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Regis at its Diamond Anniversary
In April 1989, Rev. Joseph A. O'Hare, S.J. '48, the then-President of Fordham University and future President of Regis High School, addressed an audience at the Waldorf Astoria to mark the occasion of the school's 75th Anniversary. A reprint of his remarks are provided below.

An address given at the 75th Anniversary Dinner of Regis High School
April 1, 1989
Grand Ballroom Waldorf Astoria
Address Delivered by Rev. Joseph A. O'Hare, S.J. '48

Bishop Broderick, Father Fischer, distinguished dais guests, Fellow Regians:

Regis Front DoorsI want to thank Judge McGivern for his gracious introduction. Since the 75th Anniversary Dinner is also something of an alumni reunion, I thought Judge McGivern might have repeated again the story he told us at a Friendly Sons of St. Patrick dinner a few years ago, about the 50th anniversary of his Holy Cross class. Judge McGivern suggested that the assembled group of golden jubilarians looked more like a pilgrimage to Lourdes than a campus reunion. When he approached one of the jubilarians, unfamiliar yet presumably an old classmate, he put out his hand and said "Hello, I am Owen McGivern." The jubilarian cocked his ear, peered curiously into Judge McGivern's face and said "What did you say your name was?" Judge McGivern replied: "Owen McGivern." The jubilarian said "You have a very good memory."

Looking around this room tonight, Given the large number of Regis alumni who entered the clergy one might try to reflect on whether those who were married or those who remained unmarried have weathered the years better. We do have to recognize, however, that in the last decade or so a sexual revolution has shaken our expectations of clergy. As a result of the sexual revolution, sometimes it seems better that no one wants to get married these days except priests. And the only people interested in becoming priests are women.

Whatever the ravages of time, though, it is a great pleasure to address you here in the elegance of the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, so reminiscent of the tastefully appointed Regis Cafeteria, with its lime green walls, where we did lunch together so many years ago. I have to admit that it has been some time since I dined in the Regis cafeteria. For all I know, it no longer serves shrimp chow mein on Fridays, what with the decline in the Church's discipline. Perhaps nouvelle cuisine is in these days in that stylish basement eatery between Madison and Park on upscale 84th Street. But to those of us who travelled from the Bronx on the IRT in the 1940's, shrimp chow mein seemed very exotic indeed.

Seventy-five years may represent a good life span for an individual. At 75, an institution is still in its youth, but an anniversary like this one provides a good reason to celebrate: to count not only the years but the blessings, to sort out the lines of the story, to remember, to regret, perhaps to forgive and be forgiven, to tell old stories and invent some new ones, to renew a measure of shared pride and most of all, I suppose, to give thanks.

There is much to be thankful for on an evening like this. The first reason for giving thanks can be put very simply: Regis High School was and is a very good idea.

Originally, the school's historians tell us, the idea was that of the pastor of St. Ignatius Loyola parish, Father David Hearn. Father Hearn dreamed of establishing a Catholic high school that would be, consistent with Jesuit tradition, free for those who would attend. (The notion of a tuition-free school as a typically Jesuit idea may come as a surprise to those parents who pay the exorbitantly high tuitions at Georgetown, Boston College, and Holy Cross.)
As you know, a parishioner of Father Hearn's, a recent widow, came to him to seek his advice on how to distribute the considerable wealth that had been left to her. Father Hearn suggested several worthy charities, and then he told her about his dream: a Catholic high school for boys that would be tuition free.

On the way into Midnight Mass at Christmas 1912, the widow presented Father Hearn with the first of several substantial gifts that made it possible for him to translate his idea into an institution. Properties on 84th Street and 85th Street were purchased, Church approval was gained in Rome and in New York City, the school was granted a charter by the New York State Board of Regents, architects and builders were engaged, and in September 1914 the first class was welcomed at Regis High School.

Seventy-five years later the building is a New York City landmark. During those years, more than 7500 young men, most from working class families, have passed through the halls of Regis and shared an experience that stretched their minds and hearts, opened their eyes, awakened their imaginations and untied their tongues. (There are those who sometimes wish that a few of those tongues could be tied up once again.)

There is neither time nor necessity this evening for a recital of the record of excellence established at Regis these past seventy-five years. Let me again put it quite simply: Regis High School was a wonderful idea. It was born from the joining of vision and generosity. The distinctive spirit of the school and, I would like to think, its graduates, continues to be marked by this coupling of vision and generosity.

Vision and generosity: seers and givers. There have been many of them at Regis down through the years. The earliest were immortalized by the debating societies: Fathers Hearn, Kilroy and Archdeacon. But Regis ran out of debating societies too to recognize all its heroes: the seers and the givers, the men and women of vision and generosity, the founding family that has always requested anonymity, the great teachers like Cy Egan and Steve Duffy, pastors and principals like Dan and Tom Burke, and, of course, the eminence who presided over the golden age of Regis, initially as a teacher and founder of the OWL, then as Prefect of Studies for eight years, and finally as Rector and President for six, I speak of the Reverend Charles T. Taylor, who is present with us tonight.

When I entered Regis High School as a freshman nearly forty-five years ago, Father Taylor addressed us as "men of Regis." It was more hope than a description, I suppose. And the style of rhetoric might seem these days somewhat dated. It reflected a kind of Jesuit machismo, not dissimilar to Jesuit Baroque art. About fifteen years ago, I was invited back to Regis to address an academic convocation and some material was passed on to me for my preparation. There I read that the students at Regis in 1975 were "independent learners in the educational matrix--stimulated, supported and sensitized by the environment that you find here."

Somehow "men of Regis" still sounds more straightforward.

There have been other changes at the school over the years; the quadrangle, for example, looks very different now. In the 1940's the main features of that battle-scarred space were some primitive black iron stanchions that supported rather dilapidated basketball hoops. Under those battered backboards we exchanged elbows and bumped heads in ferocious lunchtime activity, a ritual of manhood in its own way. Today the quadrangle is a much gentler place. There are even a few trees and small tables, where students can sit and read sonnets to one another while munching, I suppose, on watercress sandwiches.

The test of a good idea is how it responds to change. The idea of Regis, born out of the joining of vision and generosity, has been continually renewed during seventy-five years of ever-accelerating change. How different New York city was in 1914, when that first class found their way to 85th street. I have always carried in my own head a personal sense of the first days of Regis. Among my earliest memories were the stories my grandmother told me of her son, an uncle I never knew, who had just turned twelve when he entered Regis in September 1915. After traveling from Bathgate Avenue in the Bronx to Park Avenue and returning safely that first day, he informed his widowed mother that his teacher was called Mr. Mudd. She was sure that some upperclassmen were playing a trick on him and told him to call his teacher Father and to find out what his real name was.

Many years later, as a Jesuit in the Philippines, I learned more about Father Maurice Mudd, of the Maryland Mudds, a distant relative of Roger, who, after finishing his regency at Regis, was ordained a priest and sent to the Philippines. He became a loved and even legendary student counselor at the Ateneo de Manila, an institution that to many is the Regis of the Philippines.

Much has changed in the world since 1914, when the first class entered Regis. Before that class graduated, the nation was engaged in a terrible war in Europe, the war to end all wars, according to Woodrow Wilson. But in 1939, when the school celebrated its 25th anniversary, Hitler was invading Poland and the world was soon to be engaged in a war of even more dreadful scale. Then again on its 50th anniversary in 1964, who could have anticipated the great changes that would take place in the nation, the world and even the Catholic Church in the decade that would follow? Yet while large social upheavals were changing the world in which Regis existed, young men continued to come to 84th Street and spend four years of great personal upheaval and change.

Is there life after high school? That was the title of a book a few years ago that reflected on these years of adolescence, years that are among the most tumultuous, happiest, saddest, friendliest, loneliest years of our lives. They are years of discovery--about passion and persons and poetry--discoveries that may be renewed many times in our lives but never quite in the way we first experienced them.

High school, the time in which these years of adolescence are lived, is a distinctively American educational invention. Regis represented the fusion of this modern institution of the New World with a tradition grounded in the religious experience of a 16th century Basque, Ignatius of Loyola. At Regis, American adolescents, who were discovering their own powers for the first time and glimpsing new possibilities for their lives, encountered the powerful images and themes of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. The spirit of generosity and vision that had marked the origins of the school was captured and defined in the spirituality of St. Ignatius, who invited all those who would be great hearted to follow in his way.

This call to be great hearted, to be and do more, was not only presented in formal religious retreats, it was reflected in the entire environment of the school in a thousand different ways: in dreaded daily quizzes as well as in long rehearsals for Shakespearean plays, in debating tournaments and basketball championships. Adolescents who were awakening to their own possibilities were challenged to seek always the greater glory of God, to be, in terms of St. Ignatius, insignis, outstanding. It was a heady mix of adolescent dreams and Jesuit moral imperatives.

May ours be the noble heart,
May ours be the hero's part.

These are brave, Quixotic words. Even as boys we smiled at them self-consciously, while we sang them with great gusto. Tonight we can look back on seventy-five years, or fifty-five or twenty-five years since those high school days that were so intensely personal and yet forged such a common bond among us. Each of us reconstructs the past differently. No two children are ever born into exactly the same family, because the relationships are different for each one. So no two of us went to the same Regis. Our personal discoveries were different, and while we shared much, the time of adolescence was also private and personal. Our lives have gone in many different paths. We remember those Regis companions of our youth, who have gone before us to find in eternity the greater glory of God. As we look back, we can measure the promises kept and the promises broken. We recall the illusions of adolescence as well as the ideals that continue to engage us, and we can recognize the difference between illusion and ideal.

The call to be great hearted, to have the noble heart and to dare the hero's part, is very much the spirit of Regis High School, an idea and an institution born out of vision and generosity.

Tonight we count not only the years but also the blessings, we forgive and ask to be forgiven, we share a measure of pride and we give thanks together. Let us also renew together the hope that future generations will be able, as we were, to find in Regis High School the call to be great hearted men who wish to do and be more. It is for us to keep the good idea that is Regis High School an institution alive with vision and generosity. God bless you all.

Photos at the 75th Anniversary of Regis

Above:
photos from the 1989 Regian commemorating the 75th Anniversary Celebration.