As always, football will be the centerpiece. Hot off a stellar 2022 season, the Rams have won three of their first four games and are ranked No. 15 in this week’s FCS Coaches Poll. They’ll take on the Lehigh Mountain Hawks. Kickoff is set for 1 p.m., but the festivities begin bright and early, with the 12th Annual 5K Ram Run at 9 a.m., campus tours, and much more.

Here are five things you won’t want to miss at Homecoming this year.

1. The New McShane Campus Center Arcade

The four-story McShane Campus Center opened in early 2022 and has been at the heart of an ongoing campaign to support students’ wellness and success. Last month, the University unveiled the latest addition—an airy, sun-filled arcade with a sparkling glass entrance that links the campus center to the Lombardi Center and the historic Rose Hill Gym.

See it on the 9:30 a.m. tour, led by a current Fordham student and starting in front of the McShane Center—or stroll through anytime throughout the day.

2. Coffee and Conversation with President Tetlow

At her recent State of the University address, President Tetlow talked about Fordham’s “three sources of power”—research, Jesuit teaching, and opportunity—and explained why the University isn’t chasing status and rankings. Hear more from her on all things Fordham at this event on the third floor of the McShane Center at 10:30 a.m. And grab a cup of joe to fuel up for the day!

3. Moglia Stadium

The University will officially name its football and soccer stadium in honor of Joe Moglia—a 1967 Fordham Prep and 1971 Fordham College at Rose Hill graduate, award-winning football coach, and transformational business executive.

Planned renovations to the stadium include a state-of-the-art video board, seating and press box upgrades, new lighting, and more to enhance the game day experience. Moglia Stadium is part of the Jack Coffey Field complex that also includes Houlihan Park, the University’s baseball venue.

Check out the new signage for Moglia Stadium above the stands, and join us in honoring Joe Moglia at a special ceremony during the game.

4. Jesuit Gems, ‘Hidden in Plain Sight’

Take a campus walking tour with Robert Reilly, FCRH ’72, LAW ’75, former assistant dean of Fordham Law School, as he brings Fordham’s Jesuit history and mission to life—and encourages even the most devoted alumni to see Rose Hill with new eyes.

The tour, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Discover the Jesuit Presence at Rose Hill,” kicks off outside the McShane Campus Center at 11:30 a.m. Reilly will highlight statues and lecture halls, stained-glass windows and architectural details—like those on the stunning wrought-iron doors of Dealy Hall. The 10 panels forming the sidelights of Dealy’s western entrance depict the arts and sciences—philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, rhetoric, and more—that the Jesuits included in their Ratio Studiorum (Latin for plan of studies), originally published in 1599.

“The curriculum that the Jesuits created has become the curriculum of all universities throughout the Earth,” Reilly says. “That is a great tribute to Jesuit education worldwide.”

5. Family Fun

Homecoming has something for everyone—including the kids! Check out the Family Tent, adjacent to the main tent. It features caricature and balloon artists, coloring pages, and a shorter line for food and drink for busy parents.

This year’s celebration under the tents is now a fully ticketed event, and the Office of Alumni Relations is encouraging people to buy their tickets at a discount by Oct. 3. Check out the full Homecoming schedule and ticket options at forever.fordham.edu/homecoming.

—Nicole LaRosa and Ryan Stellabotte

Although many of Reilly’s tours include visitors from around the world, the Fordham group skews local, with most attendees hailing from the tri-state area. The person who has traveled the farthest for the occasion is Marjorie Taylor, who says she drove from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the previous day and stayed overnight in her daughter’s McMahon Hall dorm room on Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

Once introductions are made, Reilly leads the group to the museum’s fourth floor, which he says “tells the story of the evolution of vertebrates.” There, they stop in the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs, one of the museum’s most popular rooms and home to the skeletons of both the Tyrannosaurus rex and the huge Apatosaurus, the herbivore often incorrectly referred to as the Brontosaurus.

“Fred Flintstone was actually eating an Apatosaurus,” Reilly jokes, referring to the 1960s cartoon character and the so-called Brontosaurus burgers that were a staple of his diet.

Reilly describes various dinosaur extinction theories that scientists have posited over the years, including the widely accepted one—that an asteroid crashed into what is today Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and caused massive climate disruption—as well as the disproven claim that pollen caused them to sneeze themselves out of existence.

Next, he leads the way to the Akeley Hall of African Mammals. The hall, decorated with green marble and Art Deco flourishes, represents “the apex of taxidermy,” Reilly says. It is filled with lifelike recreations of lions, giraffes, gazelles, and other mammals in dioramas depicting scenes of the wildlife eating, drinking, and hunting in their natural habitats. Recreated from field scientists’ observations of specific locations in the early 20th century, as well as from the sketches and photographs of the artists who accompanied them, the dioramas consist not only of taxidermy but also meticulously crafted plant models and painted backgrounds.

Reilly dispenses several bits of trivia about Akeley Hall. The live versions of the African elephants that form the room’s centerpiece have 50,000 muscles in their trunks, he says; the mountain gorilla diorama depicts the supposed gravesite of the hall’s namesake and conceiver, Carl Akeley, who is considered the father of modern taxidermy; and each of the 28 dioramas in the hall would cost $1 million to create today.

From there, it’s off to the Birds of the World exhibit hall, where Reilly, standing in front of a diorama of king penguins in South Georgia, surprises the group by telling them that the largest bird population in New York City is not, as several of them guess, the pigeon. In fact, it’s that nemesis of beachgoers, the seagull.

Reilly leads the way to the Hall of North American Forests, which he later says has become one of his favorite rooms in the museum.

“In recent times, the most interesting to me is the Hall of North American Forests,” he says, noting that he tries to get across to museumgoers the importance of forests and trees to the Earth. Plus, he says, “The beauty of every individual tree makes just walking down the street a treat no matter where you are.”

Finding Common Ground Between Social and Environmental Justice

Reilly began his undergraduate career at Fordham as a biology major, and although he switched to political science, earned a Fordham Law degree, and spent more than three decades as an administrator at Fordham Law School, he has always been deeply interested in environmental science.

When asked to explain the connections between his career—especially at Fordham Law’s Feerick Center for Social Justice, where he was engaged with social justice issues from a legal and academic perspective—and his role as tour guide who encourages stewardship of the natural world, Reilly points to the link between the Jesuit values he lived at Fordham and the specific topic of environmental justice.

“The Hall of Biodiversity is really completely devoted to environmental issues,” he says. “About 1,000 species go extinct every day of the year, 365 days a year, and that’s because of activities that our species is doing. What does that mean for us? What does that mean for our children? What does that mean for our grandchildren?

“Pope Francis recently had an encyclical about environmental issues and about our respect for the Earth and our understanding of our relationship to all other living things. Those elements all sort of tie together … in understanding social justice.”

Upon leaving the Hall of North American Forests, Reilly encourages everyone in the group to go home, choose a tree that they could observe over time, and become intimately familiar with it. “Every tree is a perfect tree,” he says.

The next stop is the ever-popular Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life, with its 94-foot-long model of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling. Reilly, noting that this model is not taxidermy because its skin is artificial, tells the group that for the first 100 days of their lives, blue whales put on 100 pounds a day.

Finally, Reilly leads everyone to Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall. There, he provides some history of the 26th president of the United States, a conservationist and champion of the National Park System. As part of New York state’s official memorial to Roosevelt, the hall is a fitting place for the group of mostly tri-state residents to reflect on the important lessons the museum—and Reilly—had taught them about the natural world.

Fordham and AMNH: A Deep History with Enduring Connections

Fordham’s connections to the American Museum of Natural History go beyond Reilly. Not only do several graduates currently work at the museum—in departments ranging from youth initiatives to genomics operations—but one of the key figures in the institution’s modern history was an alumnus.

Thomas Nicholson, Ph.D., GSE ’53, ’61, a self-described “sailor-turned-astronomer-turned museum director,” helped the museum navigate tough fiscal issues in the early 1970s and emerge stronger. He got his start at the museum’s Hayden Planetarium in 1952 while earning a doctorate in science education at Fordham. He rose to the museum’s top spot in 1969 and served as director until 1989, during which time the museum’s research staff was doubled and attendance increased from 2.1 million to 3.1 million visitors per year. Today, the museum draws around 5 million visitors per year, as pointed out in a new history of the museum—The American Museum of Natural History and How It Got That Way, by Colin Davey with Thomas A. Lesser—published last year by Fordham University Press.

The museum’s growth is easy to understand when witnessing the enthusiasm of the Fordham group after their tour’s completion. One couple enjoyed the tour so much that they plan to become members of the museum, while another attendee went even further, emailing Reilly to tell him that he was inspired to apply to become a volunteer tour guide himself.

Perhaps the most surprising response to the tour came from Carolyn Pagani, GSS ’91, a native New Yorker who revealed that the Fordham tour was her first time ever visiting the museum.

“I’m embarrassed to say [it]!” she joked. “I loved it. I’m definitely going back.”

While not every tour group gives him the chance to expose a lifelong New Yorker to the museum’s magic, Reilly, who also leads occasional group tours of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle and Fordham’s Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses, gets plenty of joy from witnessing attendees’ reactions to the exhibitions.

“To see their faces as they get excited about something, that’s a wonderful thing,” he says.

As he leaves the group, he reminds them that the things they learned on the tour are invitations to further discoveries.

“Finishing a visit to the American Museum of Natural History is not the end of a journey,” Reilly says. “It’s the beginning of one.”

The tour of the American Museum of Natural History was one of many cultural events regularly held in the New York area and around the country by Fordham’s Office of Alumni Relations. Upcoming events include concerts, theater performances, and more.

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.

The event included a prerecorded interview of former Senator George J. Mitchell, who chaired the peace negotiations as United States special envoy for Northern Ireland under President Bill Clinton. Irish Consul General Ciaran Madden spoke at the beginning of the program, and Fordham Law professors Martin Flaherty and Michael W. Martin presented on the past and future in Northern Ireland.

The landmark political development of April 10, 1998, helped resolve longstanding strife between the nationalists, who seek reunification with the Republic of Ireland and are mostly Catholic, and the unionists, who are generally Protestant and whose loyalties are with the United Kingdom. The agreement led to the region’s legislative devolution from the United Kingdom.

“This event was right there as one of the most important events in the history of the world, or what was accomplished by this incredible agreement signed twenty years ago this day,” said Robert J. Reilly LAW ’75, assistant dean of the Feerick Center for Social Justice, during his introductory remarks. Reilly also thanked the program’s sponsors: the Feerick Center, the Ireland Summer Program, the Leitner Center for International Law & Justice, the Irish Law Students Association, the Fordham Law Review, the Fordham International Law Journal, and the Conflict Resolution and ADR Program.

Consul General Madden stressed the importance of Northern Ireland’s ongoing commitment to remembrance and reconciliation. Desegregation, he said, remains a necessary act of all the region’s people.

“It’s the work of everyone in Northern Ireland and many outside it,” he said. “It’s not easy work. It’s slow work, but it’s so, so important.” Madden also stressed the viability of this work by quoting from the late Seamus Heaney’s poem “The Cure at Troy,” which encourages hope for justice and healing.

Illuminating the history that necessitated such healing, Flaherty described the last 400 years of Ireland’s long chronicle of suffering. After recounting some of the older history—including the migration of English and Scottish Presbyterian dissenters to Ulster in the 17th century, and the Irish Parliament’s voting itself out of existence in the late 18th century because it failed to take the rights of minorities into account—Flaherty discussed the violent conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in the last century. For a long time, violence reigned and mistrust thwarted resolution. Flaherty addressed the need to hold governments accountable for the violation of their laws.

“What we need today still is to keep this kind of scrutiny, this kind of pressure, on all parties to live up to the Good Friday Agreement because there still remains much, much work to be done before we can have true reconciliation, true peace, and true adherence to the human rights that everyone in that community on both sides deserves to enjoy,” said Flaherty.

Program attendees then watched a prerecorded interview of Senator Mitchell, the man who played a pivotal role in shepherding the agreement to approval. Mitchell received Fordham Law’s prestigious Stein Prize six months after the agreement’s approval in recognition of his work in Northern Ireland.

During the interview, adjunct professor John Rogan LAW ’14 asked Mitchell a series of questions about challenges and expectations both during the peace negotiations and after the agreement’s passing.

“It was less an expectation than hope,” said Mitchell, who recounted the stressful few weeks before the vote. The two sides’ mistrust of one another and their initial unwillingness to hear each other’s perspectives led to unproductive and even disastrous meetings. Nonetheless, the parties managed to reach a consensus after Mitchell set a deadline for ending the talks. “It was an enormous relief, a sense of great exaltation and exhaustion combined,” said Mitchell.

Mitchell observed how, although the agreement is a historical landmark, it does not itself guarantee peace; rather, it makes peace possible. “Peace is not a guarantee in any society, especially not in those with a history of violence,” said Mitchell. When that history of violence has included thousands of deaths and punishment beatings, which resulted in permanent maiming, the challenge is steep. Mitchell stressed how people need to be vigilant of violence’s ongoing threat, especially in the face of Brexit.

Nonetheless, the country has come a long way from where it had been. When Rogan asked Mitchell about how he feels looking back at his role in the peace process, Mitchell beamed with pride. “It was for me a labor of love,” he said. “Personally it changed my life.” He recounted how his involvement led him to connect with his Irish ancestry. “The experience filled in a void that I didn’t know even existed,” he said.

For the final portion of the program, Martin, who has led the summer program for Fordham Law students in Northern Ireland for the last 15 years, discussed the future of the region. Martin addressed current issues, including the restoration of a devolved government, the question of direct rule and the role of the Republic of Ireland, the implications of Brexit and a hard border, and the management of a still deeply polarized society.

“There are more walls today than there were in 1998,” said Martin, referring to the physical barriers that divide the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland. “That just gives you an idea of a society that is divided, a society that is learning to trust but is not there yet.”

Despite the difficult issues, Martin noted how much progress has occurred since the agreement, including an improving economy and citizens’ increasing feelings of safety.

Martin also spoke over Skype with Niall Murphy, a human rights lawyer in Northern Ireland. Together, Martin and Murphy addressed the importance of remembering the past in order to forge a more peaceful future.

The event was the latest chapter in Fordham Law’s ties to Northern Ireland and the peace process. Former Dean John D. Feerick ’61 was part of President Clinton’s trip to Northern Ireland in 1995 that helped lay the groundwork for the peace talks. Dean Feerick also created a conflict resolution program for community leaders from the region and started Fordham Law’s Belfast/Dublin Summer Program. Additionally, alumnus John Connorton ’71, who was at the anniversary event, helped call attention to the conflict in the years leading up to the agreement by bringing political leaders from Northern Ireland to address U.S. audiences.

Northern Ireland’s peaceful future, according to Reilly at the program’s conclusion, can be sought by all of us. “Everyone, even from right here, from 3,000 miles away, can have a role in this peace process in the years to come,” he said.

—Lindsey Pelucacci

Named after the only Catholic patriot to sign the Declaration of Independence, the annual Carroll award recognizes a Catholic lawyer who has earned distinction in public service. For the past four years, Dean Reilly has helped develop the Center that educates law students and others in problem-solving social justice issues, particularly homelessness, hunger, and asset preservation for the poor.

He is also a regular volunteer on the city’s annual HOPE Count, where the Fordham community rallies to help count the homeless in the Bronx.

True to his Irish roots, Dean Reilly has been the president of the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and a contributing author to the Encyclopedia of the Irish in America (Notre Dame University Press, 2000).

And if you ever decide to visit the Museum of Natural History, you may just stumble upon him giving tours – he is a volunteer guide.

The award is given annually by the Guild of Catholic Lawyers.

“If the Selection Committee for this Award had looked even a little bit further they would have found many [worthy]recipients,” said Dean Reilly in accepting the award. “But let me assure you . . . they could not have found a recipient who was more grateful.”

— Janet Sassi