star general and former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, grew up in a housing project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and was the first member of his family to attend college. He began his military career at Fordham as a cadet in the University’s ROTC program. After graduating in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, he served as a platoon leader and company commander during the Vietnam War, where he was decorated for valor. A career paratrooper, he rose to command the 101st Airborne Division and the 18th Airborne Corps before he was named vice chief of staff of the Army in 1999.

Since retiring from the military in 2003, Keane has been an influential adviser, often testifying before Congress on matters of foreign policy and national security. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020, becoming the sixth Fordham graduate to receive the nation’s highest civilian honor. In a 2017 interview with Fordham Magazine, he described the Jesuit education he received at Fordham as a transformational experience. “The whole learning process was about your own growth and development as a human being—not just intellectually but also morally and emotionally. I don’t think I would have been as successful as a military officer if my path didn’t go through Fordham University.”

Joe Moglia coached both high school and college football after graduating from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1971, but in 1984, the New York native made a career change to finance, blazing a trail of ascent at Merrill Lynch and then at the helm of TD Ameritrade over 24 years. He returned to coaching in 2009, finishing his career with six seasons as the head coach at Coastal Carolina University, where he led the team to a 56-22 cumulative record and three Big South Conference titles before stepping down in 2019.

He is currently executive director for football and executive advisor to the president at Coastal Carolina and is chairman of Fundamental Global and Capital Wealth Advisors. Last year, he was inducted into the Fordham Athletic Hall of Fame, and in November, he was honored with a Fordham Founder’s Award. His career is the subject of the 2012 book by Monte Burke titled 4th & Goal: One Man’s Quest to Recapture His Dream. And Moglia has authored books on both coaching and investing—The Perimeter Attack Offense: The Key to Winning Football in 1982 and Coach Yourself to Success: Winning the Investment Game in 2005.

Peter B. Vaughan, Ph.D., served as dean of Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service for 13 years. When he stepped down in 2013, he received the President’s Medal for “his collaborative and visionary leadership as an educator, and for his lasting impact on the University’s ability to lead well and serve wisely in the years ahead.”

Vaughan’s distinguished social work career is rooted in his undergraduate days at Temple University, when during the civil rights movement he was involved in court watching and voter registration efforts. He later served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and found himself tending to the mental health needs of soldiers on the front lines. For much of his career, Vaughan worked with communities of color, focusing especially on the health of African American boys. He was a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and later became acting dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work before he came to Fordham.

In 2012, the National Association of Social Workers presented him with its Knee/Wittman Lifetime Achievement Award. “Ours is a profession of hope, and I never miss a chance to pass it on to students when I am able to,” Vaughan told Fordham graduates at the Graduate School of Social Service diploma ceremony in 2013. “As you leave today to begin meaningful and illustrious careers, I hope you will live every day to make the world a better place—and keep hope alive.”

Jubilee 2022 will be held on the Rose Hill campus from June 3 to 5. Learn more and register today.

The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of approximately 16,000 Black pilots, air traffic controllers, technicians, navigators, ground controllers, maintenance workers, and other support staff. They were the first Black military aviators in the United States Armed Forces and were named after the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where they were educated during their training.

“The Pentagon did not believe that a Black man could fly, and therefore, they basically did not want to train him,” Brewster told Fordham News in 2018. “They still thought that the Black man was mentally inferior. This [idea of]  inferiority had to be eliminated. It had to be destroyed. Because there is no such thing as inferiority merely because you are Black.”

Brewster was stationed in England and France during the war, where he served as secretary to the Air Force Base Commander. He was honorably discharged after sustaining a shrapnel injury, but his return to the States exposed him to continued racism.

“The discrimination [in the United States]  was sharp,” Brewster said. “It was very critical and sometimes it was even hurtful.”

In the face of this discrimination, Brewster set out to get an education, studying government and math at Fordham College before attending and graduating from Fordham Law in 1950, working for the New York City Board of Transportation while he attended law school. He practiced civil law until he retired at the age of 90.

In 2018, Brewster was honored by Fordham Law’s Black Law Students Association (BLSA) as the recipient of its Ruth Whitehead Whaley Award, which recognizes alumni who demonstrate excellence in the legal profession and provide a model for emerging Black lawyers to aspire to.

“Through his groundbreaking efforts, Mr. Brewster served as a trailblazer for all Black students who attend Fordham today,” the BLSA said this morning in a statement posted on the Fordham Law News site.

Brewster was one of few remaining Tuskegee Airmen, and he told Fordham News that he wanted to keep the history of these service members alive.

“It’s not the height that we attained, but it’s the depth from which we came.”

Watch the 2018 Fordham News video featuring Reginald Brewster: