Today, they’re helping Fordham build its own.

When they learned about the waterfront center that Fordham is planning, “it was something that we felt really strongly that we’d like to be able to help create,” Laura Ekholm said.

They’re doing just that with a major gift toward the project, for reasons that have a lot to do with their children’s experience at Fordham.

Support for Sailing and Other Aquatic Sports

The waterfront center will be built on Eastchester Bay in the Bronx, four miles east of the Rose Hill campus, to serve the varsity women’s rowing team as well as men’s crew, co-ed sailing, and women’s sailing. The first phase, construction of docks, is expected to be completed in time for the fall 2024 season.

Fordham donors and supporters have been moving the project along for years, led by Fordham Trustee Fellow Dennis Ruppel, FCRH ’68, and his wife, Patricia Ann Ruppel, who are making another major gift to the project this year. In October, Fordham Trustee Kim Bepler hosted and underwrote a fundraising dinner for the project at the New York Yacht Club in Manhattan.

The event raised $1.3 million for the project—with $1 million of that coming from the Ekholms.

‘Something of Great Value’

The Ekholms raised their family on Minnesota’s Lake Minnetonka, and their children grew up sailing on it, so when two of them—Anders, FCRH ’17, and Annika, FCRH ’20—went to Fordham, it was no surprise that they signed up for sailing.

They were impressed at the strength of the classroom education their children received, as well as the tight-knit sense of community in the sailing program and its rigors that hone time management and other life skills.

Today, Anders Ekholm is a team lead with TransPerfect, a translation and language services company in New York, and Annika Ekholm is involved with the sailing program full time. In addition to volunteering as a coach, she works for the Fordham Sailing Association, helping to set up a community sailing program in conjunction with the Villa Maria Academy, a Catholic elementary school next door to the waterfront center’s site.

She’s excited to see how the center could support other programs for area youth as well. “Sailing has given me and so many other people in the Fordham sailing sphere so much,” she said, “and anything that we can do to spread that, to give that to the community, will be a great, great thing for all involved.”

Being involved with the sailing program has been “a ton of fun,” Laura Ekholm said. “It’s just a fabulous community.”

She and Paul are investing in the waterfront center not only because of its immediate benefits but also to advance the University generally. “Giving money away is something to do when you find something of great value,” Paul Ekholm said. “For me and Laura, the great value of Fordham was the education they got, and we feel like we should support Fordham beyond sending our kids there.”

Gifts in support of the Fordham waterfront center advance the University’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student. Learn more about the campaign and make a gift.

“I think it’s very important that Fordham has a window on the water,” said Dennis Ruppel, FCRH ’68, a Fordham trustee fellow who is spearheading efforts to construct a waterfront center on Eastchester Bay in the Bronx, to the east of the Rose Hill campus.

He and his wife, Patricia Ann Ruppel, are leaders among alumni donors who have been moving the project along for years. In addition to covering various costs of the project, they purchased the one-and-a-half-acre plot where the center will be built and donated it to the University.

Now, in a new fundraising push, they’re offering a $1.25 million challenge gift—on top of an earlier $1.25 million gift—to encourage other donations in support of the waterfront center, a project with benefits that will extend beyond Fordham.

In addition to providing a home for Fordham’s waterborne sports, Ruppel said, it will provide year-round opportunities such as summer sailing programs for New York City youth and, possibly, educational programs that shed light on marine biology while fostering a greater appreciation of the natural world generally.

“This waterfront [center]is really about the University having a permanent place to interface with the water,” he said.

Kim Bepler, a Fordham trustee and 2022 recipient of an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the University, is also hosting and underwriting a fundraising dinner for the project on October 16 at the New York Yacht Club in Manhattan, where both she and the Ruppels are members.

Coming in Fall 2024

Fundraising for the waterfront center advances Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, the University’s $350 million campaign to enhance the entire student experience, including athletics. The new center will include fixed and floating docks, boat storage for the sailing and rowing programs, and, later on, a two-story building offering locker rooms as well as educational and event spaces and wide windows for viewing Eastchester Bay.

Architectural work and construction can begin as soon as a final New York City permit is issued and sufficient funding is secured, said Michael Mullarney, FCRH ’68, Ruppel’s former roommate at Fordham and another donor to the project. The docks are expected to be completed in time for the fall 2024 sailing season; temporary facilities will be put in place for the sailing and crew teams while the waterfront center’s main building is constructed, he said.

The facility aims to serve the varsity women’s rowing team as well as men’s crew, co-ed sailing, and women’s sailing, all of them club sports. The waterfront center will free them from having to rent space at various locations on the Harlem River and Eastchester Bay and help student-athletes take to the water more promptly and easily at practice time, Mullarney said.

“This gift from the Ruppels has the opportunity to be truly transformative,” said Fordham’s athletic director, Ed Kull. “Not only will this endeavor enhance the day-to-day lives of Fordham’s rowers and sailors, but we hope the Ruppels’ generosity sparks further giving to support rowing and sailing and other sports as well.”

“This project is a testament to our shared priorities and purpose at Fordham, beginning with the highest levels of University administration,” he said. “I look forward to seeing how the Ruppels’ continued support benefits our student-athletes for years to come.”

In the new facility, Ruppel and other supporters see an opportunity to elevate the sailing and crew programs—making it possible to host regattas and help the sailing program win a national championship.

The waterfront center will be constructed on a plot now occupied by a long-shuttered Westchester Country Club building that was damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Ruppel and Mullarney, commodore and vice commodore of the Fordham Sailing Association, respectively, found the property seven years ago while searching the area for a suitable site.

Recalling the national prominence of Fordham basketball in the 1960s and ’70s, Mullarney spoke about the potential for sailing and crew to generate excitement and draw Fordham students to the site on the Eastchester Bay waterfront, where they would view the Fordham teams competing in high-stakes contests out on the water.

He described the project as an investment in hardworking students who study during the long drive to regattas, study during breaks in competitions, and give their all when out on the water, even during races and practices that take place in punishing wintertime conditions.

“The sport itself is just so amazing—watching these students [with their]total positive attitude,” he said.

Ruppel noted that he and his wife have hosted Fordham’s sailing team members at their Florida home when the team visits the state for competitions. It’s a sport that tends to foster teamwork, attention to detail, and discipline—as well as a longer-term commitment to advancing Fordham sailing, he said.

“We’ve just had some wonderful, wonderful sailors in our program, and they are very supportive and very engaged in wanting to carry that forward,” he said. “So that’s great to see.”

To inquire about giving to the waterfront center project, contact Kara Field, director of athletic development and assistant athletic director, at 973-223-2157 or [email protected]. Learn more about Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, a campaign to reinvest in every aspect of the Fordham student experience, including athletics programs such as sailing and rowing.

The finish also helped propel Fordham Sailing to 16th in the May issue of Sailing World’s College Rankings, said team coach Johnny Norfleet. Fordham Sailing is a club team that was reintroduced to the University in 1999, after a lengthy hiatus. It also happens to be the University’s only coed sport team.

“It’s a non-issue because most of these guys have been competing as a coed unit since they were kids,” said Norfleet.

The team, along with nine other top teams, qualified for the Inter Collegiate Sailing Association’s (ISCA) Coed National Semifinals, being held in Charleston, South Carolina, this week. It marked their 5th straight appearance there. The Fordham women’s team also finished 10th for the ICSA Women’s National Semifinals, narrowly missing a spot in the finals.

The club is a member of the Middle Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association and operates out of the Morris Yacht Club on City Island, just a 20-minute drive from the Rose Hill campus.

“City Island is a great place to sail, it’s a little surprising that you can have a school like Fordham in a big city and have access to such a great sailing venue on an everyday basis,” said Norfleet. “It’s not a sport that you think of as engrained in the city’s culture, but there’s a surprisingly large sailing community in New York, including many who are Fordham alumni. It’s a pretty big network.”

The Fordham team boasts 27 men and women who compete together, which is the norm in sailing, he said.

“It’s a unique sport in that you have to work as a unit with a diverse group of people, though there are different ways that men and women interact and approach their sport,” he said.

Norfleet said that during competitions each team has a “double-handed,” “420” sailboat on the water, which is to say two people on a 4.2-meter-long boat. Winds and currents dictate who ends up on the boat because of their weight, with the combined total generally ranging between 250 to 300 pounds. As such, the choice doesn’t have anything to do with sex, but rather it’s to do with weight and skill. Only about four to six members make it onto the water for most of the “A Level” competitions, though the rest of the team plays a big role.

“They’re the ones out there pushing them every day,” he said.

Still, with a host of competitions in the spring and fall catering to variety of skill levels, every team member will have sailed an event by the end of the season, Norfleet said.