Now a civilian, he looks for meaningful patterns in the operations of businesses large and small as a credit analyst for Santander Bank.

Tortora started at Santander as a summer intern when he was an economics student at Fordham’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies. He began his academic journey after success in the armed forces—his service was capped with the conferral of a Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal under Combat Conditions in 2019. Today he credits Fordham—and the military community he found there—with setting him on the path to a new kind of success.

When you left the Marines, how did you decide to come to Fordham?

I wanted to go to a good four-year institution and use my non-traditional path as a way to set myself apart. The folks at PCS understood that. I was calling NYU, George Washington University, and a few other D.C. schools and really wasn’t getting a lot of help. Fordham has the name, and it’s in New York, which is not too far from where I grew up in Nutley, New Jersey. One day, I got a call at 5:30 in the morning, California time: it was PCS.

How challenging was it to transition from Marine to student?

The most difficult part is losing that sense of community and purpose when you’re just getting out. It’s hard sitting in the classroom at 25 with much younger students when you have a completely different worldview and experience. Then you pair that with the fact that I haven’t done typical school work since high school.

Having the veterans community at Fordham was really beneficial because you relate to people who’ve been through similar things.

How did your internship in the summer of 2021 with Santander Bank come about?

It all starts with the community that Matt Butler and the Student Veterans of America at Fordham have built. It’s about helping build each other up professionally and academically. So, doing resume workshops right away, doing seminars here and there for interview prep or networking events. I found that there’s a veteran network in finance in New York City. Someone pointed me to an internship, and that was that.

Did you encounter any surprises along the way?

This is going to sound weird, but I’m surprised at how proud I am that I went to Fordham. I went in with the expectations to just finish my degree and start my career, but my experiences there have led me to be extremely proud to have gone to the school.

I know a lot of veterans who are just like, “I show up to class and go home and do my own thing.’ I have friends who were at my wedding whom I met at Fordham.

Inspired by such stories of heroism, the national commander of this elite group, Richard Rinaldo, FCRH ’63, compiled the anthology Courage in Combat: Stories by and about Recipients of the Nation’s Highest Awards. Casemate Publishers will release the book in March 2017.

“Their awards are our nation’s highest military decorations, given to only one in 20,000 combatants,” Rinaldo explained, adding that the Legion of Valor is the oldest military service organization in the country, with only 400 living members. To qualify for membership, individuals must be recipients of the Medal of Honor, a Navy Cross, a Distinguished Service Cross, or an Air Force Cross.

Rinaldo is a retired Army lieutenant colonel who earned a Distinguished Service Cross in 1969 for his heroic service in Vietnam.

He was leading a company of soldiers to take a strategic hilltop when they were attacked by enemy fire. After suffering nine casualties, they secured half the hilltop but were once again under siege, and 17 more soldiers were injured. Though Rinaldo was wounded, he refused medical aid, called for support, and encouraged his company to forge on.

According to Rinaldo, Courage in Combat explores the nature of courage through personal accounts and reflections by and about sergeants, generals, past presidents, paratroopers, aviators, spies, prisoners of war, and candidates for sainthood. He wrote the book to honor the ghosts that surround him all the time.

“Some are real men dying beside me crying for their mothers,” he said. “The sanctity of their memories demands recognition.”

One chapter of the book is an excerpt from Navy Cross recipient Karl Marlantes’ New York Times bestseller, What it Is Like to Go to War. Another is an essay about Vietnam by Navy Cross recipient and politician James Webb. Two Fordham alumni, Father Vincent Capodanno and Philip Conran, are also included in the anthology.

Courage in Combat is Rinaldo’s second book, following Meatballs & Stickball (McNally Jackson, 2012). This self-published anthology explores a different type of camaraderie: growing up in Little Italy in the 1950s. Rinaldo, who now lives in Newport News, Virginia, says it is a tribute to his youth.

“It is always a wonder to go back there and listen to the whispers of the past,” Rinaldo said. “I remember the music of the feasts, the barking iceman, Chinese laundries and linoleum floors, pushcarts and pizza with anchovies.”

He also remembers watching movies at the iconic Bleecker Street Cinema with his buddy from the old neighborhood, Martin Scorsese.

“Even back then, he loved the movies!” Rinaldo recalled.

After graduating from Fordham College at Rose Hill, Rinaldo enrolled at Fordham Law but soon realized that a military career was his calling. Today, he is an active member of the Fordham Veterans Alumni Chapter and the Fordham Southeast Virginia Alumni Chapter, and participates in charitable efforts such as Toys for Tots and social get-togethers. “I really enjoyed the trip to Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast two years ago with Fordham Alumni,” Rinaldo said. “Great trip, great folks!”

In addition to receiving Distinguished Service Cross, Rinaldo earned the Legion of Merit, a Purple Heart, and a Bronze Star. He was inducted into the Fordham and New York City ROTC Hall of Fame in 2015, and taught military history at Hofstra University, where he earned a master’s degree.

—Claire Curry

Fordham has been ranked regularly on the list, thanks to the diverse and comprehensive programs provided by the FordhamVets Initiative — which helps veterans transition from the military to college life — and to the financial support the school provides through the Yellow Ribbon Program.

One program that has been particular helpful to Fordham veterans is the Veterans Writing Workshop, which has been held at Fordham’s Westchester campus since 2010 and recently expanded to the Lincoln Center campus. The workshops are held three times per year at both campuses.

Veterans meet weekly to learn about and practice the craft of writing and to receive feedback and support from their peers. The workshop is “intensive and creative,” said founder and instructor David Surface, and functions primarily as a writing class rather than as a support group or a therapy session. Even so, it’s difficult to separate the therapeutic value of such a group from its artistic value.

“Writing can be healing,” Surface said. “When you write about your experiences, particularly in a serious, intensive, craft-based way, there’s something that happens that doesn’t happen in a therapy session or support group. It has to do with taking mastery of your experience, or taking control of your experience in a way.”

The veterans are not required to write specifically about their experience at war because not all of them are ready to put their trauma into words, Surface said. Instead, they write about whatever inspires them in the moment, whether it’s a memory from the battlefield or a hike with family.

At the conclusion of the workshop, the veterans’ writings are published as an anthology, which the veterans share in public readings and events. In addition to preserving and celebrating their writing, Surface said, the book helps to raise awareness about veterans’ experiences by hearing it in the service members’ own words. This year’s book, Afterwords: Looking Back, marks the 15th edition of the publication.

“There’s a lot of talk these day about the military/civilian divide in our country. Civilians don’t understand what veterans have experienced and vice versa,” he said. “But having the veterans themselves write about these experiences is one of the best ways to help narrow that gap.”

The Veterans Writing Workshop was developed in 2010 through collaboration between Arts Westchester (formerly the County Arts Council), the Hudson Valley Writers Center, and Fordham University Westchester as part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ The Big Read Program. Free of charge, the workshop series is open to veterans from every conflict.

Often, Surface said, a workshop will find veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan sitting side by side with veterans from Korea, Vietnam, and even World War II.

“They talk about their stories, about their feelings,” he said. “There is a comradeship that forms.”

 Over and over again he has seen the veterans draw on that natural bond to help each other not only with their writing, but also with the struggles they face in the aftermath of war. He recalled an instance when one veteran decided to write about an event that had triggered a severe post-traumatic stress disorder. When the writing process became distressing for him, another veteran in the workshop offered support.

“He just sat with him while he wrote the story,” Surface said. “They help each other through these experiences.”

In addition to continuing the workshops at Fordham’s Westchester and Lincoln Center campuses, Surface will be running a Women’s Veterans Writing Workshop starting this spring at Arts Westchester. And in February, a Families of Veterans Writing Workshop will begin at Fordham Westchester for friends, family members, and supporters of military personnel.

“What I hope they learn is that their own experiences — their own memories, feelings, and thoughts — are valid,” Surface said. “They don’t need to look outside of themselves for material to write about. I just try to give them skills and tools to do that.”

Bobbie Scroggin, PCS ’12, is a veteran, a boxer, a mom, and philosopher—though not necessarily in that order.

After Scroggin left the U.S. Army, she had a two children, a girl in 2006 and a boy in 2007. Two years later she accepted a full-time position as administrative assistant at U.S. Military Academy at West Point. She filled what little spare time she had coaching the academy’s women’s boxing team.

When asked how she managed it all, she claims she had a doppelganger.

Eventually, Scroggin realized that she needed to shift the focus back to herself and her family. She began taking classes at Fordham’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies, and thus began an unexpected philosophical journey.

For Scroggin, Fordham offered a combination of location and well organized scheduling that allowed her to, in some cases, “knock out a whole class over five Saturday sessions.” For a single mom of two, PCS’s flexibility proved invaluable.

What she didn’t expect, however, was that the core curriculum requirement of two theology courses and two philosophy courses would alter the course of her studies and change her manner of thinking.

“I was like, ‘Aww, do I really have to take philosophy?'” she recalled. “But in the end I was really glad, and now that’s my major at Columbia.”

Since graduating from PCS with a bachelor’s degree in organizational leadership, Scroggin has gone on to pursue a master’s degree in philosophy and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College. She expects to graduate next year.

Given her experience living in Afghanistan, Germany, Hawaii, and her native California, Scroggin had a natural inclination to process events philosophically, but it wasn’t  until she came to Fordham that she embraced it as a discipline. She said her studies have informed her dating life, her work life, and her life as a mom.

“I subconsciously teach my kids philosophy, logic, and reasoning,” she said, joking that it has caused occasional discord.

“Now when my kids are arguing with me, they always ask me ‘Why?,’ or ‘What if you did it this way?'”

She said that at West Point, her colleagues sometimes need to remind her that she’s in the U.S. Army and the modus operandi there is to take orders.

“I always ask why, and my colleagues say, ‘Come on, we’re the Army–we just do!'”

—Tom Stoelker

Since 2001, more than 1.6 million American troops have been deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Though a large number in absolute terms, veterans of those two conflicts comprise just over one half of one percent of the U.S. population. Despite sometimes intense media coverage, many Americans are unfamiliar with the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on veterans, and of those veterans’ needs when they return home.

“Serving Those Who Have Served: Social Work with Active Duty Military, Veterans, and Their Families,” is a presentation on the coming home experience of combat veterans, and will offer insight into military culture. The presentation will be held at New York Presbyterian Hospital (Main Building), at 21 Bloomingdale Rd. in White Plains, N.Y., on Wednesday, November 18, 2009, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. It is sponsored by the National Association of Social Workers, New York State/Westchester Division, and is free and open to the public.

• Serving Those Who Have Served
• Wednesday, Nov. 18 | 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
• New York Presbyterian Hospital (Main Building) | 21 Bloomingdale Rd. in White Plains, N.Y.
• Free and Open to the Public
• Information: Anne Treantafeles, (914) 367-3108

• Mary Ann Forgey, Ph.D, LCSW, associate professor of social service, Fordham University, will speak about issues related to cultural sensitivity and competence based on her experience and research in working with active duty service members and their families.
• Sgt. Arthur Moore, U.S. Army, Vietnam War veteran, and Spc. Fianna Sogomonyan, N.Y. Army National Guard, Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) veteran, will offer personal insights on issues faced by those returning from war.
• Elizabeth Rahilly, LMSW, and Kristen Tuttle, LCSW, Veterans Administration Hudson Valley, Hudson Valley First Responder Initiative.
• Paul Tobin, president and CEO, VetsFirst, will speak on his work with disabled veterans and their families.

Forgey will offering a course at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus in spring 2010 on Working with Military Families and Veterans; she will offer the course at Fordham Westchester during the summer session. Her talk will tie together the threads offered by the other presenters with her extensive knowledge and experience in working with the military. This talk is informed by her course syllabus.