John J. Kirby, FCRH ’61, a former Fordham trustee and trustee fellow, died on Oct. 2 from complications of Myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood cancer, according to the family. He was 79.

His law career included civil rights work with the U.S. Department of Justice and a successful defense of the gaming company Nintendo, which honored him with his own character—Kirby.

“The University has lost one of its great citizens,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

“John was a giant: morally, intellectually, and spiritually. Our hearts go out to his family and loved ones today. I know the Fordham community joins me in prayer for the repose of John’s soul, and to lighten his family’s grief.”

After Fordham, Kirby earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Oxford University as well as a law degree at the University of Virginia. In 1967 and 1968, he worked as a special assistant to John Doar, then head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

Working to Uphold Civil Rights

According to a paid obituary in The New York Times, his first job as a summer intern there involved gathering voting records throughout the South that demonstrated evidence of widespread discrimination against African-Americans. He also found himself personally escorting African-American children into segregated schools, surrounded by federal marshals. His work helped lead to the creation and passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

He served in 1970 as the deputy director of the Commission on Campus Unrest, the obit said, which was created in the aftermath of the killings of four students at Kent State University.

Although his four-decade-long career included highlights such as arguing before the Supreme Court, serving as the chairman of the law firm Mudge Rose Gutherie Alexandear & Fernsdon, and leading the New York litigation department of the firm Latham & Watkins LLP, the obit noted that Kirby said he was most proud of his early work with the Justice Department.

The Man Who Saved Donkey Kong

Kirby earned a place in video game lore in 1984, when he successfully defended the Nintendo Corporation against Universal Studios, which claimed that the company’s 1981 game Donkey Kong infringed on the movie studio’s King Kong copyright. Kirby won the case for Nintendo when he introduced into court evidence that Universal had successfully sued RKO, the original makers of King Kong, nine years earlier, and proved that King Kong was in public domain, since the movie was from 1933.

Kirby continued to represent the company for many years, according to the obit, and in a show of gratitude, lead Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto named the character of Kirby, who debuted on the Game Boy platform in 1992, after him. The company also gave Kirby a sailboat, aptly named “Donkey Kong.”

A Life Grounded in Jesuit Education

In addition to serving on Fordham’s Board of Trustees from 1994 to 2000 and later serving as a trustee fellow, Kirby also gave back to his alma mater in other ways. In 2012, he and former Fordham Trustee Winston Churchill, FCRH ’62, who like Kirby was a Rhodes scholar, met with eight Fordham students taking part in the Matteo Ricci Seminar, which prepares students to compete for prestigious fellowships.

“He was the best possible example of how to live a life grounded in Jesuit education,” Churchill said.

“[He was] a fully realized man for others who made it his vocation to know and understand the workings of modern American society and to use that knowledge for the greater good,” said Churchill. “An optimist who believed in the Enlightenment, and that our better natures would eventually prevail. I will miss him terribly.”

Kirby is survived by his wife, Susan Cullman; two brothers, Peter M. Kirby, FCRH ’67, and Michael Kirby; two sisters, Lisa Greissing and Cecelia Wrasse; his children, John Andrew Pickens Kirby, Timothy James Kirby, Carolyn Sicher, and Perrin Patricia Lucia Kirby; and three grandchildren, Emma Rose Kirby, William Rose Kirby, and Eloise Woolf.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Rose Mangan Kirby Endowed Scholarship at Fordham. The fund, which was established in 2002 by Kirby and his brother Peter, is named in honor of their mother. Donations can be made at  www.fordham.edu/onlinegiving or sent to:

Fordham University
Joseph A. Martino Hall
45 Columbus Avenue, 8th floor
New York, NY 10023
Attn: Donor Relations

When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys by Thomas Maier, FCRH ’78 (Broadway Books)

“In the twentieth century, no two families existed on a bigger world stage, epitomizing the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ over four decades” than the Churchills and the Kennedys, writes Thomas Maier.

In When Lions Roar, he weaves together the intertwined histories of the two dynasties from the 1930s through the ’60s, skillfully managing a large cast of characters. The book is filled with lively anecdotes of war and espionage, adultery, the Vatican, and “so many of [the families’]private and political dealings.”

Maier, an investigative reporter at Newsday, also shines light on little-known connections. In October 1933, for example, Joseph P. Kennedy, looking to capitalize on the approaching end of Prohibition, travels to England and strikes a lucrative deal to import British liquor to America. Churchill, meanwhile, obtains stock in two U.S. companies directly tied to Kennedy in what seems, according to Maier, like a pay-to-play deal.

By the late 1930s, however, the Kennedy and Churchill, “once so friendly, now seemed at fateful loggerheads” on how to handle the rise of Nazi Germany. (Kennedy was an isolationist.) The families would become friendly again by the 1960s, Maier writes, “as if only they could understand one another, lifelong participants born into the political arena, with all the blood, brains, and passion that drives family dynasties from one generation to the next.”

Winston Churchill, FCRH ’62, a member of the Fordham Board of Trustees, and John Kirby, Jr., FCRH ’61, a Fordham Trustee Fellow, met with eight students participating in the Rose Hill cohort of the Matteo Ricci Seminar.

As former Rhodes scholars who later served on the Rhodes interviewing committee, Churchill and Kirby shared their insight into the application process by simulating an “Oxford-style seminar,” which is similar to the Rhodes interview.

“The interview experience has historically been one of the most challenging experiences of the scholarship process,” Kirby said. “If you’re invited for an interview, they’ve read your essay, seven to ten letters of recommendation, your university’s recommendation, and they’ve been researching you—as well as all the people you’re competing against—the best and brightest from their schools.”

To prepare for the seminar, the students wrote essays about Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (Cox and Murray, 2012). Then, as a group, they discussed the book and its impacts for them as top-tier students in a leading university—a social class that played a significant role in Murray’s book.

The discussion allowed students to reflect not only on the interview process for prestigious fellowships, but also on their purpose for seeking post-graduate opportunities.

“[During] one of the first days of our seminar, we were told that we were chosen because we stand out, and that we will have an effect on the future,” said junior AnnaMaria Shaker, a Middle East Studies major. “If we’re going to have an effect on the future, then we’re going to have an effect on all these systems that most of us find inherently wrong and unjust.”

AnnaMaria Shaker, a junior Middle East Studies major, weighs in on Charles Murray’s book, Coming Apart. Photo by Bruce Gilbert

During the two-hour seminar, students spoke with the alumni about the questionable values of the racial and cultural undertones that shape American meritocracy—a kind of dialogue that, the men said, is similar to the interview process for prestigious fellowships.

“The idea [behind the interview]is to be very personal to elicit someone’s true nature,” Churchill said. “They’re not looking [just]for smart cookies—all the cookies are qualified. They’re looking for the extraordinary cookie… So my advice is to be yourself. Don’t hang back.”

As participants of the Matteo Ricci Seminar, the students, who ranged from sophomores to seniors, will likely apply for similar opportunities, and possibly the Rhodes scholarship itself.

Launched in the 2010, the seminar is a rigorous two-year tutorial that prepares high-achieving students to compete for prestigious fellowships and scholarships. Selected students participate in bi-weekly debates and discussions during the first semester of the seminar. During the second semester, students then work with a mentor to develop a research project. These projects are used the following year as part of fellowship applications.

“Fordham, as I remember it, has always encouraged the top students to broaden their minds and ready themselves to go forward into the world, including applying for post-graduate fellowships,” Kirby said. “Fordham was very important in helping me to obtain a very good post-graduate education. I want to help these current students do the same.”

The Winston Churchill Foundation, which grants up to 15 scholarships each year to American students for one year of graduate study at Cambridge, recently designated Fordham as a nominating institution.

That means that Fordham is one of only 102 universities that can endorse students for the Churchill Scholarship.

The benefits to the University are twofold, according to John Ryle Kezel, Ph.D., director of the St. Edmund Campion Institute for Prestigious Fellowships. Not only does it open more scholarship opportunities for students, it demonstrates Fordham’s excellence in research and instruction.

“Fordham’s acceptance as a nominating institution is a testament to the University’s growing reputation and the outstanding contributions of our students in the scientific and mathematical fields,” Kezel said. “We have students working in cutting-edge disciplines, such as bionanotechnology, which fit in very well with current scholarship programs at Cambridge.”

Fordham undergraduates in the sciences regularly collaborate with faculty on research. In many instances, students conduct their own investigations and present results at regional and national academic conferences alongside their faculty mentors.

“I credit the students, but I also credit the faculty for giving them the focused attention they need to do the best research possible,” said Donna Heald, Ph.D., associate dean for science education.

“Our students are receiving awards at academic conferences where their competition may be graduate students, post-docs and faculty from other institutions,” she said. “It’s very uncommon.”

Fordham’s acceptance into the family of Churchill institutions also stems from the University’s increased success on the prestigious awards circuit.

“We’re being noticed more and more because our students are being accepted into other prominent UK programs, including the Gates-Cambridge, as well as for study and research at Oxford,” said Maria Noonan, assistant director of the Campion Institute. “Being part of the Churchill program offers even greater opportunities for our students to be recognized.”

The Churchill Scholarship was established in 1959 by American friends of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, to honor his request that American students study at the newly created Churchill College at Cambridge.

Ideally, Churchill candidates will be identified early in their Fordham careers and then cultivated through a combined effort by the student, faculty and Campion Institute.

– Joseph McLaughlin