Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet

In the final pages of this memoir, Jenifer Ringer quotes the Book of Samuel: “And David danced before the Lord with all his might.” The biblical passage resonates with Ringer, who during a 23-year career with the New York City Ballet, strove mightily to endure the demands of the job. For a time, in her desire for perfection, she struggled with an eating disorder—something that came to national attention after a New York Times reviewer critiqued her performance in a 2010 production of The Nutcracker, writing that she “looked as if she’d eaten one sugar plum too many.” But Ringer, who was raised in South Carolina in a close-knit Christian family, used her faith to face the ensuing media attention and rise above the internal and external critics. During her roller-coaster career with the New York City Ballet—she retired in 2014 as a principal dancer—Ringer earned a bachelor’s degree from Fordham, married fellow dancer James Fayette, and had two children. Her memoir is a charming, candid, and inspiring tale of perseverance—and of triumph over the kind of body issues that plague too many young women.

– Rachel Buttner

Thomas Berry: Selected Writings on the Earth Community

When Thomas Berry died in 2009 at the age of 94, The New York Times called “his influential writings … an early call to humanity to save nature in order to save itself.” In this collection of his work, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, the founding co-directors of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, pay tribute to their former Fordham mentor, who “reshaped our thinking about human-Earth relations” and “awakened religious sensibilities to the environmental crisis.”

A Catholic priest, Father Berry taught at the University from 1966 to 1979 and was an “anomaly in Fordham’s theology department,” Tucker and Grim write, because he “was neither a Jesuit, nor a theologian.” He established a graduate program in the history of the world’s religions and later called himself a “geologian,” a portmanteau that describes his focus on relating humanity’s spiritual and cultural evolution to the natural history of Earth and the universe. Humankind, he believed, is poised at an evolutionary “moment of grace,” ready to shift its view of its place in the universe. “The Great Work now,” he wrote, is to carry out “the transition from a period of human devastation of Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.” His urgent, hopeful message has never been more timely.

Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United

For most of U.S. legal history, corruption was considered broadly. It wasn’t just about “blatant bribes and theft from the public till,” Zephyr Teachout writes. It encompassed “many situations where politicians and public institutions serve private interests at the public’s expense.” And it took perceptions into account. That’s why in 1785, when King Louis XVI of France gave ambassador Benjamin Franklin a diamond-encrusted snuff box as a retirement gift, the framers of the Constitution were concerned that it could “interfere with Franklin’s obligations to the country at large.” Recent Supreme Court decisions, however, have diminished what the framers had in mind, Teachout argues, leading to the highly controversial Citizens United decision in 2010. That Supreme Court ruling, she writes, “effectively gave wealthy individuals and wealthy corporations the right to spend as much money as they wanted attempting to influence elections and policy.”

Teachout, who ran for governor of New York last year, wants to “bring corruption back … as an idea, something we fight and worry about.” She believes “the two most important solutions that require no Supreme Court backing are ideas advocated by Teddy Roosevelt: publicly funded elections and trust-busting.” She makes a compelling case for reform—and draws hope from Franklin, “whose own gift to the country,” she writes, “may have been his peculiar blend of persistent pessimism and persistent optimism.”

Upscaling Downtown: From Bowery Saloons to Cocktail Bars in New York City

Few New York City neighborhoods have been as transformed in recent decades as the Lower East Side, East Village, and Bowery. The formerly working-class areas, points of entry for generations of immigrants, are now among the trendiest and most expensive parts of Manhattan. In this book, sociologist Richard Ocejo focuses on the neighborhoods’ changing bar and nightlife scene (between 1985 and 2005, he notes, the number of bars in the area more than tripled). In a clear, engaging style, he analyzes what he calls “the social ecosystem of bars,” the forces and people—new and longtime residents, tourists, public officials, activists, nightlife entrepreneurs, landlords, real estate agents, etc.—who have fostered and fought gentrification. His aim, he writes, is to “raise awareness of the impacts of commercial change on everyday life” and to offer insight into New York’s transformation into “a place for upscale living at the center and, at the margins, for lifestyles that range from edgy to impoverished.”

Eye to Eye: Poems 

In poems inspired by her native New York and Italian heritage, Maria Terrone sees “eye to eye” with life’s daily mysteries. Her meditations on old friendships and the body’s impermanence bear eloquent witness to what is passing, what has passed, and what remains. In “Lace,” for example, she writes of girls in “small Mediterranean towns” who make “lace as intricate as brain circuitry.” She marvels at their work and finds a hopeful metaphor in what she sees: “When the world is like a skein / unraveling, look again to the lace: see / how absence forms its pattern, / and purpose fills even the smallest space.”

The team of Inside Out, a project by the artist JR, parked a customized box truck and photo booth on West 60th Street. Project volunteers asked passersby if they wanted to have their picture taken for a larger-than-life photo that would be posted on the wall.

The project attracted a medley of characters: Residents of nearby buildings, members of the Fordham community, and teens walking from their school on Amsterdam Avenue to the nearby subway station lined up to be photographed.

Technical issues forced the team to print the portraits at its SoHo studio (and not in the truck, as planned), leading to a lag during which they were only able to take pictures. But once they began wheat-pasting photos to the wall, the event, which has taken place in cities internationally, began to take shape. The crew hung 28 portraits before rain forced them to return several days later to paste the rest of the approximately 100 portraits that were taken.

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Photos by Ryan Brenizer

That wish, he said in his acceptance speech, was to “stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we’ll turn the world inside out.” He said art is not supposed to change the world in practical ways, but to change perceptions. “What we see changes who we are. When we act together, the whole thing is much more than the sum of the parts.”

The project was brought to Fordham by the University’s urban studies program’s distinguished visitor series. The series is funded by a grant from the law firm Podell, Schwartz, Schechter & Banfield, of which Fordham alumnus Bill Banfield, FCRH ’74, is a partner.

JR was invited to be this year’s distinguished visitor, as part of the program’s focus this year on urban arts. Other events have included a visit by filmmaker Andrew Padilla and a screening of his film El Barrio Tours, and a conference on “Law, Space, and Artistic Expression.”

Mark Street, assistant professor of visual arts at Fordham, said he first encountered Inside Out in 2013, when the crew photographed 6,000 people over three weeks in Times Square. Photos have also been posted in North Dakota, Tunisia, the South Bronx, Tanzania, and the North Pole. He liked the project’s simplicity and accessibility to the public, so he approached the group on behalf of Fordham.

“This project takes street photography and makes it personal by taking literally anyone’s photograph and putting it on the wall,” he said. He also liked he fact that the project was open to those outside of the Fordham community because although Fordham is a private university, it shares a lot of space with the general public.

“The idea of Inside Out is to play with that liminal space of the public and the private a little bit,” he said. “At its best, this wall will be an amalgam of whoever happens to wander by.”

One random passerby was Jacqueline Gonzalez, who was walking with her 4-year-old daughter Mia back to their apartment. Mia, who proudly showed off her “funny face” for volunteers, had her picture taken. Mom was camera shy, but she loved the project.

“It’s really busy around here, and I don’t really stop that much. But now that there’s art here, maybe I’ll stop more often,” she said.

For Rosemary Wakeman, PhD, director of the Urban Studies program, JR’s focus on spontaneous public involvement made him especially attractive.

“JR’s project highlights urban art and public space and the ways in which the city acts as a collective canvas,” she said.

Victoria Monaco, a Fordham College Lincoln Center junior, found out about the project that morning and came by. She said street art is integral to New York City.

“I very much consider myself a part of the city, so to have my image physically be a part of the city as well, even if it is for a short period of time, is really cool,” she said.

Vincent DeCola, SJ, assistant dean of students at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, made sure Fordham administrators were represented on the wall. He counts himself a fan of public art, something he said the wall on West 60th Street sorely needed.

“Personally, I don’t like walking down a street with a big cement wall. I’ll often go down another block where there are stores or activities,” he said. “Its great to bring some life, and it’s sort of like the face of Fordham.”

—Patrick Verel is the assistant editor of Inside Fordham.

Watch a video of the project.

Donna R. Rapaccioli, PhD, GABELLI ’83, has assumed leadership of the unified school.

“It would be hard to overemphasize the importance of the business schools’ unification,” said Joseph M. McShane, SJ, president of Fordham. “Having a single school led by the very capable Dean Rapaccioli will mean a better education for both graduate and undergraduate students. And putting both schools under the Gabelli name makes Fordham business more recognizable, nationally and internationally.”

An Investment in Values

One day after the University announced the unification of the schools, Father McShane thanked Mario Gabelli ’65, chairman and CEO of GAMCO Investors, Inc., and his wife, Regina Pitaro, FCRH ’76, for their “great generosity” and their “vision and dedication to Fordham.”

“Mario has spoken often in the context of his visits to the University about education as a great equalizer, and the heart and soul and the driver behind the American meritocracy,” Father McShane said. “He’s a believer in it, and he’s achieved it as well.”

Gabelli and Pitaro were at Rose Hill in February for the installation of Sris Chatterjee, PhD, as the inaugural holder of the Gabelli Chair in Global Security Analysis (see page 4). Gabelli’s $25 million gift to the University in 2010—the largest in Fordham history—made possible both the new faculty chair and the Gabelli Center for Global Security Analysis, which is focused on value investing.

He has also funded the Gabelli PhD Program, which will establish a doctoral-level business program at Fordham.

“It’s an exciting time to be part of the business program at Fordham,” said Rapaccioli, who had been dean of the undergraduate business school since 2007, interim dean of the graduate school since July, and dean of the business faculty since 2010. She said the unified school will focus on innovation in faculty research and teaching, and on preparing students to make a difference in the business world. “There will be new opportunities for research, teaching, and learning, and for activities that complement the business curriculum.”

An Ethical Grounding

On March 19, Rapaccioli appeared with Gabelli on the CNBC show Squawk Box to talk about her vision for the school. “We’re really using New York as our platform for education,” she said, adding: “We have a global vision where we’re bringing Fordham to the world and the world to Fordham, with campuses in London, a strong partnership with Peking University in Beijing, and global partners all over the world.”

Both Rapaccioli and Gabelli countered the argument that MBA degrees are not as needed in the current business climate as they used to be. “I think the number of people that are getting an MBA has declined, but the value has not,” said Rapaccioli, who noted that a Fordham business education is about “marrying the important technical skills” with “soft leadership skills.”

“Employers tell me every day that they need people who can solve problems, people that work in teams, people that are really comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity,” she said, “and these are the things we’ve built into the curriculum.”

That begins on the undergraduate level, with an emphasis on the liberal arts—subjects that often face great scrutiny about their practical value in the marketplace. For Rapaccioli, however, there is a fundamental benefit to centering an undergraduate business curriculum on a liberal arts core.

“Many technical skills necessary to get a job today will be obsolete in a few years,” she said. “Successful employees—and good leaders—need the ability to adapt to a rapidly changing world. They also need an ethical grounding and a nuanced worldview [to develop]one of the most important attributes any business person can possess: integrity.”

A Sense of Purpose

A liberal arts education is useful not just for cultivating a different kind of skill set, however, she said. She believes that the depth it adds to a student’s overall education is inherently valuable—both for the student’s personal growth and for the sake of the business environments they are entering. “There are many good business schools and many outstanding business students,” she said. “What students get here that they may not get elsewhere is a sense of purpose … a strong idea of his or her place in the world.”

Gabelli agrees. During his appearance with Rapaccioli on the CNBC show, he spoke of the value of an advanced degree in business. “It’s not only a payback in terms of numbers,” he said, “but it’s a payback in terms of psychology and the whole human being.”

With reporting by Patrick Verel and Joanna Mercuri

Joseph Russo, a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior, is the student supervisor of the Fordham Fund call center. He says being a Fordham Fund Scholarship recipient has allowed him to get involved with student-run organizations, like Fordham Nightly News. He’s also been a production assistant at WFUV, which helped him land an internship at CNN. “I would not be the man I am today,” Russo says, “without those experiences and my Fordham education.”

Help us change the world, one student at a time. Make your gift to the Fordham Fund today at fordham.edu/onlinegiving.

A few years ago, she met Millard (Mickey) Drexler, CEO of J.Crew, and learned he grew up on her block. “Which building?” she asked. Turned out they’d both lived in the 96-apartment Mayflower, so they hatched a plan to return together. When she entered the lobby, Alda writes, “I heard myself as that ten-year-old girl again, tossing my beloved Spaldeen ball.”

The visit inspired her new book, Just Kids from the Bronx: Telling It the Way It Was: An Oral History. More than 60 Bronxites, from former Secretary of State Colin Powell to hip-hop pioneer Melle Mel, recall their early years growing up in the borough.

“Children of Jewish, Italian, and Irish immigrants giving way to children of African American, Puerto Rican, and Dominican newcomers,” Alda writes, “and I felt moved and connected to them all.”

Appropriately repping the Bronx—and Fordham—the alumni featured in the book come from diverse, humble backgrounds and have made indelible contributions to the city (and beyond) in the arts, sports, medicine, even spirits.

In her chapter, best-selling suspense novelist Mary Higgins Clark, FCLC ’79, praises the Bronx’s beauty to anyone who dares doubt it: “Not only is Fordham University there, but there’s also Mosholu Parkway, Pelham Parkway, and the Botanical Garden, for heaven’s sake.” She recalls her father’s tragic death from a heart attack when she was just 11. “I’ve missed him all my life,” she says. The family moved away when they lost their house for “lack of just a few hundred dollars.” When her mother would go back to visit, she says, “She’d come back with her eyes glistening, saying how beautifully the roses had grown.”

Higgins Clark lost her own husband as a young mother. She supported her five children by selling novels and taking other writing gigs, attending Fordham after she’d had some success. To date, her books have sold more than 100 million copies in the United States alone.

“The Irish have a gift of storytelling,” she tells Alda, recalling a quotation from Yeats: “‘Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.’ I have that framed on my desk,” she says. “I absolutely love it.”

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Dion DiMucci grew up a block away from the Bronx Zoo, not too far from Higgins Clark’s former home. “I’d jump over the fence on Southern Boulevard and meet giraffes and hippopotamuses. I mean, it was wild,” says the hitmaker.

He speaks proudly of the honorary doctorate he received from Fordham in 2013. “[I]t felt like it came around full circle. I was born in Fordham Hospital,” he says. “It connected so much for me. … Getting that honorary degree was one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

Michael Brescia, MD, FCRH ’54, also received an honorary degree from Fordham—in 1994, four decades after his student days at Rose Hill. The executive medical director of the Bronx’s Calvary Hospital recalls growing up in an Italian family of six and sleeping in the living room on a branda—a foldout bed. “My father would put his heavy coat on top of me when he came home from work,” he says. Hit hard by the Depression, Brescia’s father wanted him to become a plumber so he’d have job security.

But one day, a big black car pulled up in front of their building. An elegant doctor emerged  to visit an ailing boy, and “it was then that I got the idea to be a physician,” Brescia says. During the 1960s, he co-invented the Cimino-Brescia fistula, a revolutionary hemodialysis procedure, and under his leadership, Calvary has become a national model for palliative care programs. He says his success “spawned many other doctors in the family whose fathers said to them, ‘Forget about being a wallpaper hanger! If Mickey could do it, then you could do it!’”

New York Yankees play-by-play broadcaster Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, also came from humble beginnings. As a kid, he didn’t always have the money to see his beloved Bronx Bombers, but when he could scrape together a buck fifty he’d buy a ticket and sit “right behind home plate in the upper deck, last row. I tell people that I now have the same seat, but a lot closer,” he says.

Kay recalls two “phenomenal” teachers who knew how much he loved the Yankees. On April 6, 1973, the day Ron Blomberg would become the first-ever designated hitter, the teachers wheeled a TV into Kay’s sixth-grade classroom. They said, “‘All right, Michael, you can see this.’ Blomberg walked with bases loaded, they unplugged the TV, and walked out.” When Kay got to Fordham, he developed his broadcasting chops at WFUV, the University’s radio station. Today his voice is synonymous with the team he’s always loved.

Renee Hernandez, MD, FCRH ’94, saw a different side of the Bronx growing up. “Where I was in the South Bronx, buildings were burning, and there was a crack epidemic, HIV,” he says. But his close-knit Puerto Rican family surrounded him with love. “I had a couple of aunts living floors above us and a couple of uncles living below us.” He eventually set up his internal medicine practice in the old neighborhood. “I wanted to create an environment that was very different from what my mother used to go to, which was more like a Medicaid mill,” he says.

Not far from his medical office, Hernandez opened Tirado Distillery, the first legal distillery in the Bronx after prohibition. He credits a 2009 trip to the Bacardi factory in Puerto Rico and his Fordham degree as his inspirations.

“My background was in organic chemistry at Fordham University and I did a lot of research there. In that research we used a distillation apparatus,” he says. “Once I saw what Bacardi was doing, I knew that I could do it too.”

Hernandez never touches alcohol; his father is his taster. But he sells his rums and corn whiskeys throughout the city and beyond, exporting a little bit of that Bronx flavor that’s always made him proud.

—Nicole LaRosa is the associate editor of this magazine.

From his boyhood apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, a young Armando Nuñez, GABELLI ’82, could look across the street to the old Madison Square Garden before it was torn down in the late 1960s. “Now it’s where Worldwide Plaza is, which is where our offices are in New York,” he says.

Today when he comes to town, the president and CEO of CBS Global Distribution Group looks out over his old neighborhood from a 30th-floor executive office. His primary office at CBS Television City in Los Angeles offers an equally impressive view—a panoramic vista of the Hollywood sign and surrounding hills. But both are dwarfed by the expansive global vision that has guided Nuñez as he’s taken CBS international and domestic distribution to new heights.

CBS Studios International, one of the divisions under his control, is the biggest supplier of U.S. programming abroad. And CBS Television Distribution, the domestic syndicator Nuñez runs, produces or distributes seven of the top 10 first-run syndicated shows, including Judge Judy and Dr. Phil. From Bonanza in Germany to the Arabic version of Entertainment Tonight to NCIS—the world’s most popular drama, seen by an estimated 57 million viewers—CBS content is nearly everywhere.

Sitting in his LA office, with a large screen split into several smaller feeds showing real-time CBS channels from all over the world, Nuñez is happy to explain a side of the entertainment business that few viewers think about.

“Most Americans don’t have an appreciation of how content gets monetized. Not only most Americans—most people in our own business don’t realize the very significant business that exists in exporting U.S. content,” says Nuñez, who was No. 7 on The Hollywood Reporter’s list of the top 25 Latinos in entertainment last year.

“People ask me this all the time: What happens to your shows in the Middle East? Our shows are enormously popular in the Middle East. People and governments may agree or disagree on America’s politics or stance on certain things, but most of the world loves Americana, and that’s what we export,” he says. “It’s incredibly entertaining.”

Nuñez joined CBS in 1999 and is credited with turning the company’s international business into a $1.3 billion enterprise, nearly tripling revenue in the past seven years.

Working with media outlets around the globe, he’s created new CBS-branded channels in the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. He’s taken hits like America’s Next Top Model and created local versions from Canada to Cambodia. Overall, CBS Studios International supplies programming in 30 different languages in 200 markets. And it has stakes in 18 channels globally, which broadcast in 24 languages to 70 million households.

“Make it good, and make it work in the United States,” he tells people when consulted on a show, and it will likely succeed globally. “We have great partners throughout the world who make our content successful.”

CBS has also made innovative and lucrative deals with Amazon, Netflix, and local digital platforms around the world. Last year, the international division licensed several series to Netflix to stream in seven European markets.

Nuñez says he’s “doing what I thought I wanted to do as a kid. I just didn’t think I was going to be this fortunate.”

While international TV distribution seems an oddly specific career for a child to aspire to, Nuñez had a mentor in his father, Armando Sr., who worked in film distribution for 20th Century Fox in Havana. In pre-revolutionary Cuba, this “meant that he would drive the film prints around to different movie theaters in Havana,” Nuñez says.

The family fled during the revolution, when Nuñez’s mother was eight months pregnant with him. “I was made in Cuba but born here,” he likes to say. And his father continued working for Fox in New York City. “I just thought my dad had the coolest job in the world,” he says.

With his dad’s connections, Nuñez appeared in the audience of The $10,000 Pyramid and New York’s own homegrown kids’ show, Wonderama, where “I almost won a bike,” he says. “All that kind of had an influence on me.”

Nuñez majored in marketing and management at Fordham, where he was a commuter student. Running between morning classes and afternoon jobs in Manhattan, he worked his way through college.

“I’m incredibly proud of my Jesuit education,” says Nuñez, who has been a member of Fordham’s Board of Trustees since 2012. “That inquisitive nature that the Jesuits encourage … is a good skill set to have.”

His first full-time job after graduation was at a company called Telepictures, which syndicated programming and sold specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer abroad.

There he sat punching messages into a telex machine. “I tell people, if you’re passionate about something, you take any job you can to get into the field,” even if it’s tedious, he says. “It doesn’t matter. You get in and you be that sponge.”

From the dumpy telex room, Nuñez climbed the ranks of the international entertainment industry. He was an account executive for Channel 47, then the local Spanish-language channel in New York. In the 1990s he was a vice president at Viacom, where he supplied programming for global MTV, VH1, and Showtime. Prior to joining CBS, he served as president of Universal International Television.

It’s a career that has him logging a lot of international miles. And he often finds himself back in his hometown, either for CBS business or for a board meeting at Fordham, where he actively supports efforts to attract top scholars. Last year, he hosted an LA event for alumni and prospective students that honored legendary sportscaster Vin Scully, FCRH ’49, on the set of Entertainment Tonight. And he established a scholarship for undergraduates at the Gabelli School, with preference given to Hispanic students.

When he does get to spend time at home, he enjoys relaxing with his wife, Madeline, and playing golf with his son, Daniel, 14. “We sit as a family and watch Amazing Race and Survivor,” he says, while also copping to enjoying non-CBS shows like The Walking Dead. Daniel was recently accepted at LA’s oldest’s Jesuit school, Loyola High School, and a few other schools. “He’s going to Loyola,” his father says with a definitive smile.

In 2011, Nuñez and his own dad made a trip to Cuba, during which Armando Sr. pointed out the Havana theaters he once supplied with films. With the United States only recently reestablishing diplomatic relations with the country, it’s too soon to tell if the younger Nuñez will be following in his father’s footsteps and bringing American shows to the family’s homeland.

But Nuñez clearly considers all countries fair game, noting that the growing middle classes in India and China could provide even more viewers someday. “At the end of the day,” he says, “there is not a market in the world of any significance where our content is not seen.”

—Maria Speidel is an LA-based freelance writer.

It’s 8 a.m. on a frigid Saturday morning in early March, and most of Fordham’s Rose Hill campus is just sputtering to life. But at the Lombardi Memorial Center, members of the Fordham rowing team, some 45 men and women, are already seated at rowing machines and well into morning interval training.

The day’s workout is 90 minutes of distance and sprint conditioning, offset by short recoveries, all of it meant to simulate rowing’s home-stretch intensity of “legs burning and lungs bursting,” says Ted Bonanno, head coach of the women’s varsity and men’s club teams.

“We have an expression,” says Fordham senior Patrick Cahill, co-captain of the men’s team. “You earn your medals in the winter and pick them up in the spring. … Without the gym work, there would be no success.”

That philosophy takes on particular relevance this year, as Fordham rowing celebrates its centennial. It all started with John J. F. “Jack” Mulcahy, an 1894 Fordham graduate and one of the pioneers of American rowing. The New York native went on to become Fordham’s first Olympic champion. At the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis, Mulcahy and Michael Varley won the gold medal in double sculls and the silver medal in coxless pairs.

With his rugged good looks and chiseled features—“a man you wouldn’t want to tangle with,” jokes former Fordham rower James Sciales, FCRH ’87—Mulcahy even modeled for some of the sculptures that adorned the Olympic venues.

In addition to founding and coaching the Fordham team in 1915, Mulcahy served for several years as president of the Atalanta Boat Club and was a New York City alderman. He’s revered among Fordham rowers past and present, who share his passion for rowing’s relentless focus on the team.

“This isn’t a sport where you stand out and star,” says Bonanno, who rowed on the U.S. national team in the 1970s, coached at three Olympics, and is in his 26th year at Fordham. “No matter how much you do, you’re only as good as your whole boat.”

Fordham senior Nicole Arrato, captain of the women’s team, prefers it that way, saying one of rowing’s greatest challenges is being on the water and having to pull with the same momentum as your seven teammates. “You have to learn teamwork and communication,” she says. “And you need the mental and physical drive to reach your best.”

Fordham’s tight-knit group of alumni rowers couldn’t agree more. “The kind of commitment you learn in rowing builds character,” Sciales says.

That today’s team continues to row on the Harlem River, the same waters used by Mulcahy, is not lost on past or current rowers. After all, it was the success and celebrity of Fordham’s first Olympic champion that helped establish New York City as a center of American rowing.

“Here was an Irishman who worked his way up in what was then considered a gentleman’s sport and became the best in the world,” says John Fischer Jr., FCRH ’72, a former men’s team co-captain. “And to think he was a Fordham man. Not many schools can point to that kind of a heritage.”

—Jim Reisler

On November 14, the Fordham Rowing Association will celebrate the program’s resilient legacy with a gala dinner at the Water Club in Manhattan. Learn more and register.