For the Marist College Archives and Special Collections
Transcript - Anthony Campilii

“BEGINNING OF INTERVIEW ”
Gus Nolan: Good morning, this is an interview with Anthony Campilii, Vice President for Business Affairs and the Chief Financial Officer at Marist College. The date is November 30th, we’re interviewing Mr. Campilii in the new [Library] building at Marist College.

Good morning Tony.

Anthony Campilii: Good morning Gus.

GN: Tony could you give us your full name please?

AC: Anthony Vincent Campilii. With two “I”s on the end, like in Hawaii.

GN: Were you named after another member of the family?

AC: I was, my Dad. Anthony is a family name and so in my father’s family every branch of the family has a son derivative of Anthony with one of the children.

GN: Where were your born and when?

AC: I was born in Poughkeepsie, I assume it was Poughkeepsie, but in Dutchess County, July 17, 1941.

GN: Do you have any siblings and what are their names?

AC: I had a sibling. I had a sister and her name was Lorraine and unfortunately she passed away so now I’m an only child.

GN: Where did you grow up and tell me about the home-town.

AC: I grew up in a small little village called Wappingers Falls, a little village of about Five thousand people. My wife also comes from the village of Wappingers Falls. We both went to school in Wappingers Falls, at St. Mary’s, for the first eight grades. It’s a charming little town. Even though the surrounding area has grown rapidly, the village has stayed relatively the same and it’s wonderful to see that little town maintains its character. I went to a Catholic High School for one year in Newburgh, St. Patrick’s High School, but I also, at the time, I realized that I was the only one in the village that was going there and I was a lonely child for one year. I decided that I wanted to go where all the rest of the kids went and so I transferred as a sophomore to Wappingers Central School, at the time. I proceeded to have my sophomore, junior, and senior years in Wappingers.

GN: Can you tell me about your parents, names and their occupations?

AC: My mother’s name is Venzie, which is a derivative of Venchezza or Vincent for the male name. She was, at first a seamstress, and then with very nimble hands and a very acute business sense she went to work in a local dress factory where she became a fore-lady and virtually the assistant manager who ran the store for the, who ran the factory virtually for the owner. She gave me my first job. I had a job when I was six years old and I worked in that dress factory doing a variety of things until I graduated High School. This was my source of revenue and the only caveat was, since I was underage, if I saw the suits walk in the front door, I was to run like hell out the back door [laughter] and that was the caveat to that. She was a seamstress until she retired, oh probably twenty- five years ago and she basically retired because of ill health. Had very serious back difficulties and other kinds of problems. My Dad is a unique story because even though he didn’t have great command of the English language, he was born here, and of his family, he’s the only American citizen. But when he was three years old his mother became ill and the entire family moved back to a little town called Nocciano in Italy, which is directly across from Rome on the Adriatic Sea. He lived there with his mother and father and his five siblings until he was nineteen. As my uncle recalls it, when he was nineteen, he was called into the Italian military. My uncle who lived in the United States, called him and said, as an American citizen you have no responsibility, if you don’t want to, to go into the Italian military. So, he called my father over and my father came here, dropped what he had picked up a small little suitcase, got on the boat, my uncle had given him passage, and landed in New York City. He came to Wappingers Falls where he lived with his aunt and uncle for quite some time. As he recalls it, he was so lonely that if he had had the money, within two or three months he would have turned around and gone right back home because he was terribly, terribly lonely. He didn’t know the language, knew no one, he was an outsider because he didn’t speak the language, had difficulty getting a job, but he persisted and then went to work for New York Trap Rock where he worked himself up as a laborer to one of the guys who went up and down the Hudson River with the tugs. He became... He had no formal schooling but had quick knowledge and was a quick learner; had nimble hands and a great mind and was able to pick up engineering and all kinds of things where they promoted him and promoted him. Why he left, I never really knew but then he went to work for Lumb Woodworking Company where he was their boiler man and also the mechanic on duty that fixed all the machines did everything; however, they wanted to promote him probably umpteen times. He turned them down because my father got through his entire career with no one (where he worked) ever knowing that he couldn’t read and write. When he had to order parts or what have you, he went to one of his good friends and he said this is what I need, this is how many I need and here’s the part. You write it down, you order it, and then just have them ship it to me. He went through probably fifty years without anyone knowing that he did not have command of the English language. He memorized all the road signs; he memorized the alphabet so that he could pass the exam for his driver’s license. When he went for his driver’s test he could say I know, he knew what the letter was, he didn’t know how to piece them all together.

GN: Beautiful story. About your own personal life, how long have you been married to Ginny?

AC: Ginny and I have been married for thirty-nine years this last October. We were grammar school sweethearts, we were high school sweethearts. We went our separate ways, each of us had different boyfriends, and girlfriends. I went away to the University of Buffalo as a sixteen-year-old senior and college freshman. I only lasted a week at the University of Buffalo because I was homesick. I may have had the brains, but I did not have, I think, the social skills or the maturity that probably a College freshman should have, so I came home and went to Dutchess Community College. Ginny having graduated from the same class as I, from Wappingers; was going to Dutchess Community College. Since she and her family had a car, we drove together for two years back and forth to school and gradually our relationship that we had as sophomores in high school rekindled and we went on from there.

GN: Tell me about the children now.

AC: We have three great kids. I have a daughter Susan, who’s our first. If you’re going to ask me their ages, I think she’s thirty-seven. I keep putting it out of my mind because I don’t want to have children that old. My son is thirty-five, his name is Christian and then my youngest daughter Allison, is thirty-one. Allison is the only one of my children who came to Marist College and had a wonderful experience. The other two, are graduates of the University of Notre Dame.

GN: Have you stayed active in community activities? I see from your resume, you really have been involved in the community in Wappingers in various kinds of social and religious activities. Are you still active?

AC: Oh, I’m very active. That’s one of the things that keep me going. I enjoy my work here, and going into the community I have an opportunity working to represent myself and my family and my background, but also to represent Marist College. In many things, United Way, and I’ve been on our local Grinnell Library Board. I keep telling them that as a kid, I was a pretty mean kid and I got thrown out of the library so many times that I said at some point I have to come back and make amends. It’s a small little library that’s the same small little library and so I said I have to go back and do something for the number of times that poor librarian had to throw me out for raising holy hell.

GN: Are you still active in it?

AC: Oh yes, I’ve been a former president and now I’m still on the Board of Directors, very, very active. It happens to be right down the street from where I live and I’m the second caller if there is an emergency after the library is closed. The cops call me and say, "Will you come down?" I have a key. "Will you come down and help us search the library and find out why the alarm system went off?" The librarian, she used to live in the library and she would come out in her nightgown with her coat on. I could hear the alarm go off from my house and I would slip on my clothes and I kept telling her we have to stop meeting like this at two o’clock in the morning; you in your nightgown and me with very little on other than a pair of slacks and a coat [laughter].

GN: Okay, let’s move on to your coming to Marist College. Let me ask you this, what made you select Marist for finishing your undergraduate work? You could have studied anywhere.

AC: I could have gone anywhere, it was honestly a matter of convenience and you have to understand, at the end of my two years at Dutchess, my plan was, and it always bothered me, that I didn’t have the maturity to last at a residential campus. And so my goal was, I was going to go back to the University of Buffalo and I was going to make my mark there and prove to myself and my family that I could handle this, that I was mature enough. So, after I graduated with an Associate’s Degree in Business, I applied and was readmitted to the University of Buffalo. I went up there, spoke to the Dean, got my credits approved, and was going in, registered to go in, as a full-fledged junior. Left home, drove up there, got to the Dean’s office and he informed me that since I was going to get a degree, at that time, in Accounting, from the University of Buffalo, I had to start from scratch. All my accounting credits and the business courses that I had taken at Dutchess Community College, were no longer valid. I questioned him as to why; I had these letters, I had this commitment and now he said “Well, we've had to change our mind”. At that time, you also have to understand, Ginny and I were the first graduating class from Dutchess Community College; so Dutchess Community College was an untested product, so maybe they were a little squeamish. I said, there was no way I was going to put my father, the minimum I would have to stay at the University of Buffalo was three years. I said that I was not going to put my mother and father through that kind of expense. I packed my bags and left the University of Buffalo again. This time, not because I was not mature and homesick, but because I had my Italian temper up and I just said this is not for me. I knew at the time, before I left, I had checked in on Marist, as to whether or not, I knew this was a local school because by the time I left I knew this was going to be very difficult to get into someplace else. I checked with Marist, Marist had started a week later. So when I came home, much to the chagrin of my mother and father, because I flew home and again they thought, oh he couldn’t handle it and everything so I had to explain it to them and they didn’t understand. I started Marist two days later. At that time they thought for sure I was going to be a priest or a brother because all they knew was Marist, the Brothers, the cloisters up the road in Poughkeepsie.

GN: Now, you come to Marist and you’re here for two years; you graduated in sixty-two. How did you move from a graduating senior to the financial office at the college? What was the connection there?

AC: The connection was a lady by the name of Mary Travis. Mary Travis happened to be a very dear friend of my unmarried aunt, my mother’s sister. I got to know her through who we called Aunt Mill, and I also knew that once every semester I had to go up to some office and plunk my money down, which at that time was three hundred dollars for the entire semester. As I became a senior, I started looking around and I’m saying to her, who handles the books? Who handles the finances? Who handles this who handles that? And she kept saying I do, and at that time, Richard Foy or his name at that time was Brother Linus Foy was away on a second novitiate in Rome. There was an acting President; his name was Brother Daniel Kirk. I started asking questions of Brother Dan Kirk as to whether or not there might be any interest in me as a graduate to handle some of the finances, because there was a business program in the evening division, but there was no business major in the day division. I was the first person who was going to graduate with a degree in Business Administration, because all the other men were at night and they weren’t as far along as I was. I came in with sixty credits, so I was able to graduate in two years. The Business Program hadn’t been open that long so I was able to muster enough credits to get through the program in two years. I had applied for other jobs, had sought an accounting firm, but still had my mind; I saw an opportunity here because there was nobody here to do what I thought had to be done and that I could probably do. So I kept hounding Dan Kirk, and he kept saying I don’t have the authority to hire, however, I’ll pass this along to Linus Foy when he returns. Well, I thought that was a great put off and kind of resigned myself that nothing was going to come of it. After graduation I applied for a job in a county firm in Newburgh, a CPA firm. They were kind enough after a series of interviews, I beat out the other candidates and they offered me a job. Well in the interim, through my college career, I worked at the A&P on a part-time basis with a great manager who understood the fact that I was going to college and worked my schedule around my class schedule and around my crew program. He said that I could stay there as long as I wanted to, even on a full-time basis. That’s what I did after graduation. I stayed there until I was hired. Ginny and I were engaged at the time, we were going to get married in October. He allowed me to stay and that was my source of revenue until this new job was supposed to start. In the interim, I guess it was the day after the fourth of July, July fifth. I was in bed and my mother gets this telephone call from a Brother Linus Foy, whom she had no knowledge of. Linus Foy calls me and says, listen, I hear that you are looking for a job, and that you have been interested in Marist. I know that you are a graduate, how would you like to come up and talk? I said all right, give me an hour or two to shave and shower and I’ll come up and I would like to meet you. We talked, probably that afternoon for maybe three or four hours. I immediately connected with this man. He was an ideal person. You could see he was so genuine, down to earth. I had no experience what so ever in terms of what I was asking him to accept on faith; things that I knew I could probably do. He said, well, we don’t have a lot of money around here, we need somebody to do this because Mary Travis is retired from Central Hudson. She’s not a bookkeeper, she’s not an accountant. We need somebody to do the job, so yes, if you are interested we’ll take you on. We would like to… the only trouble is we can only pay you eighty-five dollars a week. Well eighty-five dollars a week, even back then, was considered poverty level. I knew that I had expenses of furnishing a house and getting married or what have you. Or I should say, furnishing an apartment. I went home and talked to, at that time, my fiancée and said well, what do you think? I kind of weighed the pros and cons of having to cross the Newburgh Beacon Bridge, the tolls and the gas back and forth and I said, you know, it might be worth while since I was able to beat out all these other guys for this first job, chances are I can do it again. If I don’t like what I see at Marist, I can always quit and get another job. So I called Rich Foy, Linus Foy, and I said, if you still want me, I’d like to take the job. I started on July sixteenth, 1962, which was about two months after I graduated from the college. I often tell people that the reason why they offered me the job since I was their first Business graduate; they didn’t know what to do with me and they were afraid to let me loose. They didn’t want me to go out and embarrass them so they put me on the payroll. [Laughter]

GN: Well actually, historically, Linus was probably one of the youngest colleges presidents at the time and in parallel you were probably one of the youngest financial officers in a four-year college at the time.

AC: It was the truth. As a matter of fact, a mention was made of that. Probably a year after I started, or two years, we had a Middle States evaluation. I believe, if we research some of the comments; they alluded to the youth of the administration of the college, which they were not terribly much in favor of. There was Tom Wade who was probably twenty-three or twenty-four; there was Brother John Malachy who was the Registrar, who was in his early twenties No? They looked at Linus Foy, who at that time was the youngest College President in the United States. They looked at this snot nosed kid who was handling the finances and said, you guys don’t have your act together.

GN: Tell me about the beginning of the development of the office. When did you first start to begin to get a staff in the financial corner of the college?

AC: Well, I would say for the first year or two, Mary Travis was then doing the bookkeeping; she dumped everything and said now this is all yours. Which was great because, that’s how I learn… theoretically I learned on the job. I knew the skills from bumper to books; but never had to actually sit down and do it. Linus was a great teacher. His office and my office were next to each other and we had a door between us and that door was always open. I heard what he did, he heard what I did; only if he had a private meeting did he ever close that door. So he mentored me, he showed me what he wanted me to do, he said, ok, now you figure this out and I certainly made my share of mistakes. At first I had to do the payroll, which I had never done before, learning all about income taxes and things of that nature. Then I had to learn the billing for the fall semester. Then I had to learn purchasing; I had to learn the rudiments of personnel and hiring. The fact that I was their only business person, all of that fell on my shoulders. He said, this is what you have to do from here on in. It was a beautiful education, but it was an education on the job, because there was nobody else to do it and that was my function. I often think about payday and I was the most popular person on campus at the end of the month when everybody got paid. Everybody was concerned about my welfare; is he going to be in today, are we going to get paid today? Things like that. At that time then, for probably for a year or two, Mary Travis was working for me partially, doing some of the bookkeeping, and was Linus Foy’s secretary, we both used her. Then we realized, as we started to take on a few more students, that Mary Travis, and again it was a part time job for her; that she really couldn’t handle all of my work that was starting to expand, and all of Linus Foy’s work. So, I began to search around, and there was a lady, who also was a friend of Mary Travis who was on the staff in the evening division, as a secretary to Dr. John Schroeder, who was looking for a day job. If you look at the Marist of that day, we didn’t have a lot of women on campus and there were only like two secretaries. I said, I need somebody who can type, I need somebody who can take dictation, I need somebody who is good with figures and this lady filled the bill. Her name was Marion Strictland. She was the best thing that ever happened to me, my career, and my office. She was my secretary for twenty-five years from that time forward. She and Mary Travis began to share an office and then I still had my office and Richard Foy had his office.

GN: Related to this point that you’ve touched on; and that is, keep me abreast of the regulations the legal the regulations regarding taxes, deductions and so on, was there an opportunity to learn this from seminars? Did you get a chance to share your experiences with other college people like yourself or did the MBA program itself take care of most of it?

AC: No, I never started the MBA program until quite some time later. Linus sent me to a number of workshops…. he sent me to a week-long seminar in Washington, D.C. to learn the ropes. I went to insurance seminars, I went to accounting seminars; wherever I could pick up and basically learn the trade of higher education. I also became a member of the National Association of College and University Business Officers. I literally found out that when you went to a convention, you didn't learn anything there, it was a good… let's socialize. Where you really learned was the workshops, the round table discussions and so after a few junkets at their national association, I realized that that was not the place for me. I wanted to go to the regional, sometimes even local seminars where you sat there and you literally came out and felt, I have really learned something today, and then hopefully brought that all back as part of my bag of tricks. What I was doing, was not totally what I was trained for, I was trained to be an accountant and all of a sudden Linus, the college had these needs. I didn't know how to interview for a secretary and I didn't know how… the questions that you were supposed to ask and the questions that you weren't supposed to ask. You learned by going to a seminar on personnel, inter-office communication, those kinds of things. I was very, very fortunate that the College was that young and didn’t need the gross expertise of someone that you would hire today. I learned on the job, Linus, I always have said this and I will go to my grave saying this, he took a big chance, he took a gamble. I would like to think that that gamble paid off, but he did take a gamble on a youngster with two years of an untested program that Marist offered because there was nobody that graduated that was out there in the community doing what I was doing. We learned together, he learned and of course he wasn't a business man either; so I learned, I shared my information, as he learned, he shared his in information and the beauty of Linus Foy was, that if you made a mistake it was as though he made the mistake. You got called for it, never in a demeaning way, he always insisted that you learn from you mistakes; he never hung you out to dry, we can tolerate other mistakes, but don't make the same mistake again.

GN: Ok, I think it's only fair to say that he saw quality in the bud here and eventually that the roles would bloom and has as... we are very happy with that. In a new direction, when did you first get a suspicion that Marist was really going to grow and become what it is? Was it the beginning of the building programs, or was it the beginning of new students coming in? When did you see that?

AC: I think I began to see a light at the tunnel for me in terms of staying or leaving when Champagnat first went on line, which was in 1965. At that time, that was a building that was going to house four hundred students, we didn't have four hundred students. With Leo and Sheahan we didn’t have four hundred students to fill that and part of the design was that building was going to open but we weren't going to fill it the first year. We had to put admissions things into place, so that in year two, we could stand probably one year of a loss, ok, but we couldn't stand two years and so all of a sudden the Admissions Office became a much more valuable function. You could see the plan for the fact that this College was going to grow. Then I think the next step for me was when we added women. Having an all male institution was great, I was a part of it for two years as a student, saw what it did. When I got out I became an administrator, but in the modern world, in all male or all female institution, my gut told me that this was going to be a thing of the past. I think that it was to our benefit that we began to take on women. It added a different character to the institution, it rounded out, I mean some of the men were sloppy here. They had no social skills. They didn't know how to treat women. They treated them as second-class citizens and that is not a way to leave any type of educational function, going out as though women were toys on a shelf. I think adding women added such a rounding for the collegiate experience. I never thought they would dominate as they do today with maybe fifty eight to forty two percent women to men, but that's what we're mirroring, what society is out there.

GN: Let me mention two individuals who would be from the academic stand point but really from the more business types of running an institution. One would be from the bookstore; do you remember Tony Dangelo?

AC: I do, I remember him with great fondness.

GN: Did you bring him on board?

AC: He was one of my first hires. I can't honestly remember the date, but let's say it was in the mid-sixties when the bookstore was in Donnelly Hall. I remember he came from Niagara University as a former cop and all the things that had been going wrong with the bookstore, as we interviewed, he had all the right answers. Plus the fact that he was a former cop and we were having lots of theft. In all deference to our students there was pilferage and that was showing up on the bottom line in the bookstore, we weren't making a profit. He came through as this former cop, putting all these new things, all these new procedures and he ran the bookstore for years and years and years.

GN: The second person who played a significant role, I think, in keeping the ship afloat would be a fellow by the name of Andy Pavelko. Where did he come from? What was his background?

AC: Andy, again, I hired Andy because at that time, again, I was learning on the job. All of a sudden the Physical Plant came under my jurisdiction where we had to buy toilet paper and rolls of this and I had to understand electricity and I realized that I couldn't do this. Brother Niles Donnelly, who was then our kind of clerk of the works was trying to get out of the day-to-day operations of the College and go more into the planning and construction so we knew we needed someone on board to handle maintenance, janitorial services, custodial services, and all the physical plant needs. Andy, I can't remember where he came from, now I remember, it was the Guardian Life Building, he always told me, he was from the Guardian Life Building in New York City. That's what he ran, and he wanted to move to the country, had the expertise had the personality and we hired him. He was great for the College at that particular point in time.

GN: Other areas dealing with the maintenance of the College and the support, how were decisions made and what kind of research went into choosing food services and security and directions of the staff development in terms of grounds that we have today? Any one of those, off the top, food services perhaps?

AC: Well, food service. When we go back, we had an outfit initially called Brady Food Service. Don't ask me why I remember this but they were terrible. The students hated it, and at that time, our tuition, our room and our board was very, very low. We were a great bargain at the time and we decided that we would go out to bid, and when we did we found out that first of all what Brady Food Service was charging us were pittance and that's all we were getting, was pittance on the table. There were other companies out there who were literally the gentlemen of the industry. The first one that comes to mind was the Saga Food Service. We said, listen, we've been down at the bottom; what we had better do in order to build a quality and the reputation of this institution, since we were going to be a residential campus, we have to do something with food service. We have the facilities for the residents with brand new facilities, now we better do something about the dining service. We bid it out and we decided that we were going to bring on Saga Food Service at a substantial increase in cost, and we realized that that was the time we took a quantum leap in terms of tuition, room and board in order to get the Saga Food Service here on campus, to raise the level of dining service on campus. So we did, we went out to bid. We went to some of their facilities, we had interviews with some of there managers, with the students at other campus', what they thought and of course you always looked at the trade papers, and they were, at that time, the gentlemen of the industry. They had taken collegiate feeding and brought it to another level.

GN: How did it work in terms of other areas of concern? Like, maintenance of the College campus, was there an organization or a staff person you could put in charge of that? How did that develop?

AC: Well, for instance, when I hired Andy Pavelko, my dealings were always with Evelyn Fisher and Niles Donnelly. Then when Andy Pavelko came on board, he reported to me. I had other things to do from a financial perspective so I could not be on the grounds. I could not be supervising the custodians, I could not be supervising the mechanics, so he became a member of my team. At that time, I was called the Business Manager. So the Business Manager began to develop not only a clerical staff, but a professional staff. Andy Pavelko was a member of the professional staff, Tony Dangelo from the bookstore was a member of the professional staff. I'm trying to think of what other function we then began to hire. We looked at security and the first guy, I think his name was Ron Aderholdt who came on board and he was a member of my staff. Security became part of my responsibilities and then we realized that I couldn’t continue for every job that became available, I could not continue the hiring and the firing and what have you? We developed the beginnings of a Human Resource department which at that time we called Personnel. Her name I think was Ann Haggarty, and she was a student and then she became part-time personnel director. She became part of my staff. We had staff meetings and we discussed the needs and then my needs went along with the academic needs, which went along with the student service needs, which at that time we used to have what was called the Dean of Students. The Dean of Students took care of the student welfare, the Academic Vice President took care of the faculty, and I took care of all the stuff that nobody else wanted; that they knew how to do or even wanted to do came on my plate.

GN: You can't mention the word Dean of Students without bringing up one of the outstanding figures of Marist College. Who do you think this person is?

AC: Right off the bat, it's Brother Paul Stokes of course. Again, he was a mentor. I think he may have had a little trouble dealing with me at first, because all of a sudden, I was a member of the staff, and I think a lot of the faculty who were here, kind of resented that this twenty year old, and I was twenty when I started, this twenty year old all of a sudden had a position here on campus; where two months ago, he was a student and you took orders from the faculty. Now, I was at least an equal, and in some cases giving discussions with a new… that I had probably more so than anybody else that I had the ear of the President. For eight, ten, twelve hours a day, he and I talked about everything. I think the first year was probably the hardest, including Brother Paul Stokes, until he understood who I was and I did literally have to earn the respect. I didn't have it at first. At first, I was Linus' boy, and until I was able to prove the fact that I earned my salary and then some, and could contribute to a conversation and to the administration of the campus. That was a little bit difficult.

GN: Other people served in that role, I'm thinking of Brother John O'Shea. Do you remember him?

AC: Oh, I remember him with fondness.

GN: Contrast him to Brother Paul Stokes.

AC: A contrast to Brother Paul Stokes, who was a disciplinarian from the word go, and I'm from the old school, I believe in discipline. So he and I were always on the right track. Brother John O'Shea was much more lenient, he was kind of the father figure, the kind of father figure that put his arm around you; where Brother Paul Stokes was the father figure that banged a ruler on the table and say, "you will do this". The funniest story that I remember about John O'Shea was, I had denied the students some lounge furniture in Champagnat Hall. I was brow beaten through the campus newspaper. This guy shouldn't be in this job, he doesn't know anything. Which personally, took me by surprise and I was devastated for about two or three months. I realized that that comes with the territory, you couldn't control what went on in the student newspaper. What they did, to get back at me, they advertised my job in the Poughkeepsie Journal. The ad was; no training; doesn't have to know anything, will take anybody off the street. I mean it was… people started calling me for my job. I didn't see it until… but then what they did, was, they sent me to my home, which my wife was absolutely flabbergasted, how could I bring something like this into our home. They sent me a subscription to Playboy magazine. Now you had to know, at that time, Playboy was the ultimate in what was considered pornography; even though it's not. My wife gets this magazine in a brown paper wrapper and she opens it up and she sees Playboy magazine. Of course she had never seen it before, she opens it up, calls me up "how could you do this, I'm so disappointed in you" and I said, "I don't know what you're talking about." Well, what they did, what I found out, was, I called Playboy magazine and I wrote to them and said I want you to stop and they said, "well, we’ll send you six free months" and I said, "I don’t want you to do this!" What the student's did was send the bill to John O'Shea and I said to him, "Brother John, you didn't send this magazine," and he said, "of course you know I wouldn't send you a magazine". In order to get back at me, the students sent me a subscription, as a gift from him. We had a number of laughs over that.

GN: Tell me about another development; the building projects, specifically the move from the Marian gym to the building of the McCann Center. Were you involved? When was that decision made and how was it made, or who made it?

AC: Well, there was as part of our overall strategic plan, the fact that we had to develop a campus that was well-rounded. We had hired, at that time, I think Tom Wade, was our basketball coach, and Tom went into other things, he was then the Director of Admissions. We realized that if Marist was going to make a move, in reaching not only academic levels, in terms of reputation, we would probably have to go from a Division III school to a Division II or I. That is not a whole lot of difference between Division III and II, but there is a whole lot of difference between Division III and Division I. As part of going to Division I, it meant that we had to take a facility, which was spartan, and I'm being gracious in saying that it's spartan, had no, I don't even think it was regulation size that may be from memory, I'm not sure. We couldn't attract people to come to our basketball games because they had to stand, there was no place for them to sit so they had to stand along the sidelines; so we came up with this vision, I'm sure it was Linus Foy along with Jack Gartland. That perhaps what we really needed to bring us to the next level was a facility and at that particular point in time, we talked about a gymnasium, and then we talked about the possibility of a swimming pool and the locker rooms, all of what went with it. Now the financing for that was very, very difficult because we didn’t have the money. What the McCann Foundation did was to guarantee that if we were to open this facility to the community, that they would be willing to upfront money for us to put up the shell of the building and to put in the gymnasium. Well, that was the plan, that was the plan all the way through until we were about ready to dig the foundation. The more we thought about it, we said, when will we ever have enough money to complete the building. The way the finances were going at that time, every year was a struggle to make ends meet, and we said, well maybe this is the time for us to go out for a loan, a long term bond and finish the building and do it right. Do it once, do it right and get it finished. At that point in time, we said, all right, we're going to go for broke. We took the money from the McCann Foundation and we added another, I think it was a one point seven million dollar loan from at that time, the Dutchess Bank. We finished the natatorium, which was the swimming pool, the diving well, the rowing tank, the locker rooms and we said, can you have a basketball court without locker rooms? Where are these guy's going to change, at that time it was only men, where are these guy's going to change? Ok, you can't have them go into a pit, so you need the locker rooms. Well if your going to do the plumbing for the locker rooms, you might as well take the next step, bring the masons in and put in a swimming pool. So one thing led to another and it was probably one of the best decisions we ever made. Then, we had the best facility of all the schools we competed with, for students, between New York and at that time it wasn't even Albany, it was Montreal. We had the best facility.

GN: Ok, we've talked a lot about the past, maybe we can switch into another decade and Linus is replaced eventually by Dennis Murray. You've worked with both for more than twenty years. Could you just comment on leadership and on the style of management that Dennis brought after Linus was here?

AC: They’re two completely different personalities. Linus was definitely an internal President, knew what was going on, he had the ability to leave you on your own as long as he knew that you knew what you were doing. It was, I think, an administration of compatibility, not that we always saw eye-to-eye, but we had the right to disagree. Now, when Dennis came along, Dennis's style is a little bit different. Dennis is an external President, or was hired to be an external President and so a lot of his focus is to fund raising and to the external public and basically taking what, he called at that time, the finest unknown secret in higher education. Nobody knows who you are and it’s going to be my job to bring that out to the public. I have had a great relationship with Dennis in this regard. I think he has recognized in me… One of his expertise is not finance, Dennis' regime is… he also can be hands-on person. I have been one of the fortunate ones, that while I don't directly report to him, I have what is called the dotted line to the President. The Chief Financial Officer should always have the ear of the Chief Executive Officer, and in that regard, I do report to him. Truthfully, he has left me to my own merits. I think he and the Board of Trustees have given me, I think, the kind of authority, that probably, I won't say I shouldn't have, but would be more directly related to the President and so I have been very fortunate that Dennis Murray has let me run my own ship, with guidance, with direction. I think that he is a little bit more volatile than Richard Foy, but he has also… He is a great reader of people as was Linus Foy. Dennis has been able to gather round him, over the course of his twenty years, I think, a group of administrators, individually, we all have our faults, collectively, I say, we're one hell of a team. I think that Linus Foy had that same-- we were a good team at that time. I know a couple of times they have gone, both of them have said this, they've gone elsewhere, on Middle States visits or what have you and they say you know, sometimes I come back and I'm kind of belaboring you and moaning and groaning about that you don't do this and you don't do that, but he says you know, I’d match my team with some of the teams of the best universities in the United States and I still think that we can come out on top. That's always nice to hear. It's not said very often, but it's always nice to hear once in awhile.

GN: Like the Middle States Report which you will be doing again shortly, could you now, from your position, just say two or three things that might be, say, the weakness of Marist, that wouldn’t have to be strengthen or should be what are it’s strengths what are the best points that you might say about Marist in terms of where they are at the beginning of this new century?

AC: Well, one of our strengths is… I think we offer probably one of the finest quality educations that you could possibly get, and we offer it at what I consider a reasonable, it's not low, but it's not high, at a very, very reasonable cost factor. I think we have a depth and breadth of programs. I think we have an absolute, and we're getting better, an absolutely fantastic faculty. I think that we have a great administrative team who have their pulse to the guts of higher education. I think we're at the cutting edge of technology and marrying technology with all of those kinds of ethereal things; with religion, with education, with philosophy, bringing technology and the liberal arts together. I don't think there are too many people who are doing that kind of thing of what we are doing. There is a place for both. Most importantly, something which comes through the tread over my forty years is the fact that when people leave here, one of the things that Dennis Murray has said over and over "you have been given a gift by your parents and by this institution for an education; when you leave here, you have got to go out and give back." You see many, many of our graduates who have done extremely well and who are involved, totally immersed in either their religion or their community and they’re giving back to the community, and I think that stems from what we offer here. We ask people to get involved while they are students, and I think that carries through right on after they graduate and after they get into their own homes. They are involved with their kids, they are involved with their church; they are involved with their community and I think that we have given them that here; and I hope that we always have a chance to do that.

GN: One point that we really should look at, perhaps would be diversity. Would you think that's a choice?

AC: Of course we all believe in diversity. It depends on what we mean by diversity. Diversity can mean many things to many people; is it a male female relationship? It's no longer, diversity used to mean black and white. It's no longer black and white; it's now all the new wave of immigrants that are coming to this country with different cultures. I think we have a responsibility to infuse in our students, a recognition of those cultures. It's no longer a middle European culture now, it's a world culture. I think a lot of our students have difficulty dealing with that and I think that's probably going to be one of our next biggest goals. Diversity, absolutely.

GN: Well thank you very much Tony.

"END OF INTERVIEW"