introduced Harris to the world of fundraising. She confesses, though, that she got her first teaching job for an additional reason: She needed health insurance. Being a professional dancer is as physically taxing as being a professional athlete, and by the end of her run with the Jackson Company, neck, ankle and knee injuries had left Harris in so much pain that she found it difficult even to stand on the subway platform for five minutes waiting for a train. “I will always remember being in constant pain and having to just dance through it or act like it didn’t hurt,” she said. “Pain could never be a factor. Everyone wanted to see grace and beauty.” At the age of 31, Harris recognized that it was time to retire and pursue a new career. Two years later, in 2014, she joined the staff at Penn Charter as fundraiser – with an occasional break to work with students rehearsing dance numbers for the all-school musical.
Joseph Fitzmartin “Father Fitz.” It has a nice ring to it, but although longtime music teacher and choral director Joe Fitzmartin studied at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary for six years, his plans to become a Roman Catholic priest never came to pass. But he did become a music teacher.
the organ. Wait until your legs are long enough to reach the pedals, his mother suggested, but she enrolled him immediately in piano lessons. A priest at Cardinal Dougherty High School prepared him to enter the Curtis Institute of Music, but seminary beckoned. “My only role models were priests and nuns,” he explained. St. Charles at the time was a 10-year program, the first six years a course in the humanities leading to a bachelor’s degree, followed by four years of preparation for ordination. But Fitzmartin’s interest in becoming a priest changed early. On a religious retreat during his first year at seminary, he recalls hearing an older priest express doubt about the existence of original sin. The seminarians were shocked. That exchange confirmed Fitzmartin’s own doubts; over the next several years he resolved that he would not seek ordination. “I knew that I just couldn’t see myself telling other people how to live their lives,” he explained. During his summers at St. Charles, however, Fitzmartin was selected to study composition and conducting at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Following his graduation, he was hired to teach music at Girard College, where he remained for the next 16 years. Fitzmartin has just begun his 21st year at Penn Charter and describes himself as “a contented atheist.”
Ed Foley
Choral director Joseph Fitzmartin (left) at seminary school.
Music and religion were intertwined throughout Fitzmartin’s early life. He recalls hearing an organist play Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” at Incarnation of Our Lord Church in the Olney section of Philadelphia where he grew up, and asking if he could study
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When Ed Foley OPC ’81 teaches his economics classes about small business, he speaks from experience. For two decades before joining the PC faculty in 2008, he was in charge of selling a broad range of vehicles for a local car dealership. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where he was an All-Ivy lineman and lettered on three championship football teams, Foley was certain that he wanted to work for a big national company. With that in mind, he joined Pittsburgh-based Beecham Group (now part of GlaxoSmithKline), selling health and beauty aids directly to small stores throughout the area. But after a year and a
Associate Director of Athletics Ed Foley, shown here at a promotional event with Phillie great Jim Thome, was in change of fleet sales for Magarity Auto Group.
half, he decided he wanted “something more interesting.” Foley found that opportunity right in Flourtown, where he grew up as one of 12 children. In 1987, he joined Magarity Chevrolet, becoming general manager of its fleet division. In that capacity, Foley was responsible for selling cars, vans, small trucks and other equipment to companies and organizations across the area, including SEPTA, Philadelphia Electric Company and Herr’s. “My buddies would tease me that I was selling used cars, but it was really the beginning of business-to-business sales in the auto industry,” he said. Eventually, Foley was put in charge of all Magarity’s auto business at two locations. Sales, he says, is a relationship business. “You’ve got to connect at some level, and it’s not really about your product. It’s about building a mutually beneficial relationship based on trust.” He left the auto industry for good during the 2008 recession. He has been back at PC ever since, serving as associate director of athletics, coaching and teaching physical education, Economics and the Mathematics of Finance, a new course this year. He enjoys it but admits that he misses some of the perks of his former job, such as getting to drive a new car every six months. “I say I have headaches [now] but they’re more enjoyable headaches,” he laughed. PC