 Good afternoon Please be seated The president the trustees and the faculty of Fairfield University are happy to welcome you The family friends and associates of mr. Dolan as well as our students representing the Dolan School of Business To this conferring of the Doctor of Laws Honorary Degree on Charles F. Dolan Father von Arks trustees deans members of the faculty Administrators students ladies and gentlemen welcome to this honorary degree ceremony Please rise for the invocation which will be offered by Reverend Mark Scalise of the Society of Jesus and Director of Campus Ministry Good and gracious God We thank you for the blessings you confer on Fairfield University For our students whose idealism and open spirits fill us with hope For our staff whose care and dedication to our students inspire us For our faculty whose scholarship helps us to understand our world and enlarges our intellectual horizons For our administrators whose management of the University and vision for its future lead us forward We thank you for the trustees who make certain that Fairfield continues to thrive and remains financially secure and for the benefactors whose generosity makes it all possible on This day, oh Lord We are especially grateful for the tremendous friend and patron Charles Dolan has been to this University his pioneering vision and Entrepreneurial acumen in the television and sports industries have impacted the entertainment and financial world for more than 50 years and His willingness to dedicate so much of his time and treasure on behalf of Fairfield has profoundly affected this institution As we honor him today, we ask you to bless him for his life's achievements and magnanimous spirit Bless his wife Helen Ann their large extended family and all whom they hold dear Bless him with good health and happiness and bless his commercial and philanthropic legacy with continued success Finally Lord on this special occasion bless Fairfield University May this school continue to educate women and men who uphold the highest ideals of the Jesuit and Catholic education that they have received and in so doing give ever greater glory to you We ask this knowing that you are our loving God forever and ever Thank you Father Scalise Ladies and gentlemen, it's now my pleasure to introduce Reverend Jeffrey von Arks of the Society of Jesus and President of Fairfield University Thank You Lynn As always when we take a moment like this to celebrate a milestone in the history of the University I try to step back and look at our work Together as educators within the longer and deeper context of the mission of Jesuit higher education And indeed the overarching mission and vision of St. Ignatius And as I do that and think about the life and the career of Charles Dolan I am struck at just how profoundly Ignatian in character his work has been We often say that we want to form men and women who will go out and Transform the world for the better men and women who will set the world on fire The goal is precisely to engage with the world as it is to discover what is possible And then to have the courage and the fortitude to build the structures and the institutions that will turn That vision into a reality in the service of the greater good That is the Ignatian Charism in a nutshell And doesn't that describe the work of Charles Dolan? Right at the start when he was just 12 years old. He was selling magazine subscriptions Then he was writing a column about his experience as a Boy Scout for the Cleveland Press Well still a boy. He was traveling on the train from Cleveland to New York to try and sell loan ranger scripts to national radio You can already see in these early Strivings the seed of Charles Dolan's unique character the drive to communicate To reach people to inform and to do so on a national scale In the years that have followed he built cable vision Pioneered how sports are brought into people's homes and built the framework and the technological infrastructure that revolutionized The media exploding the avenues of communication and television beyond what most people could have imagined and in many ways Anticipating the digital revolution that is characteristic of our age This makes Charles Dolan one of the great communicators of our time Jesuit education has always had a particular appreciation for the arts and for the power of the imagination to transform people at a deep level Indeed the spiritual exercises are based on exercise of the human imagination And the early Jesuit educators were great proponents of the arts architecture music and theater because they understood that the narrative and Dramatic arts opened people up to a better understanding of their own natures and hence ultimately to a desire for ultimate truth What Charles Dolan has accomplished in a similar vein is nothing less than to have dramatically expanded the imagination of our culture and In so doing expand the reach of information and education to many who might otherwise Have been denied what that culture had to offer Fairfield University has been extraordinarily fortunate to have benefited from Charles Dolan example support and inspiration Thanks to his support the Charles F. Dolan School of Business is one of the best business schools in the country and One with a reputation that is rising all the time Our graduates are sought after in financial industry media marketing and accounting and so on and they are particularly sought after Because of their entrepreneurial spirit Anchored to a strong ethical foundation In many respects they have been formed in the tradition an example of Charles Dolan It is also true that many of them have benefited from the scholarship support that he has provided Many of the graduate students who are supported by these scholarship funds are International students whose presence adds a wonderful dimension to our graduate education where we are preparing all of our students to be global citizens as We move forward we remain committed to forming the graduates of the Dolan School So that they continue to embody the virtues and spirit of Ignatian principles Courage vision the willingness to experiment and to innovate But to always remember that the overarching goal is the social good and the service of our neighbors our country and our world Thankfully, we will always have the example of Charles Dolan to point to and to follow Our students will have that example before them for generations to come and Chuck, let me assure you that Fairfield is committed to the enhancement of the great legacy that you so generously launched in 2000 and So we are honored and grateful and pleased to be able to celebrate Charles Dolan today by presenting him with this honorary degree We shall now have the reading of the honorary degree citation by Dr. Donald Gibson Dean of the School of Dolan School of Business The president and trustees of Fairfield University to all who shall view these presence greetings and peace in the Lord There are only a few men and women who can truly be called pioneers Those who forge a path through the unknown to a brighter future that only they can imagine by this standard Charles F. Dolan the founder of cable vision and home box office and a man who Revolutionized the distribution of information in our culture can truly be called a pioneer This drive to create to innovate and to persevere was evident in mr. Dolan's earliest years a spirit inherited from his father David J. Dolan an inventor in the auto industry By the time Charles Dolan was 12 He began his first job selling magazines for the Crowell Collier Publishing Company His love of media was sparked and as an avid boy scout. He was soon writing a weekly column for the Cleveland Press scouting in Cleveland by Eagle Scout Charles Dolan by six nice title by 16 he was traveling to New York on the train to try and sell scripts for the Lone Ranger radio series It was while working later in radio that mr. Dolan and his wife Helen Ann Started a business that would set the trend for enterprises to come Developing sports films and distributing them to news outlets that would lead to teleguide Incorporated which provided information to New York City hotels The key to success was the distribution of television signals through cable an innovation that mr. Dolan extended to the rest of New York Bringing professional sports teams cultural programming and movies into the homes of cable viewers Encouraged by the power and potential of cable mr. Dolan founded home box office and in 1973 He founded cable vision on Long Island Which would grow to become one of the largest and most influential media companies in the world Throughout mr. Dolan developed a reputation for entrepreneurial vision courage Loyalty and for always remaining open to what life has to offer When something interesting happens check it out his daughter Kathleen remembers him saying he's never lost Perspective that he's one human being among the rest of us When his colleagues Mark Lustgarten passed away from pancreatic cancer mr. Dolan founded the Lustgarten Foundation to help change the outcome for those with the illness Still the largest private foundation devoted to pancreatic cancer research And in 2000 thanks to his generosity as a benefactor and trustee Fairfield University named the business school the Charles F. Dolan School of Business The Dolan School is one of the best business schools in the nation and one that prides itself on forming graduates in the Jesuit tradition of serving the common good While embracing the entrepreneurial drive exemplified by mr. Dolan For his pioneering spirit his vision of an interconnected world that far predated the technology to come and For his personal role in the expansion of the media industry The president and board of trustees of Fairfield University hereby proclaim Charles F. Dolan Doctor of Laws Onaris Causa it is now my pleasure to introduce dr. Charles F. Dolan to offer remarks Well any time I Can't have the opportunity to hear so many nice things said about me I'm willing to get up as early in the morning as I need to and to travel as far But what I want I really want to start by thanking all of you for doing that. I think it's terrific for you to assemble and To put put such a flattering ceremony together for me It's really very stimulating and I'm very grateful to all of you for being here Fairfield University to our family has been they've really a monumental institution a great influence they have we've been involved with it now for what about 40 years and It has helped our family in so many different ways and It is for me to be grateful to you not you to be grateful to me But at any rate, it's wonderful to be here with you our involvement with Fairfield began with our youngest daughter Debbie who Graduated when did she graduate? But it was quite a while ago and she now has eight children and She was followed at Fairfield by our daughter Kathleen who has two and between those ten we I hope that we will have more students at Fairfield University in the future and Then my younger brother Larry his daughters Joan and Carol came to Fairfield and They had many wonderful years here and our Wonderful graduates and then just last Last semester our granddaughter Marianne Rose Graduated and Indeed that was an event the father let me give her that her diploma much to her surprise But it was a spectacular day and Marianne sits right there With her next to her father and her mother is around here somewhere right over there, right? they But this degree is really a great honor and it's also about pretty useful I've mentioned my brother Lawrence Larry is a lawyer and and his wife Eva is a lawyer and four of their six children are lawyers so it's you want to integrate with your with your family but If with that family if you don't have a degree It's a very difficult to do that And up until just a few minutes ago. I didn't have a degree but now I have one The the now at least I'll if I can't do anything else with that degree at least I can show them around the courthouse the My my brother Larry Would have been here, but he couldn't come today Because in addition to law he has developed another interest He's a Clevelander, and he now owns the Cleveland Indians and that team as you may know is engaged in a stressful series with the Chicago Cubs the But but Larry said to me That if I come tonight where we are going and if I wear my academic role That I that he will invite me to throw out the first pitch I thought that was fine until I saw the game last night, and then I thought oh no forget Throwing out the first pitch. I want to be in the lineup And I I want I want I want I want to bat so They It just seemed after last night that Something like that was absolutely necessary so if you happen to be watching the game tonight, and you see a pinch hitter Go out to the plate, and he's the most well-dressed in the whole team Well, you'll know who it is But again, I want to thank all of you for the they trouble that you took to Come here today. It's really an honor to see you all here, and I see so many familiar faces in this group And you really made this a special joy For all of us for my family and for myself, and thank you very much This ends the honorary ceremony will the guests please remain in their seats until the platform party has Recessed out of the great hall guests are then in cordially invited next door to the Diffley boardroom for a celebratory lunch