 Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us for the latest virtual event in our spirituality series. My name is Jessica Colligan, and I'm happy to welcome you on behalf of Fairfield Alumni Relations Office. With me this evening are Father Jerry Bloschek, who is our Vice President for Mission and Ministry, and Father Tom Regan, who is a member of Fairfield's campus community for many years, a beloved member as evidenced by tonight's record number of registered. Before we get started, I just want to ask you please keep your microphones muted just to minimize any distractions, but we do encourage you to submit any questions that you may have for Father Regan in the chat, and we may not be able to get to all of them in the time allowed, but we'll certainly do our best to answer as many as possible. And now I will turn things over to Father Jerry. Thanks very much, Jessica. Tom, it's wonderful to welcome you back to this campus, which was your home for how many years from 1980 to 2003. It's wonderful to welcome you back to what was your home, but we know from the enthusiasm and the warmth and the love of the alumni and alumni that you were successful in making this a home for so many generations of students. So welcome home, Tom. And it's again an opportunity for us to say how very happy and grateful we are that you have shared your life with us here at Fairfield. I would have to say it's a pleasure in my life as wonderful as it is because of the people I'm seeing on this screen. Thank you. Somebody said, Tom, I don't remember who said it, but somebody said that you probably even outdid Charlie Allen in terms of the numbers of weddings and the number of stag weddings that you celebrated. As you gaze out at this massive people, these participants, do you see many of them who you could have imagined 20 or 30 or 40 years ago as you celebrated their nuptials? That's the pleasure of a longitudinal study. My first reaction was, I can't believe that these kids are having children. And then as I now I just came from Loyola where we had six undergrads whose parents I taught and I had flipped and I said, I can't believe these poor kids have them as parents. Tom, before you came, I know that you did your your graduate studies, your PhD. I am a moderate Fordham. But how did you come to know the society to begin with? That was an amazing thing. My dad's first cousin was a math professor at Boston College. And he was like the coolest guy I ever knew. In the 60s, he was writing code. He did doctoral studies at the University of Indiana. And ironically, as we'll see with other examples, he was pulled out of doctoral studies to come to Fairfield in 1954 to be on the early faculty, not the original faculty, but the early faculty. And he did all sorts of stuff in computers, which was just amazing. And I thought he had the coolest job. And then when I was an undergrad at BC, you know, I was around a lot more. But I did the NCAA summer camp and he helped us work with all these inner city kids in, you know, in these huge computers, as you could imagine what they were like. And it was just amazing. And then his brother started his own software company. And John was writing code for what would be the first word processing in the 1960s. So it was just amazing. So I got to know a lot of the Jesuits when I was at BC. And I just found their life so exciting. And I always, you know, watching his example, I just thought right from the beginning, I wanted to be a professor. Tom, what was it about those Jesuits that struck you as exciting and attractive, such that it could compel you to want to imitate them and follow their way of life? They were just so smart and yet so down to earth. And, you know, I got to know, like someone like Sidney McNeil, who had been kicked out of Baghdad, and you had those Baghdads. So my life at Fairfield was surrounded by people who had been kicked out of Baghdad, you know, Joe McDonald and Al Cardone and Pell and just these incredibly generous people. And they had the world in the palm of their hand. I mean, they were not the least bit narrow-minded at all. It also always struck me about the old Baghdadis that they, you know, you never heard them speak ill, even of the Bathis regime. They were sorry to leave Baghdad in their work. But these were people who still retained, many of them, then went to other places in the Middle East, you know, to Lebanon or to Iraq or to Syria or Egypt, to continue working with Middle Easterners and especially people who came from Eastern churches or Muslims. So it's always been a powerful sense that I have of the old New England province, this missionary spirit, this kind of missionary entrepreneurship. And later on, I would get to do a lot of work with the Baghdad alums. And these are people they would have reunions every other year. And they would attract 1,400 people for a reunion that went Wednesday through Sunday. And they spoke in glowing terms about their experience. It was just incredible. Tom, what about, how did you decide to study philosophy? I really wanted to be, I started out as a history major. And then by the time I was a junior, I was taking, I took a great course with Dan Shine on existentialism. And I was really into Freud and those things. And I found out that I was more interested in the history of ideas than I was in battles and things like that. And so I've always thought, and I've taught, you know, history of philosophy so many times that I really think that that passion, I wanted to be a history professor, but it was going to be history of ideas rather than military things. I just found it so stimulating. And was Fairfield then your first assignment after you finished your PhD? Yes. And rightly so, I loved it there. When I was, I did two years here in graduate school. And my first year teaching, I was teaching at Fordham Prep. And then Rick Spinello, who had a couple years ahead of me, finished under Quentin Lauer and was teaching, he did Regency at Fairfield. So that slot opened up. So they weren't really happy with me at Fordham Prep, but after they thought they had me for two or three years, and I left after one, and I was commuting up and down. I moved to Connecticut, I started teaching. And then, you know, I would come down two days a week for classes. So I feel like I know the Hutchison Parkway and the Merritt Parkway, like the back of my hand. But then so I was there for four years while finishing my doctorate. And so the first year at Fairfield, I was still taking classes the second year, I studied for comps. And then third and fourth year, I ended up, you know, writing my dissertation. And I really only lost a year to my entry class. And yet, you know, I had tenure while they were still in graduate school. So being able to do the degree before going to theology was a real plus in my life. It must have, you know, having had the opportunity, having had to finish up my dissertation while I was teaching, I'm in awe of the fact that you were still in coursework, took the comps and wrote the dissertation while you were here teaching. How did you pull that off? I've always had two or three jobs at a time. When we get to talking about Loyola Chicago, I was always like in three programs. So it's, I like being busy. Does that keep you out of trouble? Do you find that that's better for you to have multiple jobs? I'm just type A. I just like to go, go, go. And it's, you know, when you get bored with one part of your assignment, you work on the other. So that's it. But I mean, after four years at Fairfield, I had such an amazing time there that when, you know, when I was in theology, I was teaching at BC. And BC had so many young Jesuits. And they, you know, I was, they were offering me a job. And, you know, I just said, there's so many people there. I had a great experience. I think we need to spread the wealth around, but they didn't have to convince me very hard to come back to Fairfield. I'd love coming back. And then it was like, again, I had been here for four years. I knew the faculty at that point, and I hit the ground running. So it was just like a welcome home and no, no time lost. The fact that you had done a PhD in philosophy, how did that affect the way you did your theology studies? Because normally people do their PhDs, even philosophy PhDs, after the normal course of Jesuit formation that, you know, the kind of climaxes with theology and ordination. But you must have been singularly well outfitted to do a pretty probing and serious theology having done the PhD in philosophy ahead of time. I did my work on Whitehead. And therefore I was able to do a lot of stuff in process theology. And so while I was studying theology, I was able to do a lot of my papers in process. And because of the BTI, the Boston Theological Institute, I did, you know, put like postdoc courses at BU on Whitehead's religious thinking. And I was able to publish some stuff off that. So that was a side thing. It was like the course papers I was writing, I was able to publish. And I gave it a festrift for this guy was retiring. And then Eddie O'Flaherty, who had been provincial, was dean there and got me some opportunities to do a history of process theology, which I was able to write up and it came out in a toad, and it was like picked up and republished in Spanish. And so I really kept my hand in my own professional work while still studying. But the probably the funniest line was, for my comprehensives, I had three really heavy hitters on my comp board, led off by Dan Harrington, who was such an amazing scholar, but an incredible gentleman. And he was throwing out all these softball questions about process theology and process Christology. And then the next guy up was the visiting professor from Harvard, the Stillman Chair. And he said, okay, okay, we know that you know about process philosophy, let's get into other areas. So he wasn't as kind. Now, Tom, we're going to we're going to make our way through our our brief time with you in a slightly different way than we have in the past. Because as many of you I'm certain know, Tom was the 2017 Bellarmine lecturer here at Fairfield, which was our 75th anniversary. And Tom wowed people with his knowledge and familiarity with of the history of Fairfield, but especially the history of Fairfield through people and through buildings. And when we realized that we were going to be bringing Tom back, we thought it would be a wonderful idea, if he would be willing to reprise, to some extent, his Bellarmine lecture, and to amplify it with his memories, which you as you can imagine, living with the Jesuits that he did, many of them who were the real pioneers, I imagine, right Tom? Absolutely. We thought this would be a wonderful opportunity for us all to enter into the history and spirit of our beloved Fairfield, through the mind and heart of someone who is so central to our whole experience of Fairfield. So Tom, I wonder whether you would help us by doing that? Absolutely, be happy to and this, this will be short, much shorter than the Bellarmine, but just in a sense, a trip down memory lane, and if people are on the screen, you're going to be able to see this stuff, and it'll bring back memories to you. So, you know, when I see this, it's just like every time I drive back to campus, it's like welcome home. So I'm just thrilled at Fairfield is such a part of my life, and that all of you on the screen are part of my life. But it has an amazing story. And so very often, I would give tours to family and friends. And so this is basically my tour, but with the help of your digital archives, and we'll give you the address at the end to go in and you get all the yearbooks, all the mirrors, all of the anything that you want is on here. But they have this fabulous slide collection. And so this digital thing sort of writes itself. So how did Fairfield come about? Well, actually, we can get this start video here. Here we go. It all started with John McElaney, who was from Woobin, Massachusetts, and he was up in Shatterbrook, which was the Jesuit and the Bishop. And all during the 30s, Father James Dolan, who was provincial, James Heavy Dolan, everybody in New England had a nickname, was trying to start a college in Connecticut. And he wrote to Bishop McAuliffe, and his letters just went ignored. And so he finally said to McElaney, just go down there, show up in Hartford, and see if we can't get permission to start something in Hartford. Well, it turns out that all of Connecticut was one diocese. And the reason he didn't answer any letters was Bishop McAuliffe really didn't like Jesuits. But he knew that Connecticut was going to split into three dioceses in a couple of years. And so without saying anything further, he just said to McElaney, he's like, well, why don't you go down to Bridgeport? And I'm sure you can scout out something there. And maybe you can find something there, which was another way of saying, yeah, you can do it, but you're not going to do it in my diocese. So that was really important. So here's the guy that sort of started all. And he found this fabulous property, the Malans estate, the Jennings estate. This is a guy who made his money in Standard Oil as a partner with Rockefeller. And so they, they just, they agreed to buy this for $43,000, $43,879, which came with 76.2 acres, you can imagine. And we're saying you can't get a garage in Fairfield at that kind of price these days. But then while he was negotiating, he realized the clerk of court said, well, you know, if you're going to start a big school, there's a Catholic guy who was the clerk of court. The estate right across from that, it's up for back taxes. The Lasher estate called Heartstone Hall. And you can pick that up for back taxes. And so for another 68,500, they picked up another 105 acres and another mansion. So for a total of 112,000, they got these two huge properties in about 200 acres in Fairfield County. On St. Patrick's Day in 1942, they formed a 501C3 and the rest is history. They started out and they decided that this would be not only the prep, but also the university. Well, it was war time. And so 42, the prep started. And so the prep opened its classes on September 9th. But ultimately the university had to wait until after the war. But one of my, the funniest stories was, and I lived in Bellarmine in its last year as a Jesuit residence. And if you went downstairs, the area where the Art Institute now was actually a pool. And all those rooms on the side were cabanas. And so they decided this would be the lecture hall. But it was around the pool, they had all these bare-breasted sea nymphs. And so they realized if we're going to teach ninth grade boys, this was not a good backdrop. And so that's when all the paneling went on the walls and all those side rooms that became little offices. But that was one of the pedagogical downsides of having class around the pool. But ultimately what happened is, is in, they went up to Pomfret and on St. Patrick's Day, they incorporated as the 501C3, Fairfield University of St. Robert Bellarmine. And I haven't seen the new renovations of the gym area, but this was until recently, part of the floor. It might still be there. I'm not sure. But ultimately what happened was, is Dolan leaves his role as provincial and they switched places that Dolan becomes the president. And McElaney goes up to Boston to become the provincial. Well, this was a good arrangement because Dolan had been president of B.C. High and he got us through the get the chap getting a charter worked out. And it was amazing because he realized we're going to do some more building. But one of the guys he brought in, this is, this is the Jesuit flexibility. Here was Larry Lange, who would be one of the major architects of the building. But Larry was, because of the war, he was going to do his PhD in physics at MIT. But because of the war, he ended up moving over and he was getting a PhD in physics at Harvard. Well, as luck would have it, one of the priests who was teaching physics at prep decided to go into the war as a chaplain. And so Larry was pulled out of his PhD program, like Caulfield was, and said, you will go to prep and teach physics. Well, he wasn't a, he wasn't there very long. When all of a sudden they say, well, you know, given your background, you could be more valuable across the way. So we're going to have you start really putting together the curriculum. And you, the young priest, you will be dean of arts and sciences. And he goes, I don't even know what a dean does is that's okay, you'll figure it out. And this is the story of fear. And if you take away anything from this is I think that fear fill is one of the most successful stories in American higher education to think that you're 70 years away from your first graduating class, and you as competitive with anyone in the country, I think it's an amazing I'm just so proud that I could be part of this amazing endeavor. And so ultimately, here's the first faculty. And of these 15, I had a great relationship with eight of them. And some of you'll know this father Lieber as a young man, he was a scholastic, not yet a priest. Art Reel was in the English department. These Carmen Donnaruma of Donnaruma, that's him. You know, Chet Stewart was in the ed school. There's James Heavy Dolan. There's Larry Langeth. Art McGreevy taught English for many, many years and then went up to BC. And the fabulous story, Carmen was such a great guy. He taught a year at the prep before he came over. And unfortunately, when John Orman died, we all love John Orman from political science, a lot of us came back to campus for the funeral. And we had a reception in Bellamon when it was all done. And I brought on one of the Alpha Sigma New Kids over as a graduate, he was doing some teaching in Bridgeport. And I said, let me introduce you to Carmen Donnaruma. And he just blurted out, he goes, oh my God, I thought you were dead. And he goes, yeah, my wife Louise says that a lot too. So they stayed characters to the very end. But these people, when you think of what they did, they were just incredible. And so ultimately, these are the first two buildings, Berkman's will go up in 47, followed by Xavier. It was the beginning of a long relationship with Fletcher Thompson. They added the house on the corner of Round Hill Road in North Benson, which became known as the Rat House. And it was the psych lab for rats. And they also, the smell of rats brought the rats out of the swamp. And so Father Tomograph, who's a real pioneer in these early days, would sit on the back porch shooting rats coming out of the swamp. I don't think you can do that now. But what happened was, is how did Heavy Dolan do all this? He took out a $200,000 loan from the Newton-Waltham Bank in Massachusetts. And I said, wait a minute, that's my parents' bank. I grew up in Waltham. Well, how did that happen? Well, when he was president of the BC, he put all of BC's money into the Newton-Waltham Bank in 1928 and saved them from collapse. And so he was able to get $200,000 at one and a half percent. And that was really, that relationship was the foundation of all the beginning. Well, Dolan had incredible plans. And as you can see, this appears in a, I think it might still be in the registrar's office someplace. But this was the original master plan. And it has the plan for campus along with the medical school, the law school, the graduate school, and everyone had their own campus. And yet things turned out very differently. It was during this time that the junior college of Connecticut decided that after the war, with the GI Bill, that this is easy to turn it into a four-year school. And so on February 3, 1947, Dolan announced that we would start our own, freshman-only, and we'd roll in one class at a time. And because of the GI Bill, tuition would be $200. Most of the students would be commuters. And they opened their doors to have 303 students, 121 were veterans from World War II, and 60, they didn't have any dorms. So if you weren't a commuter, 60 lived with neighborhood families, right? Well, at that point, McElaney, who was the bishop, who was the provincial, is pulled away to become the bishop in Kingston in the Wingham Province at Jamaica. And so it's musical chairs, Dolan leaves Fairfield to become acting provincial. Edmund Fitzgerald, who was a dean, because he becomes the acting president. And a year later, he will be appointed provincial in Boston. The big part of this time was we had our first graduation, I still say we, but on June 12, 1954, 2,009 men graduated. The women would have to wait a bit, but they were, 10 went to grad school, there were 19 lawyers, 12 became doctors, and interestingly, 51 of that first graduating class were called to Korea. And so when Fitz came, Joseph Fitz now, he takes us, so he replaces Edmund Fitzgerald, and you'll see a trend here, that if your name is Fitzgerald, your chances of becoming president of Fairfield are very, very high. So we have yet another Fitzgerald coming in, and he starts the whole accreditation process. He was president from 51 to 58. And so he realized that you have to have dorms. And so there's Joe Fitzgerald. And so ultimately, everything is multitasking. You say, how can I do so many jobs? Every building was multitasked. So this was the first building in 1954, that great room that is now part of the Unation College. That was the student center, right? Part of this was the library. And so they began building, and Loyola started to have on its own. In 55, they had Gonzaga, and there's where Larry Langath comes in. He tells that great story that if you know, over here, all of us would know, there's nine rows of raised bricks. And then the modality of Gregorian chant. So the architect wasn't Catholic, and he said to Larry, this is a really boring wall. But we can raise the bricks. I know a little bit about Gregorian chant. We can raise the bricks. And ultimately, we can give you a little, a little fancier image, and it won't cost you anything. That was all it took for Larry. So it didn't cost us anything. And those nine bricks, about nine rows of bricks are here to this day. Ultimately, as you remember, when we built Canisius right next door, if you go around here, there's the stairs up to what is now Donnaruma. But those were called the stairs to nowhere. And they went up to basically a meadow, and they waited until 1980 when they built the faculty office building. So for those 40 years, they just waited there. But ultimately, things began to be very interesting. We bring in the next Fitzgerald, all right. And this is James Fitzgerald. He was called the Tower of Power. He was six foot six. But his office as president was his desk in his room in Bellamon. He didn't really interact a lot with people, but he was he had some foresight. And so ultimately, there was no presidential office, but he began the building of Gonzaga, as we said, in 45. He promoted this young chemistry professor, John Barone, to start the AUP. But when he was there, we had 52 faculty members, 23 of whom were Jesuits. 29 were laymen. Why do I say that? Well, if you're running a school, and basically 23 of your faculty are working for room and board, that's a pretty good faculty salary line. And so these Jesuits were so inspiring that they not only worked five days a week at Fairfield, but then on the weekends, they would go, say, mass in the parish and everything that they got in terms of stipend went right to the support of this new endeavor. So he was a somewhat of a builder. But if we go back to that master plan, we think of all those got the English Gothic buildings. The first thing to go in was the gymnasium. And then ultimately, we get Campion. And the blonde brick, as they say, the 1960s blonde brick was a little cheaper than English Gothic. But I saw Janet Krause was on the phone. This doubled as the humanities building. So this upstairs was all student housing. But then you see these room with the marble. This was the humanities building. And so this was philosophy, theology, and English. And Janet Krause, our friendship goes back 39. We were about five of us. I was first year. I was really low on the totem pole. And so I was in an office with four other people. And it began a great lifelong friendship with Janet. We're still close. And I think she taught English so many years. It was wonderful to be there. But this was quite the building because it was all tile floor on this floor. But then as you went upstairs, it was carpeted. But that meant that kids would throw water on the floor on Sunday night. You'd come in, pick up a term paper on Monday and find that your office was two inches underwater. But I digress. That was quite an interesting place. But ultimately, this is the huge moment in 1962. So here's a school that's less than 20 years old. They were on NBC. And it was the GE College Bowl. This was, you know, there was only the three state ABC, NBC, CBS and public television. This was NBC. So if you're going to watch television, this was a big deal. And it was a national program. And so Fairfield gets in there and the moderator was Donnie Lynch from the English department. And so Fairfield in their first week knocks off Creighton and it was a landslide. And so Creighton was found in 1878. And they got blown out by these four students from Fairfield. So they're invited back. So they do University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale. And again, Carbondale is 1869. These four students blow them out. It was unbelievable. And everybody's saying, where the hell is this Fairfield? You know, what's going on there? They're graduating classes. 1951 is their first graduating class. And so ultimately, they get back a third week and they blow out Clemson, which is 1889. And so I refer to this as a BC guy. This was Fairfield's Doug Flutey moment before there was a Doug Flutey in Boston. But this put Fairfield on the map. Everybody's saying like, where is this? And how is this possible that a school that's less than 20 years old is blowing out these major powerhouses? So ultimately, one of the things that the president put in, he really wanted to have a program in science, which you call the New Horizon. And so he started to have a lot more interest in science. Ultimately, he he retires and incomes Bill McGinnis. Bill McGinnis was dean of the business school at BC. He had a doctorate in marketing from NYU. Later, you know, we became very good friends. But I think as when I was provincial and Bill had to report to me, he always reminded me he was the president and I was, you know, a young whippersnapper. So he never stopped being Bill McGinnis. But he was the one that really moved Fairfield along. He became very, very active with the business community in Bridgeport. And ultimately, we knew something was going to go well when his inaugural address was entitled religious universities in a pluralistic society. So as we deal with the secular, he really took us to the next level. At that point, the curriculum was still very domestic. And yet he understood where we needed to go. He moved the president's office into the what was a pretty large classroom in the back of Canisius. But that became the president's week. And he really professionalized everything. In 1964, he realized that 90% of the students came from the tri-state area, we really had to start building dorms. And so that was one of his big agenda. He ultimately had the Rudolph Bano Science Center. Bano is an industrialist in Bridgeport. So we started with Bano. And then things really started to take off. We got the new Nicelius Library. Then we got the Campus Center. And then ultimately, I'll go back a slide, how was that possible? Well, in 1963, the Title I Higher Education Facilities Act gave us $243,000 to start Bano. That went a long way in 1963. And $500,000 to start Nicelius in the Campus Center. Well, ACLU got ahold of this and decided to sue us in the other Catholic schools in Connecticut and ultimately said Catholic schools should not be getting government money. Well, this would be game over. And so this went all the way to the Supreme Court, ultimately, and Fairfield won in a five-floor decision. And had they lost, they didn't have a million dollars. And so we got to defend us. Edward Bennett Williams, who was the founder of Williams and Conley, he ended up defending Nixon. He's probably the best defense attorney in the country, probably one of the best litigators in the country. He's a graduate of Holy Cross. And for older Jesuits, he was a debate partner with William Richardson, who's probably one of the most formidable Jesuit philosophers of the 20th century. So they were debate partners. They didn't lose. But ultimately, we had Edward Bennett Williams argue our case before the Supreme Court. So we begin, McGinnis is undaunted by this. And in the middle with this case hanging over his head, in 1965, he builds Regis Hall. And then we build what was then called, this is an interesting story if you know the history, he builds Northwest. And then he builds far Southeast and Far East, now called Costco Claver, and ultimately now called Jokes. But when Joe McDonnell came in and decided that we needed to have all of these buildings named after Jesuit saints or whatnot, they changed the names. But when they were originally there, we had Northeast on one side, Northwest on one side, Costco, what was Far East and Southeast. And that part of campus was called the Orients. And so subsequently, as the general, I go watch this unfold, everyone kept calling it the Orients. And even people who had no memory of why these were called that, subsequently, and I think it's probably gone now, but this part of campus was called the Orient when people had no idea why. But that was the story. So ultimately, you know, these buildings, they got with these great architectural plans that were designed to be built in Florida. So living in the Northeast was a little different. Then the 60s came, and Fairfield was no different than any other place, is the protest against the war. We had the black students take over Xavier. We had one of the big things that the students did. They had all these books on the Catholic index, which meant you couldn't read them. Well, that was in the basement of Konishos, the library at the time. And so Father Small, interesting name, Father Small was in charge of them. And he had all of the books on the index, which were all the books that you wanted to read, but you couldn't read. And he had them in this little cage with chicken wire, which drove the kids crazy. So one night they broke in and they reshelved all the books where they should have been. That was like one of the big protests. But then we had Kent State, and it was just like any other school. But one of the largest questions is at that point, I'm going to see that one of the big issues was in 1969, 70, the FUSA, which was a little FUSA at the time, they wanted a concert. And so they tried to get the doors, the doors, you know. And at that point, the police said, well, you can have the doors, but you have to have one parking space for every two people you think will attend. There wasn't that much parking in all of Fairfield at the time. So ultimately, they loved McGinnis. And in 1968, they dedicated the yearbook to him. But when the doors thing went south, ultimately, he was impeached and they wanted to turn him off campus. So that tells you a little bit about Presidencies and Jesuit schools. But we had Kent State in 1970, the big thing was Fairfield went COVID. And I think that was one of the great decisions. So ultimately, McGinnis is invited to go to USF and he leaves for California and in comes Tom Fitzgerald, who was the dean and then the academic vice president at Georgetown. And so McGinnis did a good job raising the profile. But when he left, he left Tom with basically $700,000 in debt, which he had to pick up. And so when we look at that in the interim, Jim Coughlin was the acting president. And then Tom Fitz, known as the Silver Fox, came in and within two years, eliminated the deficit. He was a great administrator. And one of the things he did, and there we have Joni Walters here is the first woman to be hired. She had a PhD in Economics from Harvard. And it was such a different time. We have Don Ross over here. And now as I listened to struggle, the struggle that students get into getting into medical school, Don had such a reputation in the premed community that if he had a really good student, he would just pick up the phone and call the dean of medical school and the Fairfield student was in and the track record of Fairfield premeds under Don Ross is just extraordinary. So there's probably many people on this call who owe their career to Don Ross because of what he did. So ultimately, it was a different world. I look back rugby, all his a shirt, his a ball, go play rugby. Paul Davis was the rugby coach. You probably got paid like $1,000 a year, because he was also a history professor. John McCarthy is the hockey coach. He was chair of the select department. My chair in philosophy, Joe Grassi was a coach of the tennis team. It was just a completely different world. Some of our people will remember the Nautilus of precursor to the grape or the sea grape where beers were 25 cents, and that was a different world. But this is a great slide I love. It was a world before we had risk management. Look at this slide. When you had a mandatory part of freshman orientation, a 30 foot greased pole, all right, at which point there was something on top, and you encourage students to climb this grease pole, risk management would go crazy today. Someone falls off and breaks their neck, new or should have known was a phrase that comes to mind from the legal community. But this was an amazing hazard, and it went on for years. They still do it at the Naval Academy, but just a different kind of world. Ultimately, older people on the call will realize this was the tree down by the pond, and all during life magazine, look magazine in the 60s, were a couple in a boat, a canoe, and an ad for Salem cigarettes. And so oftentimes, well, Madison Avenue, you would come up and shoot things on our campus, but this was it. And I remember being at Fordham now, I'm down studying philosophy, that Tom Fitz walked me along a chalk line and said that this will be the center for financial studies. And as we walked, how did that come apart? Tom McGrath in the psych department was this major, major international consultant to Fortune 500 companies on stress. He worked mostly with IBM and GE, and he would be off one or two days a week doing consulting with sea level people on stress. He convinced the savings banks of Connecticut to take a 30 year ground lease at Fairfield, and they built what was then a first class high end conference center. And it was used basically by GE and IBM. And it was through Tom McGrath, they had a 30 year lease, we'll get back to this. But ultimately, Fitz is still building. So he invites Phyllis Porter in, and we start the big time School of Nursing. This was, I remember walking along a girder with Tom Fitz on one of my visits up from New York. And he was saying, here will be the racquetball courts, note for future reference, this would be a very big part of my recreation while my time at Fairfield. But, you know, suddenly we begin to have the facilities that go with the reputation of the growing reputation of the school. And then the game changed. In comes Al Kelly. And he comes in 1968. Al Kelly was like a protege of Tom Fitz. He, like him, was a chair of classics at Georgetown. And I remember I came a year later, 1970, so Al's second year. And he said, I have a conference in Waltham, you're from Waltham, right? Well, I have a conference at Bentley. Why don't you ride up with me? I don't need, they didn't have GPS. I don't have to figure out how to get there. And then I'll drop you off, you can see your mom, and then we'll come back, up and back in a day. And so I remember, I said, if we're going to be in Waltham, why don't we drive out through the other side of town and I'll take you through Brandeis, which was founded in the same year as Fairfield. But as a national Jewish school, it had an endowment at that point of $60 million. Fairfield had an endowment of six. And so if he's on the call, George Diffley and Al just did an extraordinary job in philanthropy. And when you think, when Al came in, most of our alumni was alive. We had no wills in the States. And ultimately, we had no people in the C-suite offices yet because our alums were too young. And so Al did what he did with George Diffley on the basis of parents giving. He was an unbelievable fundraiser. I was on another board, and Jim Hoff at the time was the president of Xavier. And he said, how does Al Kelly raise so much money? I had spent some time in Cincinnati. I said, Indian Hill is like Greenwich. It's right outside of Cincinnati. Imagine that your school is surrounded by 60 Indian Hills. And then you have a sense of what Fairfield County looks like. But Al was able to ingratiate himself. And he brought in so many friends with no connection to Fairfield, who suddenly realized what a great thing we were doing and got very, very involved. So Al began building his own campaign. And this is just extraordinary. He's throwing up a building a year. And when you build dorms, you know, every state has a housing authority. So they want you to build dorms. They'll advance you alone, that you amortize over 30 years. And basically, room and board becomes like paying off the mortgage over 30 years. And so it really doesn't cost you much to build dorms. But Al was a genius. And he realized we have to build dorms. Why is that? Well, let's start something attractive. So he beguiled the three phases of townhouse. Now this slide tells everything. Why was that necessary? Go figure it out. We had 900. When I got to Fairfield, 1980, we had 950 kids living at the beach. And when Labor Day came around, basically, they threw away the key. It was just students. But then during the Reagan years, when we started building all these McMansions, you know, we had these nice houses going in with families. And suddenly they didn't want to be living next to all these kids who were having parties all the time. And so we did this to get some of the kids off the beach and make it attractive for them to live on campus. So ultimately, the Jesuits decided to move out of Bellamon Hall. They take a year off. They renovate Bellamon. We moved down to what was over here. This part was built in 1978, right across from what was the rat house. So this is all swamp land area, wetlands. So this was called the Swamp House. It was completed in 1978. And then this part of the house was built in 1980. And it was great in 1980. So ultimately, I lived in Bellamon my first year. I lived in like this little Anne Frank room up on the third floor. But you've got these breathtaking views of sunrise every year, every morning coming up out of the sound. But I watched every brick of this building. I love watching construction. And so this was called, interestingly enough, the Faculty Office Building. English and sociology were on the first floor. The entire business school took the second floor. And then political science, economics, philosophy, and theology were all on the first floor. And that was watching that go up. But I mean, the faculty started having their own offices fearful, but under Al Kelly really comes into its own. And then ultimately, we built the chapel. Previously, the chapel had been the basement of Loyola. And, you know, every time you'd say mass there, the wiring was, you know, back to 1955, when kids had microwaves that they weren't allowed to have, you knew they had them because suddenly all the lights would dim in the chapel while you're starting to say mass. But then interestingly, the topology of this part of the chapel roof, and this is the donation of Bill Egan, wonderful, wonderful guy, rugby player, but just a great philanthropist. But the topology of this, they were having all sorts of problems with leakage. And then they realized that this had the same topology as the space shuttle. And so they actually brought in someone from NASA to figure out how, and then since then, it's just a gorgeous, gorgeous chapel. Ultimately, this was sheer genius. Thanks to the generosity of the quick family, we have like first rate art center, many of the things that would preview down, it would preview on Thursday on campus would later be off Broadway or at Lincoln Center. And this opened up an outreach to the Jewish community, arts community in Westport, and people who had never been on our campus before suddenly became regulars on in our programs and the philanthropic aspect of this, people were just so, so generous. Al Kelly was a genius, right? And then ultimately we bought this building, this, if McCullough Hall was the estate, when his son got married, the original owner, the Jennings estate, this was believe it or not, this was built as a wedding present for his son when he got married. And then we began to take over the rest of what was called Julie Hall. We had using, we were renting some of this earlier, but now we bought the whole thing. And then ultimately Chuck Dolan comes in and this was absolutely huge. What $25 million gift it was at that time, one of the biggest donations in higher education. Chuck Dolan was just an incredible guy. I got to know him very well. His daughter Debbie lived on my floor and just incredible, incredible people. And then ultimately we buy the savings bank, they were in year 23 of their 30 year ground lease. We bought them out of their last seven years. And then this was no longer the Center for Financial Studies became the Dolan School of Business. And we were able to get a CSUB accreditation right away, because we had just a first class business school. So we bought them out of that seven years and became the business school. And ultimately, we bought the Bridgeport School of Engineering. And this had been in business since the 20s. And so previously we had a 3-2, there are a lot of some people I see on the call would do three years at Fairfield and then go to Columbia, Wister Polytech or RPI and get their engineering degree. But a lot of great engineers have a Fairfield route. And so that enabled us to do engineering. And then ultimately, this is my favorite story, Joe Domenna, who was a young alum by great success on Wall Street, he generously donated this addition to the library. And my hat always went off to Joe Overbeck and her incredible library staff who kept the library up and running through this construction of a completely new building next door. And ultimately, the only downside of this amazingly fabulous building is it opened to everyone's delight, but it opened around the same time the movie Titanic came out. And all the undergraduates were saying, oh my god, look at the staircase, it's just like Titanic. And I said, I don't think that's what the architects were looking for. But that's ultimately, it just gave us a first-class library, and Fairfield really came into its own. So ultimately, with the Cohena Rafterty gifts, Larry Rafterty was able to give us some facilities. In 1992, we had now 17 varsity sports, and we began to give our athletes the facilities that they deserved. Ultimately, I'm so happy about this, John Barone gave his heart and soul to Fairfield. And when they named this the Barone Center, it was so fitting as a tribute to one of the great great leaders of Fairfield. And then ultimately, there's Janet on the call, we were able to now acknowledge our growing number of alums, we're now had a home of their own. And the downside of this is we had really come into the mainstream. And this is, I think, one of the most moving. We had 14 people kill in 9-11. I did many of these funerals. Ultimately, Eddie Condon, who lives up in Trumbull, he lived at the guy at the end of his street, was in charge of the clearing of the debris at 9-11. And he asked them if we could get a piece of a girder. So he was able to secure a piece of the girder. And then the art people at Fairfield put together this incredible monument. And so last but not least, my last dealings at Fairfield, Jeff Von Arks came in and I met with him. I was now moved out in 2003. And I said, you look at Bellarmine, you look at Bellarmine, it's a great place, but you look at now the Jesuit residence, it was built for 40. We now have about 12 guys living there. I would like to give you. And so I was able to work it out with Rome. We gave the Jesuits own St. Ignatius House. We gave that property and that house to the university in exchange. And I said, I want you to build a conference center for the university. And we'll do it like a 25-year lease. And that will be the Jesuit residence for probably 12, 13 years until the numbers go down. We still have property across the street at Harrison House on the corner of Holland Hill Road and North Benson. So the Jesuit, that's zoned for 13 and a half houses. If we need to build a house to five people, we still have another house on Bala Road. There's plenty of other options. But Jeff Von Arks was just a fabulous collaborator. And so I end here. He built so many new buildings and had a great presidential run of his own. But we collaborated this and I think it was win-win. He was gracious enough to go along with this idea. And we built this as a hopefully what will be a university conference center. And, you know, when people come to campus to visit after COVID, this would be a great like a hotel on campus that we can host people coming for faculty interviews, people coming for talks and whatnot. This will become a university center. And that was the plan. So in a nutshell, if you were a family member or a friend, I just saved you about three and a half miles of walking. But you saw the tour that I would give to people that I really wanted to show how proud I was in Fairfield and what an amazing story it is in Catholic higher education or American higher education today. So I'll stop my screen share there and turn it back to Jerry. Now normally those of you who have been following us over the course of the last year, normally I have some questions with which I pepper the guest. But I think that so many of you certainly have comments or questions that you'd like to pose to Tom. So Jessica, if we could welcome questions at this stage. Absolutely. Yeah. If anybody has anything they would like Father Regan to answer, please feel free to submit it in the chat. Well, maybe while they're thinking Tom, what's your best and fondest memory of your 20 some years at Fairfield? I would just say watching students walk down the left side of the commencement address right side, I mean, with their degree. I mean, you'd meet them coming in as freshmen. And then all of a sudden, you know, you felt like, wow, my work is done here. But, you know, the rest the ball is in your court. And, you know, I just take such vicarious enjoyment in seeing what our people have gone on to do. I mean, like, you know, when I was dean at at Loyola, Chicago, you know, I had Fairfield's MacArthur fellow out to be a commencement speaker. And I, you know, you know, having taught this kid in freshman philosophy, I take no credit for his incredible he's an incredible doctor and whatnot. But I said, you know, you had him as a freshman. And now, you know, he's a MacArthur genius award winner. And you're bringing him in. And we're saying, like, you know, when we met when you were a freshman, could you imagine that I said, I could imagine that you would be MacArthur winner. I would never imagine myself as a dean. So it worked out pretty well. Tom, one of the questions which has come up is from Aaron van Dijk, one of our faculty members in the Aaron physics or chemistry chemistry. Yeah, chemistry chemistry. Aaron, why don't you pose your question to Tom yourself? Yeah, Tom, I'm curious, you know, Fairfield, I think has a strong track record of producing, you know, leaders like yourself in higher education, but also, you know, a number of presidents within AJCU and other universities. So I'm curious, is there something that you think that's unique about the environment of Fairfield specifically that has trained individuals to become good leaders at other institutions? You know, I would say I can tell you, and I think it was the example and being able to get close to people in leadership. Let me use an example of Tom Fitz. Tom Fitz left Fairfield and went on to become president of St. Louis. And I got to know him really well. He said, you know, when I was at AVP at Georgetown, the provincial came and said, you know, BC is a disaster. Would you like to think about it? So before they got Don Monan, he was, and he said, no, I looked at BC's books. This is 1972. And he said, I knew I didn't have what it took to get into the, you know, into the finances. And so I took Fairfield and after eight years of Fairfield, I knew. And so when he became president of St. Louis, he had the skill set. And, you know, because I caught everyone's attention. I fired the dean of the medical school before I started my term. But then when he went out there, I gave a paper out there at a conference. And he said, oh, Tom, you're here. I know your conference is going to let me give you a little tour because we have a little time before your conference starts. And so I walked over with him and one of the biggest guys in my field, and he gave us a little tour. And this is a typical Tom Fitz story. While we were walking over, a homeless woman came up and she was asking for money. He says, no, no, I don't have any money. But if you stay here, I'll be back in a few minutes and I'll get you something to eat. And he was wearing like a windbreaker. He had his collar on. And so this huge guy in my field turned to me and he said, oh, what a nice old priest because he does, he can do campus ministry is retired. And he said, I said, he's the president of the university. And he goes, oh my God, I've been at Old Dominion for 25 years. I never even got close to the president. And so when you look like Mark Reed, who's down at St. Joe's now, he went to the same high school as Al Kelly. Tim Snyder, who's now the president of LMU. The dean out at LMU was dean here. I mean, you got to work really, really closely. It was a whole, it was a smaller team. And so rather than go to these big places and never even see, you know, the other place. And one of the best things too is, you know, when we had the faculty dining room, it was so interdisciplinary. I mean, you'd go to Fairfield's dining room and you'd have lunch with, you know, people in every department. And so I think when I look at the people who now hold really major roles, and it's not only there, it's really funny because at, you know, at BC and whatnot, you know, we said like everybody who does student service at Fairfield ends up, you know, being a major, major player in the, in the student service department at all these other schools. I mean, our dean of students now here at Loyola, at Thornton, the dean of students at Lincoln Center, was, he lived on my floor, Keith Eldridge, and he ultimately got his start. And so I think it's just an incubator because you get to see up close really good leaders and ultimately people who are willing to share what they know with you. Tom, one of the participants would love to have a sister Jean story if you have one from your time at Loyola, Chicago. My favorite one is when she turned, I'll tell you too, but when she turned 96, you know, I went to her birthday party, people helped her blow out the cake. And then about a week later, she came over to our house for lunch and I walked by for brunch. I said, sister Jean, how's your, how's your, how's 96 treating you? And she said, well, okay, except for this. And she held up and she had her arm in a cast. I said, oh, what happened to you? She goes, I got hit by a ball at the soccer game. It's like, oh my God. And she goes, when I got hit, you know, I knew it was broken. And everyone around me is a panicking. So we'll call 911. It's like, we don't need to call 911. Jack up in the booth. He has a, here's a car. He can drive us down. And so when he went in, when she, they brought her into the hospital, you know, this young attending comes in, he's looking at the chart and he leans over and this is typical sister Jean. And she ultimately says, he says to her as a, oh, sister, you're 96 years old. Did you have a fall? And she looked at him. She goes, don't be patronizing to me. I was hit by a soccer ball. But then apps, you know, when I started doing more work with STEM people, I used to like to go to her birthday parties. But then when everyone was helping her blow out her candles, I got totally grossed out. And now with COVID, you know, oh my God, I'd never go near that cake. Tommy, again, many people have been sending messages acknowledging the enormous impact that you've had on their lives. What would you say was their impact on you? How are you the person you are because of your time here? Oh, they basically made me the person I am. I mean, I was exposed when people say, you know, I'll give you a quick example. People say, well, what's it like being in the community now is that we have a great chef and we have, you know, 33 in the house. And, but we don't go out. And so what was COVID like for us is that it was like being on a, an ocean liner that never docks. And like what I looked forward to at Fairfield, you know, I was teaching, you know, those days, the load was a three three, you know, I'd meet a hundred new people a semester. And they just expanded my horizons. And, you know, the 300, you know, 200 new people a year, just make sure who you are. I mean, you're open to all sorts of new things. You know, when I became provincial, it was like working with an office staff. And I said, you know, I've gone from working with, you know, young people and potential to old people and actuality, you know, and you realize that the possibilities there are endless. And so it just kept, I think when you work with undergraduates, it just keeps you so young. When you had the opportunity to be as interdisciplinary as we were with all the faculty, it was amazing because, you know, you just learned so much from your colleagues. And you know, there was never a dull moment. Tom, one of the, one of your hearers, one of your admirers wants to compliment you on maintaining your Wulburn accent despite all of your time in Southern Connecticut and Chicago and New York. Tom, I think we probably, it's almost eight o'clock. We try normally to end up around eight. I do have just one more question that someone sent directly to me. They recall, Father Regan, that you were good friends with Father Higgins. Is there a memory or something with Father Higgins that you would like to share or a piece of your friendship? I think I am the kind of Jesuit I am because of him. I mean, he was one of the most exemplary Jesuits. And when I became provincial, you know, he had run Al Kelly's office for all those years. And so very graciously, he had been socious, which was like the chief of staff for the provincial under another provincial. And I said, would you be, I love working with him. And he was so edifying. And it was never about him. And so we had the provincial staff was just incredible people. But I said, would you come and consider becoming the socious, my chief of staff. And so he came in my second year. So for those five years, you know, he was my total guru. I mean, I think I was as effective as I was as provincial, because I had him in my back corner who wasn't afraid to tell you. But I mean, I just profited so much from his advice. He was just, you know, he was like a Jesuits Jesuit. And like it was Father Murphy and Father Higgins. And, you know, the best part of Fairfield was, and I benefited from this too, is instead, you know, sons and daughters come free, but nieces and nephews, when they, they put that benefit for Jesuits, they didn't calculate how many some of these could have. And so Father Murphy, I think put 17 kids through and Father Higgins put like, I think 12 nieces and nephews through. And so when I went to John's wake, I felt it was my family wake because I had taught all of his nieces and nephews. So it was like being part of that family. And I just can't say enough of what a debt I owe to John Higgins. You know, we, when we first conceived of this program, initially we were Jessica and Janet, we talked about doing a series on Ignatian spirituality. And we concluded that the best way to do that would be to invite Jesuits like Father Tom, who have spent time here, and who have come to know you and whom you have known, because as we ask them to review with us their time and their own vocations, that'll be the best, the best entree into what it means to live a Jesuit life and to live Ignatian spirituality. St. Ignatius singled out as the most important quality he was looking for. Two, one was gratitude. Ignatius said, a lack of gratitude is the mother of all sins. Tom, from the minute we started until now, you've exuded gratitude for your time here, for the people you encountered, for the experiences you had. That spirit of gratitude is such an example to us and such an invitation to find the grace of God and the gift of God in all of the events we have that meet us. And the second, I think great quality that Ignatius expected of his sons and of all those who participate in Ignatian spirituality is availability. And Tom, you've lived that. You came here to Fairfield. You pursued your work as a philosopher. When it was time for you to move on and take on the reins as a provincial, you did that. When it was time to go on and be dean of the graduate school and the undergraduate in the seminary in Chicago, you did that. And then when the provincial said, Tom, it was time to come back to New York and become rector of the Jesuit community at Fordham, you've done that. So Tom, for all that you've done for all of us, but tonight I want to signal out your modeling for us the gift of availability to God's service and a spirit of gratitude for all that God has done for us. Thank you, Tom, for showing us those two great qualities and so many others. Thank you very much. It's such a pleasure to be with you and to see all your wonderful faces again. Thank you. Great being with you. There you go. Thank you. Thank you, Father Regan. Thank you, Father Jerry, as always, for guiding these conversations. Thank you all for being here. Our next one of these personal journeys discussions will be with Father Frank Hannity on May 19th. So keep your eye out for a link to register for that soon. And thank you all again. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the night.