MC_2007_Spring_Campaign_06
4/18/07
6:30 PM
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Southern California Alumni Gather for a Basketball Game and Reception Fenton Chair in Biology in honor of Dennis’ parents. In addition to the Fenton gift, support from attendees now totals $172,500.
On Jan. 2, Southern California Jaspers watched the Manhattan College men’s basketball team sweep over the Pepperdine University Waves in Malibu with a score of 89 to 87. This victory marked the beginning of a winning streak for the team. Following the game, some 30 alumni and their guests proceeded to a reception hosted by Dennis ’73 and Linda Fenton at their beachfront home in Malibu. John Fenton ’68, Michael O’Hara ’70 and John Meyers ’85 served as co-hosts.
Representing the College, Stephen Laruccia ’67, director of major gifts, reported on the state of the College. He said Manhattan is more selective than ever before. It admits one out of every two students who apply, and current student SAT scores, verbal and math, are at 1130. The face of the campus is changing with the Mary Alice and Thomas O’Malley Library, completed in 2001, and construction of a new residence hall, East Hill Tower II.
Linda and Dennis Fenton ’73 hosted a reception at their home in Malibu in connection with the Manhattan/Pepperdine men’s basketball game and the Sesquicentennial Capital Campaign.
A diverse group, the alumni came from all over the Southern California region, ranged from the classes of 1958 to 1994 and represented the schools of arts and sciences, business and engineering. Alumni attendees included: Joseph Archer ’65, James Breen ’77, Egidio Carbone ’61, Marianne Connolly ’87, Kevin Cronin ’60, Paul Dellafiora ’62, Robert Driscoll ’58, Michael Ehner ’65, Andrew Murray ’94, Nicola Peill ’87, Thomas Phillips ’62, Emmett Lynch ’66, Salvatore Scarpato ’65 and Frank Swertlow ’67. Fenton welcomed the alumni, highlighted their special status as Jaspers and spoke about the purposes of the gathering: to become better acquainted and to hear a report about the College and its Sesquicentennial Capital Campaign. He stressed the need for alumni to support alma mater as the best means of ensuring its growth and development. As he remarked, “God has been good to me, and I felt I should share some of my good fortune with the College.” In May 2004, he and Linda endowed the Catherine and Robert
Turning his attention to the Sesquicentennial Capital Campaign, Laruccia reported that $147 million (at press time, the total was $149 million) had been raised toward the $150 million objective with the expectation that the campaign will conclude in mid-year. A full 50 percent of the campaign goal is earmarked for endowment, which includes endowed chairs for the College’s five schools and endowed student scholarships. In the course of the campaign, the College has received 28 gifts of $1 million or more from individuals, groups, corporations and foundations. Laruccia attributed the success of the campaign thus far to alumni who have been more generous than ever and an increasing rate of participation from younger alumni. Voluntarism has played a vital role in this campaign with close to 150 volunteers from the campaign steering committee, the Financial Services Advisory Council and numerous other groups reaching out to their fellow alumni for support. The campaign is positioning the College to advance its strategic plan, Manhattan 2025, which has as its principal goal the establishment of Manhattan as the premier Catholic college in the New York area. Additionally, the plan will complete the transformation of Manhattan as a widely recognized and respected college, and a regional residential college with outreach to New England, Washington, D.C., and the Great Lakes.
Brothers’ Gift to the Capital Campaign In early December, the Manhattan College community of De La Salle Christian Brothers presented the College with a gift of $500,000 to the Sesquicentennial Capital Campaign. The Christian Brothers Endowed Scholarship, as part of the Sesquicentennial Capital Campaign, is one of the largest at the College and has been funded for the most part by contributions from the Christian Brothers over many years. It is awarded to financially needy undergraduates in the spirit of St. John Baptist de La Salle, who educated the poor for self-sufficiency. The gift is in honor of the Brothers who presently hold regular, administrative, adjunct and emeritus faculty appointments, as well as those who presently have staff appointments at the College. “This very generous gift from the Christian Brothers is a wonderful testimony to their sustained dedication to Manhattan College,” says Michael McMorrow ’64, executive director of the
Sesquicentennial Capital Campaign. “Many of our lives have been touched in a personal way by the Christian Brothers as individuals and as a religious order. They have been and continue to be our teachers, our mentors, and our spiritual guides. Their devotion to the future of the College is very gratifying.” In summing up the mission of the campaign, as well as that of the Brothers and the College, Brother Luke Salm, professor emeritus of religious studies and trustee emeritus, looks back on the legacy of De La Salle. “The life of a man who lived more than 300 years ago and left as his legacy an institution that has been a force for good ever since, becomes a challenge for the future,” he says. “That future is in the hands of God, the God whom De La Salle himself often addressed in these words: ‘Domine, opus Tuum’ — ‘Lord, the work is yours.’”
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