And then there were all the people who inspired and challenged him athletically, like track coaches Ed Kilkelly, Arthur O’Connor, and Jack Brown—to say nothing of Fordham track’s most famous alumnus, two-time Olympic gold medalist Tom Courtney, FCRH ’55.

Courtney enjoyed “a certain degree of royalty” at Fordham, said Ostling, who met him during one of his many visits to campus.

These and other recollections come up as Ostling discusses his recent major gift to Fordham’s track and field and cross country programs in honor of coaches O’Connor and Brown.

By giving, he seeks to help today’s student-athletes have the best possible experience—like he did.

“I thought it was time to try to help make a difference” for them, Ostling said.

A Lesson in Giving

Ostling, who retired as chief operating officer at EY, formerly Ernst & Young, earned his bachelor’s degree from Fordham’s former Undergraduate School of Education before enrolling in Fordham Law School. A longtime generous donor to the school, he is quick to praise all the people who made a mark on his personal and professional growth—from coaches to classmates to colleagues in his legal career.

Those who inspired his philanthropy include a past dean of the law school, Joseph M. McLaughlin, FCRH ’54, LAW ’59, who made a lasting impression with a quick act of generosity. It happened when Ostling was being interviewed by McLaughlin after first arriving at the law school as a recently commissioned military officer, wearing his U.S. Marine Corps uniform.

Expressing concern about Ostling’s ability to pay for a more diverse wardrobe, McLaughlin turned around and wrote him a generous check, only asking that Ostling pay it back when he could.

“I can’t tell you what that meant to me,” Ostling said. “I guess he knew a lot about my financial background and that sort of thing from my application. That moment of him without any need to, or request, turning around and doing that just made a huge [difference].”

He noted that his gift to Fordham track followed Courtney’s death last fall, so in a way it helps continue Courtney’s unstinting support for the program.

“My aspiration is that the young men and women at Fordham who participate in track and cross country have the chance to feel the same experience I felt,” Ostling said. “I had a great academic experience, a great social experience, a great athletic experience at Fordham.”

Athletics fundraising is one of the pillars of Fordham’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student. Learn more and make a gift. 

“Tom was a true man of Fordham, and we are proud to call him a Ram,” said Ed Kull, director of athletics at the University. “He will forever be in the Fordham history books, and his character, persistence, and determination will continue to inspire our Rams for generations.”

As a track star at Fordham, Courtney won numerous individual titles. He also anchored the Rams’ relay team that set a two-mile world record at the Los Angeles Coliseum Relays on May 21, 1954. Sports Illustrated featured him in his Fordham gear on the cover of its May 2, 1955, issue, one month before he earned a bachelor’s degree in political philosophy from Fordham College at Rose Hill.

Courtney’s renown only grew after graduation, when he represented the U.S. at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. He earned two gold medals—first in one of the most dramatic 800-meter races in Olympic history, then as the anchor of the 1,600-meter relay team.

“Few men have worked as hard and achieved such personal fame in such a short time as Fordham’s Tom Courtney,” student reporters Ronald Land and Bill Sturner wrote in The Ram less than two weeks later, upon Courtney’s triumphant return to campus.

A Record-Setting Track Star

Courtney was born on August 17, 1933, in South Orange, New Jersey. He grew up in nearby Livingston with dreams of becoming a professional baseball pitcher like his father, who had signed with the New York Yankees in 1928 and played in the minor leagues. Courtney played baseball and basketball, then switched to track in his junior year at James Caldwell High School in West Caldwell.

He received track scholarship offers from several universities, including Georgetown, Villanova, and Yale. He chose a full scholarship from Fordham after meeting coach Artie O’Connor at a New Jersey state meet. It was a decision that thrilled his mother, he once wrote, because her cousin Charlie Deubel was a 1935 Fordham graduate who had captained the Rams’ track team.

“While most runners are slender and wiry, Tom was broad-shouldered and muscular,” Raymond Schroth, S.J., FCRH ’55, wrote in his book Fordham: A History and Memoir, adding that the 6-foot-2-inch Courtney was “absolutely driven” and that “nothing was to get between Tom and his running.”

While competing for Fordham, Courtney won numerous high-profile races, including the 1,000-yard Metropolitan Collegiate and IC4A championships. He set a U.S. record in the 400-yard final at the Metropolitan AAU championship and a world record in the 600-yard final at the intercollegiate indoor championships. At the Washington Star games, an international invitational, Courtney bested the University of Pittsburgh’s Arnie Sowell, then considered the best runner in the world, by five strides.

He formed a tight bond with his Fordham teammates Terry Foley, FCRH ’54, Frank Tarsney, FCRH ’54, and Bill Persichetty, GABELLI ’54. With Courtney as the anchor, the Rams’ “Fabulous Four” two-mile relay team recorded 13 straight wins in 1954.

Courtney also developed a close relationship with O’Connor, a 1928 Fordham graduate. During Courtney’s junior year, the coach “began mentioning the word Olympics to his star,” Father Schroth wrote. “For the next year and a half his training became both grueling and methodical as he kept a daily log of everything he did,” hoping to qualify for the 1956 games in Melbourne.

Qualifying for the Olympics—and a Date with Grace Kelly

Courtney had been a cadet in the Air Force ROTC program at Fordham, and after graduating in 1955, he was drafted into the Army. While completing basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey, he continued to prepare for the Olympics, sometimes sneaking out of his bunk at night to run along the camp fence.

“After I graduated from Fordham, I was on my own,” Courtney recalled in his 2018 memoir, The Inside Track. “But I knew what to do and each day I tried to improve, to work a little harder, and to become a little faster.”

The Olympic trials were held in Los Angeles in July 1956, and Courtney made the team. Later, he and Olympic rower Jack Kelly Jr. were asked to model the official apparel members of the U.S. team would wear in Melbourne. They became friends, and “he asked me if I would go on a date with his sister, Grace Kelly, of movie fame,” Courtney wrote in his memoir. “We had a nice time and I asked her for another date. She said she was going to Monaco the next week, and the next thing I knew she was getting engaged to Prince Rainier.”

‘The Most Courageous Race I’ve Seen’

On November 26, 1956, the day of the 800-meter final at the Melbourne Olympics, Courtney’s nerves nearly got the better of him.

“As I stepped on the track, my legs went rubbery,” he wrote in The Inside Track. “I found that I could not stand up and I sagged to the grass. I saw the hundred thousand people in the stands, and thought, is it possible that I am so nervous that I won’t be able to run today?”

He took an early lead, then lagged behind his U.S. teammate and college rival, Arnie Sowell, who was favored to win the race. With 120 yards to go, Courtney made a move and eventually caught Sowell “on the turn and slowly passed him,” he later wrote, only to see Great Britain’s Derek Johnson spurt past him with just 50 yards to go.

“The sprint was over for me, my legs were getting rubbery, my head was bobbling, and my body stiffening. I was finished. … But I looked at the tape with just 40 yards to go and realized this was the only chance I would ever have to win the Olympics,” he wrote. “I did not want to finish thinking I might have put a little more into it. I leaned as far forward as I could and threw my arms out ahead of me.”

He crossed the tape one-tenth of a second ahead of Johnson, finishing with a time of 1:47.7, before collapsing from exhaustion.

Journalist Bob Considine later called it “the most courageous race I’ve seen in 25 years of sportswriting.”

Courtney, however, was experiencing “a new kind of agony,” he later wrote. “I had never run myself into such a state. My head was exploding, my stomach ripping, and even the tips of my fingers ached. The only thing I could think was, ‘If I live, I will never run again!”

Five days later, he not only ran again, he earned his second gold medal, as the anchor of the 1,600-meter relay team. The 1956 Olympics were the last not shown live on television, so Courtney had to call his parents in Livingston to tell them he had won.

“Why was trying to win the 800 meters, the 400 meters, and the relay so important to me?” Courtney wrote in The Inside Track. “There was a poem by Sterling W. Sill taped to our refrigerator as we grew up. It read, ‘The average man’s complacent when he has done his best to score, but the champion does his best, and then he does a little more.’ I guess I saw triple in that quote.”

A Homecoming Parade in the Bronx

Upon returning to New York, Courtney appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and on December 12, 1956, his alma mater threw him a parade in the Bronx, from Poe Park on the Grand Concourse to the Rose Hill Gymnasium, where he received a “huge, triple-decked, silver trophy” from Fordham President Laurence J. McGinley, S.J., The Ram reported the next day.

The Fordham University Band led the procession through the Bronx, followed by the student body and the Livingston High School band. Wearing his white Olympics sport coat and a straw hat, Courtney rode down Fordham Road in the back of an open-top orange Cadillac—an experience he recounted in his memoir.

“That was a lovely time,” he wrote, “and I was in a convertible with my coach, Artie O’Connor. He was very motivational for me. As we went along, he took my losses much harder than I did. He was a dedicated, wonderful man. He loved Fordham and it helped me to love Fordham.”

Raising a Family, Building a Career

After the Fordham parade, Courtney returned to an Army base in Boston and continued to compete, setting a world record for the indoor 600-meter before retiring from competition in 1957, the same year he received an honorable discharge from the Army.

Two years later, he earned an M.B.A. from Harvard University (where he also served as an assistant track coach), setting the stage for a long, successful career in finance. He became a senior vice president of finance at Peninsular Insurance Company in 1962, and later worked as an investor at several firms before forming his own, Courtney Associates, in 1983. He specialized in portfolio management and venture capital before retiring in 2002.

In 1963, he married Posy L’Hommedieu. Together they had three sons: Tom Jr., Peter (who earned an M.B.A. from Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business in 1997), and Frank.

A Loyal Ram—and an Inspiration for Student-Athletes

Over the years, Courtney remained a loyal Fordham graduate and generous financial supporter of the University. He made gifts to the men’s and women’s track and field program, to the Fordham Fund, and the Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., Endowed Presidential Scholarship Fund.

Courtney also was a frequent attendee at Jubilee reunion weekends at Rose Hill and regional alumni events in Florida, and while he could not attend the June 2022 reunion celebrations in person, he spoke with attendees via Zoom. With his wife, Posy, at his side in Florida, he took questions from his longtime friend and former Fordham track teammate Bob Mackin, FCRH ’55, in the Bronx.

“Fordham was a wonderful place, and I’m thankful for my experience there—and my scholarship too,” Courtney told the assembled Jubilarians and guests.

Along with Fordham and NFL football legend Vince Lombardi, FCRH ’37, Courtney was one of the first five people to be inducted into the Fordham Athletics Hall of Fame when it was established in 1971. He was inducted into the University’s Hall of Honor in 2011. And in 2016, to kick off Fordham’s track and field season, the program honored Courtney with a banner unveiling ceremony at the Vincent T. Lombardi Memorial Center at Rose Hill.

At his virtual Jubilee appearance in June 2022, Courtney received a special thank-you from Brian Horowitz, FCRH ’10, GSE ’11, head coach of the men’s track and field and cross country teams.

“Walking into the Lombardi Center each day and seeing the Olympic rings and knowing that you represented Fordham so well is a real inspiration for myself as a coach and for the current members of the team,” Horowitz said. “We hope to continue to make you proud.”

In addition to his wife, Posy, and their three sons, Courtney is survived by a brother, Kevin, and nine grandchildren.

—Adam Kaufman and Ryan Stellabotte

Watch Tom Courtney’s come-from-behind victory in the 800-meter race during the 1956 Summer Olympics. In this clip from “Greatest Thrills from the Olympics,” produced in the lead-up to the 1960 Olympics, host Bob Considine interviews Courtney, calling his epic victory “the most courageous race I’ve seen in 25 years of sportswriting.”

With his wife, Margaret “Posy” Courtney, by his side, two-time Olympic gold medalist Tom Courtney, FCRH ’55, joined the reunion festivities by Zoom from Florida. He took questions from his longtime friend and former Fordham track teammate Bob Mackin, FCRH ’55, who was among those in Loyola Hall.

Prior to the discussion, audience members watched a video of Courtney’s dramatic come-from-behind victory in the 800-meter race on November 26, 1956, at the Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. Courtney—who later said he was proud to be described in the Melbourne newspapers as “The Fordham Ram”—set an Olympic record that day with a time of 1:47.7 before nearly collapsing from exhaustion.

“I was totally, absolutely spent,” he recalled during the reunion event. “All I could think of is, ‘I am in such bad, painful condition, I will never run again.’”

But he ran the next day, and several days later, on December 1, he anchored the U.S. team’s four-man 1,600-meter relay, winning his second gold medal. Because it was the last Olympics not broadcast live on television, he had to call his parents in Livingston, New Jersey, to let them know that he won.

Upon returning to New York, Courtney appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, and on December 12, 1956, Fordham feted him with a dinner at Mamma Leone’s restaurant in Manhattan and a parade in the Bronx—from Poe Park on the Grand Concourse to the Rose Hill Gymnasium, where he received a “huge, triple-decked, silver trophy” from Fordham President Laurence J. McGinley, S.J., The Ram reported the next day.

“Few men have worked as hard and achieved such personal fame in such a short time as Fordham’s Tom Courtney,” Ram reporters Ronald Land and Bill Sturner wrote.

The Fordham University Band led the procession through the Bronx, followed by the student body and the Livingston High School band. Wearing his white Olympics sport coat and a straw hat, Courtney rode down Fordham Road in the back of an open-top orange Cadillac—an experience he recounted in his 2018 memoir, The Inside Track.

“That was a lovely time,” he wrote, “and I was in a convertible with my coach, Artie O’Connor,” a 1928 Fordham graduate who offered Courtney a full scholarship and was the first to suggest that he try to make the U.S. Olympic team. “He was very motivational for me. As we went along, he took my losses much harder than I did. He was a dedicated, wonderful man. He loved Fordham and it helped me to love Fordham.”

After the Olympics, Courtney continued to set world records in 1956 and 1957 before retiring from competition. In 1971, he was one of the first five people, including Vince Lombardi, FCRH ’37, to be inducted into the Fordham Athletics Hall of Fame. He earned an M.B.A. from Harvard University and enjoyed a long career in business, retiring in 2011 as chairman of the board of Oppenheimer Funds.

“Fordham was a wonderful place, and I’m thankful for my experience there—and my scholarship too,” said Courtney, who for many years has been a generous supporter of the University.

Brian Horowitz, FCRH ’10, GSE ’11, head coach of the Fordham men’s track and field and cross country teams, thanked Courtney for his support of the program’s student-athletes.

“Walking into the Lombardi Center each day and seeing the Olympic rings and knowing that you represented Fordham so well is a real inspiration for myself as a coach and for the current members of the team,” Horowitz said. “We hope to continue to make you proud.”

Watch Courtney’s inspiring effort in this clip from Greatest Thrills from the Olympics. Host Bob Considine interviews Courtney, calling his run “the most courageous race I’ve seen in 25 years of sportswriting.”

Bringing Bronze Back to Ireland

Fiona Murtagh, FCRH ’16, won a bronze medal as part of Ireland’s women’s coxless four rowing team on July 27. Murtagh, an Irish native, rowed for Fordham as an undergraduate after transferring from the National University of Ireland in Galway. As a Ram, she led women’s rowing to two victories at the Head of Charles regatta and was named to the All-Atlantic 10 first team in 2016.

In early August, Murtagh arrived back to her hometown of Moycullen, in County Galway, with fans cheering her on amid celebratory bonfires. After spending a month before the Olympics in a training bubble, Murtagh told The Irish Times, “We deserve a break to spend time with family and friends. It’s been so long since we have seen anyone.”

Forget Tokyo, the real Olympic village is Moycullen this evening! A homecoming to welcome back rowing medallist Fiona Murtagh – not every day an Olympic medal comes through the parish. #Olympics #Tokyo2020 pic.twitter.com/s3wjKOY6pN

— Dr. Barry Houlihan (@stagedreaction) August 1, 2021

A ‘Gutsy’ Performance from a U.S. Pitcher

Soon after Murtagh received a hero’s welcome in Ireland, former Rams pitcher Nick Martinez took the mound as the U.S. baseball team’s starting pitcher in the gold medal game against Japan on August 7. He earned the starting nod after striking out nine and picking up a win against South Korea in the group stage. Although the U.S. fell to Japan, 2-0, to claim the silver medal, Martinez made a strong showing, striking out seven batters over six innings while allowing one run. In the publication’s game recap, USA Today called Martinez’s performance “gutsy” and stated that he “[kept]the U.S. in the ball game.”

Martinez, who was drafted by the Texas Rangers in 2011, after his junior year at the Gabelli School of Business, made his Major League Baseball debut for the Rangers in 2014 and started 68 games for the team over four seasons—including several games at Yankee Stadium. He has been pitching professionally in Japan since 2018, first for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters and currently for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.

Rowing for Gold and Silver in St. Louis

Martinez and Murtagh are not the first Rams to take their places on the Olympic podium. In 1904, at the summer games in St. Louis, 1894 Fordham graduate John J. F. “Jack” Mulcahy and his partner, William Varley, won gold and silver for the U.S. in two rowing events: the double sculls and pair without coxswain, respectively. Mulcahy had developed an interest in rowing at an early age, at a time when the Harlem River played host to popular regattas.

After the Olympics, Mulcahy worked briefly as a New York City alderman and as vice president of Midvale Steel Company. He returned to Fordham in 1915 to help the University launch its rowing program and served as the team’s inaugural coach. Vincent M. Doherty, a 1918 graduate and a member of the 1915 freshman crew, recalled that Mulcahy “was a stern master,” but that “he had the affection and respect of every man on the squad.”

A Steeplechase Medal as a Student

At 1932’s Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Joe McCluskey, then a Fordham junior, won bronze in the steeplechase—a seven-and-a-half-lap race that includes both standard hurdles and water jumps. In his 2002 obituary, The New York Times noted that had officials not made a mistake in lap counts, McCluskey would have won silver.

In the 1933 edition of the Fordham Maroon yearbook, McCluskey’s entry read, “Any introduction to this son of Fordham would be superfluous for he is known to every man on the campus because of his athletic conquests,” and his classmates recognized him as the student who had “Done Most for Fordham.” Throughout his career, McCluskey won 27 U.S. track and field titles.

“I don’t think I had as much ability as some others,” he once said, “but I put more into it. When you can’t stand at the end of a race, you know you’ve given everything. I ran a lot of races when I couldn’t stand at the end.”

Double Gold and an Olympic Record

Also willing to push himself to exhaustion was Tom Courtney, FCRH ’55, who won the gold medal for the United States in the men’s 800-meter race at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.

“It was a new kind of agony for me,” Courtney recalled of the race, in which he set an Olympic record time of 1:47.7. “I had never run myself into such a state. My head was exploding, my stomach ripping, and even the tips of my fingers ached.”

Five days after that race, he earned another gold medal, as the anchor of the U.S.’s four-man, 1,600-meter relay team.

“When I got back to the States, I appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show,” Courtney wrote in his memoir, The Inside Track (Page Publishing, 2018). “There was a big party at Leone’s Restaurant, and a wonderful parade down Fordham Road. I was in a convertible with my coach, Artie O’Conner. He was very motivational for me. … He loved Fordham and it helped me to love Fordham.”

After the Olympics, Courtney went on to earn an M.B.A. from Harvard and had a long career in business. He retired in 2011 as chairman of the board of Oppenheimer Funds.

Mulcahy, McCluskey, and Courtney are all members of the Fordham University Athletics Hall of Fame.

“It was a new kind of agony for me,” he later wrote. “My head was exploding, my stomach ripping, and even the tips of my fingers ached. The only thing I could think was, ‘If I live, I will never run again.’”

Courtney did run again, however. Five days later, he anchored the U.S. team’s four-man 1,600-meter relay, earning a second gold medal. He was inducted into the Fordham Athletics Hall of Fame in 1971, and USA Track & Field inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 1978 as one of the best middle-distance runners of his generation.

VIDEO: Watch Courtney’s inspiring effort in this clip from the Greatest Thrills from the Olympics. Host Bob Considine interviews Courtney, calling his run “the most courageous race I’ve seen in 25 years of sportswriting.” (Race begins at 1:25.)

Courtney, who is among the greatest track athletes Fordham ever produced, will be honored along with eight other Olympic Gold medalists in track & field. All honorees have competed in the Millrose Games, which take place on Friday, Jan. 28, at Madison Square Garden.

While at Fordham, Courtney was on two-mile team, which set the World Record in California in 1954. The next year, he graced the cover of Sports Illustrated in his Fordham gear.

After graduating from Fordham, Courtney made the Olympic team and took first-place, winning the gold medal and setting an Olympic record in the 800 meter run at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. He also anchored the 4 X 400 relay for a second gold medal.

Courtney went on to set many other world records in 1956 and 1957 before retiring from competition. He later became assistant track coach at Harvard for one year before obtaining his M.B.A. from Harvard Business. Courtney was inducted into the Fordham Athletics Hall of Fame in 1971.

Fellow alumnus, Norbert Sander, M.D., (FCRH ’64), will host the reception along with officers from the New York Athletic Club. Sander, the 1974 winner of the New York City Marathon, is the architect of a modern initiative that brought running back to life at Manhattan’s 168th Street Armory, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2010.

A significant contingent of one of Fordham’s greatest Track & Field squads, Classes 1963-65, will hold a reunion at the 104th edition of the Millrose Games at the Garden on Friday night to celebrate Fordham’s rich history of success in these historic Games.