JA: When you graduated, was there a formal ceremony, did family members attend?

JLRB: Yes, Brother Paul, to get the college going, had excellent contacts in Albany. I remember his talking about… and excellent contacts at Catholic University. We had a sort of piggyback arrangement; we had had from nineteen twenty-nine, with Fordham, the brothers did two years here and then two years at Fordham, and graduated. We also arranged a piggyback process with Catholic University. For our graduation, in Marian Hall, the old gym, I remember, Roy J. Deferrari coming and speaking, which was very interesting because I think the year before, the first graduating class, there were only four and I don't think they had a formal speaker. They had some kind of graduation day, but no formal speaker that I recall. I do know we had Roy J. Deferrari, who was chancellor of Catholic University. Rather prestigious. It wasn't for our parents or friends, it was just an in house thing. My parents did not come, or brothers and sisters. I remember my mom and dad coming to New York City for my masters but there was no outside major welcome lets say for the graduation here. It was an interesting point, and I don't know why, because we were allowed visits, and parents came often and our friends, I just, perhaps the thinking was, that we're religious and we're supposed to be humble. The humility, simplicity and modesty are the three characteristics that are attributed to us, so maybe that was the thinking could be. The parents and friends were definitely not there. Then we used to… the life style for the brothers then; you know my college was radically different from the college students today. Evidently from forty-seven's class, to sixty's class where they were all brother our life, our training, our life style was all-monastic. We got up at five thirty in the morning, we said prayers at ten to six, and we had meditation at six. We had mass at six thirty, followed by breakfast and then what is called employments; we all used to do about a half hours work around the house to tidy up the property. Then we were in class by eight thirty. The classes were great, because they put the best teachers, some of the best teachers here, Frances Xavier Benoit for example, she was a great, great teacher. We did very well. Then, Brother Paul, when he was getting the college accredited, needed doctorates. He contacted a Dr. John Schroeder, in town, at Arlington High School. Dr. Schroeder agreed to come to Marist; he had a DED from Columbia and he was a magnificent human being, a model Quaker. Unforgettable individual, unforgettable. At Marist, he came here, I would say in forty-five, forty-six and then stayed. Spent his whole career, retired from Marist around seventy, seventy-one, and died. His wife, Eleanor is still alive in Florida. Then, also when we were going through we had nobody for American Literature; so Brother Paul went to Vassar, and he said, "I need somebody here in American Literature, you know, this little college across town there, could we hire somebody for an extra cost?" We got a Dr. John Christy, who had just started at Vassar and spent his entire career at Vassar, is now retired. He was the typical young professor; feed him facts. [Laughter] He was good, he was very good, but then he got sick in the middle of the year. He was replaced by a Van Wyck Brooks. In American Literature, there is a very, very famous Van Wyck Brook; critic a historian and I never tracked down whether he was the one that replaced Christy for about two weeks. It was for Moby Dick, I will never forget that. Van Wyck Brooks was the typical experienced teacher, who sat back and simply asked questions; did you notice this? What do you think about that? Radically different from Christy, and a very fine experience. Then Christy came back, good man, we got very good teachers, the caliber of teaching was excellent. Then we got total liberal arts, we had chemistry and we had mathematics, we had history, philosophy, and lots of philosophy. People at that time, until about nineteen sixty, all the brothers who graduated had over a hundred and forty credits. Then when John Malachy said, "if I'm recruiting students here, lay students, they are not going to sign up for a hundred and forty credits; we've got to cut back to a hundred and twenty." So we cut back to a hundred and twenty. It was also a change that Brother Paul had decided, I don't know why, to base the GPA on three instead of four; so that an A was ninety-five to one hundred; a B was eighty-five to ninety four, and so on. So that only the early brothers went through that system. Which is a blow to our egos, but anyway, now that's all in the past and who cares? [Laughter] If you try to translate that into a four 0, would be interesting, especially getting a ninety-four and calling that a B; with no plus' or minus’, so anyway, but we changed that also, with the name and number of credits and the four 0; now it’s all changed in nineteen sixty or there a bouts in order to accommodate the lay students. We did very well in those early years; fifty-nine, sixty, sixty-one, let’s say; first graduating non-brothers was sixty-one, as a class. There were tensions, because the brothers had owned the place, and here these outsiders were coming in and gradually taking over and becoming more and more numerous, and there was a little friction at times. Evidently, the brothers used to rip off all the A's and B's. They were top students; they were committed students, but there were some very bright lay students that came in, in those early years. We have two of them Jimmy Callahan in mathematics, and Jerry McKenna in biology, who later became a psychiatrist; both of whom held Professorships at Harvard. They were competing with say Bob O’Handley who has been at MIT for decades now, about thirty-five years, and then like Greifenstein who became a research chemist at Oak Ridge. Over all, the best grades were taken by the brothers. Then, when I came, as an English major; I had a masters in French and a masters in English, Brother Kieran Thomas Brennan was in charge of the student brothers. He had taken over after Brother Paul went to Rome in fifty-eight and was elected Major Superior, so he needed a replacement here. As head of the student brothers, Brother Kieran replaced him, and as president, Richard Foy, replaced him. Kieran was extremely happy to see me, because he could dump theater on me every year, [Laughter] well in fact sometimes two plays a year. Seeing me come in, he said “Joe, all yours, you take over the theater." So we got the student brothers and we put on a play, The Strong Are Lonely, about the Jesuit reductions in Latin America, somewhat like the film, Mission. A very good play by Fritz Wildhauser. We put this play on about…we ended three weeks, four weeks at most before the end of the semester. The lay students’ president was John Donnelly, was so upset they came to see me. They said, “You put on a play with the brothers, you have to put on a play with us.” I said, Wow, John, exams are around the corner. “He said, “I don’t care, you have to put on a play with us.” So then I went to see George Sommer, the head of English, because I wasn’t much into theater and I asked George for a suggestion, all male no womenaround, all male. He said "Joe, why around, all male. He said” Joe why don’t you try somebody in French Sam Beckett, Waiting for Gobot. So I got it, and sure enough, that’s what we chose and put on. It was not a polished production, but it was a polished interpretation. The week we finished, it was on PBS, so we all watched it, everybody knew all the words and we said we think our interpretation was better. One student from here, Bob, Spanish major, I forget his name, Bob, went on to an MFA, at Catholic University, which has one of the top drama departments in the country. He then became a professor at Queens College in New York City. So we did pretty well. At the end of that year, Linus Foy, got me and said, "Look Joe, you have to get a doctorate and your not going to do that by putting on plays; you have to commute to New York City and start hacking away.” So I Said, "Ok." He said, "We'll hire a drama coach, part time.” He looked around, and he found the Dutchess County Players, locally, and he asked about five of them, and it was no, no, no. Then they suggested a hairdresser in town; Jim Britt. He discussed it with me and I said, "Well, you can't hold that against him, give him a chance. I would hope that he’s OK.” He was a gem; Jim Britt, we could not have hired better. He did marvelous with our students. He came on board in fall of sixty, and he stayed here until he died. He got his bachelor's with us, and then he dropped dead one day; heart problems. A magnificent choice. After that, I stayed on as moderator and Dr. Lanning replaced me as moderator, and then eventually, Gerry Cox, who is still here. That defeated the tensions. I recall, fisticuffs on one occasion, not often well maybe twice. I remember distinctly once, who was going to use the gym; the brothers said, “It’s our gym. At that time we didn't have McCann, we didn't have Champagnat, the gym was the theater, also. So there were tensions, but not let's say with the gradual turn around in numbers. The brothers, let’s say, in the fifties, they were up to about one hundred forty, maybe even t one time, Brother Paul say's, one hundred fifty; and then you have the sixties with all the turmoil, Vatican II as well as Vietnam, so that the number of Brothers dropped dramatically in the course of the sixties. Then we grew dramatically, the people who studied the high data say, I was amazed at this, the growth rate for Linus Foy, for twenty years was as much as the growth rate for Dennis Murray. I would not think that, but those who study the buildings and the number of students, they match. We did very well. Linus Foy was a top-notch educator and administrator, superb. When we went co-ed, in nineteen sixty-eight, I guess; we drew much better than we figured we'd draw. We were swamped with women, we said “wow”.  So the reputation was out there, we were a good school and we were also; let’s say liberal there that I was running, and then when we were going co-ed residential, I was asked to get a couple of students and go around and visit co-ed colleges. We went to Elmira; we went to Harvard College, then we went to Molloy, with students. We would spend the day there, talk with everybody, then we would come back in the evening and say, “Well what do you think?" Well, the one student, I think was Bill Paccione, who’s now a Hyde Park teacher, Bill, when we left, got into the car, and left Molloy, he said, “Boy, I’ll take all their buildings, but I'll take all our policies." They’re beautiful buildings at Molloy, beautiful and resident advisors have suites. Marist didn't have any luxuries in the sixties and the seventies, but our policies were very, very attractive. We had discipline, but we also let people grow up. Linus Foy believed a college existed for the students, not for the teachers and not for administrators, it exists for our students; let them grow up; educate them, control them, but basically, let them grow up. It was very good policy.