Prep
Prep’s Marathon Man AFTER 51 YEARS, JIM HORAN, ’70 HAS THE FINISH LINE IN SIGHT.
The Benchmark
It’s the spring of 2003, and just a few weeks short of graduation, I am in one of two places you’d be most likely to find me: the old Prep TV Studio in the basement of Burke Hall (the other was the yearbook office in Hogan, because I was unequivocally the coolest kid in school...and if you believe that, I have a pool pass to sell you!). I am sitting at the keyboard of a new iMac, purchased for the TV Studio with funding from the admissions office. Huddled around the computer with me are my classmates and co-producers Mike Lazorwitz, Jonathan Fedors, and Tim Chester. We have made our share of videos by this point, but today is different. Today we are showing a rough cut of a promotional video for Prep admissions. Behind us are Prep’s first-year admissions director John Irvine, ’83 (and eventually P’11), our video production teacher Jim DeAngelo, ’85, and the toughest customer of all: Jim Horan, ’70.
None of us have taken the journalism elective, so the extent of our knowledge about Mr. Horan (whose title was then VP for Planning and External Affairs) is that he was the man behind much of what Prep “looked like” and “sounded like” —that is, the way Prep presented itself publicly—and that he cared very much about Prep, perhaps even more than we did! In some sense, this felt like the ultimate test, the final boss. If our work could pass muster with Mr. Horan, we must be doing something right.
Skip ahead 22 years, and I am writing from the office next to Jim Horan’s. For 18 of those years I have had the pleasure of calling Jim a colleague and continuing to learn from him. And yes, he has defined so much of what Prep looks like and sounds like and feels like, starting with the physical plant but extending into so many areas of Prep life, so many of our ways of proceeding. That’s what makes it an honor to know the work of the Communications Office today builds upon the work he started with the Office of Public Information decades ago. And yes, then, now, and always, he cares very much about Prep. Enough to devote a 51-year career to it, in fact. That’s what makes Jim the benchmark even now, not just for me, but for so many at Grand & Warren whose work builds upon traditions he had a significant hand in creating—from admissions to fundraising to alumni relations and beyond.
One of those traditions is the magazine in your hands. Together with Dan Sorrenti, ’76, Jim launched Prep Magazine in the fall of 1981—a little over three years before I was born!—as an expanded (in size, in scope, and in production) version of the “What’s Going On Here” newsletters Fr. Charles F.X. Dolan, S.J., ’32 had been crafting for alumni. As time has gone by, our toolbox for keeping in touch with the extended Prep family has no doubt grown, but there’s a reason my office walls are adorned with framed copies of every issue I have worked on (this is the 34th, but who’s counting?) plus that first one from 1981. The magazine, like its founding editor, is the benchmark, the standard for everything else we create in the Communications Office. I am proud to be the steward of this tradition and proud that we can celebrate Jim in this issue as his retirement draws near. By my count, Jim has made “cameos” as part of a group photo on three past Prep Mag covers: one in 1987, one in 1999, and one in 2018. Now, finally, he gets the spotlight on this stage that he built.
As for that video all those years ago, Jim had some notes about pacing, and being 17 or 18, we might have grumbled a bit after he left us with them. But we obliged nonetheless, and it’s fair to say the final product was more refined for his input. John Irvine is still Prep’s admissions director, so I take that to mean the project was a success. It might have been the first time Jim Horan set the benchmark for a project I worked on, but it was certainly not the last!
Congratulations, Jim, and thank you for everything.
Mike Jiran, ’03 Director of Communications
Prep
Volume 34 | Number 2
WINTER/SPRING 2025
Michael Gomez, Ed.D., ’91 President Chris Caulfield, ’03 Principal
Mike Jiran, ’03 Editor
Joe Popovich Jr., ’14 Sports Editor
Trish Fitzpatrick, P’07,’16
Matthew Holowienka, ’11
Jim Horan, ’70
John Irvine, ’83, P’11 Mike McLean
Mike Murcia, ’08 Contributors
Mark Wyville, ’76, P’11,’18 Select Photography
Mike Jiran, ’03
Matthew Holowienka, ’11
Additional Photography
Mike Jiran, ’03 Layout
Prep Magazine is a publication of the Office of Communications of Saint Peter’s Preparatory School. It is distributed in print, free of charge, to Prep alumni, faculty, staff and parents, and online at spprep.org/prepmag
Copyright © 2025, Saint Peter’s Prep. All publication rights reserved.
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ON THE COVER: Jim Horan, ’70 stands at the corner of Grand & Warren, holding a copy of Prep Magazine’s first issue from 1981. Fifty-one years after joining the Prep faculty, and nearly 44 years after launching Prep Magazine as founding co-editor, Horan is set to retire at the end of this school year.
PHOTO: Mike Jiran, ’03
14
The Longest Run
Jim Horan, ’70 will retire this summer as Prep’s VP for Planning and Principal Giving. It will mark the end of the longest tenure of any Prep employee in history...in fact, it equals exactly 1/3 of Prep’s 153-year history!
Features
8
Marauder Mountaineers
Two Prep students and two alumni put their hiking skills to the test last summer as they attempted to reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.
12
A Transformational Milestone
With an unprecedented gift of $25 million, Jerry Sheehan, ’48 has continued an unrivaled legacy of generosity to Prep and secured the future of the Sheehan Scholarship Program. 8
12
3
144 Grand
Career Day sets a record; a familiar Jesuit returns; answering the Great Ignatian Challenge.
21
Photo File
The Warren Street a young Jim Horan found as a Prep freshman in 1966 was streets apart from the Warren Street where we will celebrate his retirement in June.
24
22 Sports Soccer and Cross Country defend county championships; Crew makes waves at Head of the Fish; Four all-division first team selections for Football.
22
26
Alumni
30
Meet the Athletic HOF Class of ‘25; Veterans’ Panel returns; Michael Rizzo, ’10 In Focus.
WALKATHON
’24:
Perfect Weather Meets Prep Pride!
The streets and footpaths of downtown Jersey City were filled with maroon during the 2024 Prep Walkathon in October! Three years into its revival, this fall tradition—which originally ran from 1978-2010—has undoubtedly hit its stride and retaken its place as a highlight of the Prep calendar. Two routes along the Hudson River waterfront provided a scenic walk, which concluded at Keenan Field, where a carnival awaited returning students and adults. Dean of Student Life Catherine Eppler, whose office organizes the event, credited the 15 members of the student Walkathon Committee (pictured above) with making it all possible. “Those guys really stepped up for me,” she said, noting their support counting donations each day, soliciting support from local businesses, setting up and cleaning up the event, and more. Through donations from students, families, and friends of Prep, a dine-to-donate event, faculty/staff sponsorships, and students volunteering their time, the 2024 Walkathon saw just over 90% student participation, with $81,000 raised for financial aid at Prep.
Men for Others Club: Prep’s Agents for Change
How does Prep uphold the Jesuit commitment to social justice? One way is the Men for Others Club. Motivated to live the Works of Mercy, students become helper-advocates, for and with others. Over the past four years, club members have answered the call to serve through numerous missions on and off campus, including cooking for and eating with guests at the Hoboken Homeless Shelter, tutoring refugee middle schoolers, and organzing clothing drives. This winter’s initiatives have included a coffee drive for the Hoboken Shelter and inviting the Prep community to join in writing Valentine’s Day cards to patients and staff at Jersey City Medical Center. Members presented the cards, plus a handpainted banner with signatures from the Prep community, during a visit to the hospital in February.
Moderated by English teacher and immigration expert Mike McLean, alongside veteran
Theology teacher Mike Fletcher, P’21, students embrace Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J.’s maxim to be “men for others” by cultivating relationships with nonprofit organizations and building bonds of solidarity with the poor and marginalized.
“Joining this club as a freshman, and now leading it as a junior, and inviting the whole student body to get involved has been transformative for me,” says Men for Others co-president Patrick Cansino, ’26. Co-president Luca Merletti, ’26, adds, “I feel the joint mission of service and social justice is the best way for Prep brothers to truly be agents for change.”
A Record-Setting Career Day
With nearly fifty alumni returning to Grand & Warren to share their stories with current students, Prep’s 2024-25 Career Day enjoyed recordsetting participation. Three years into its revival by the Offices of Alumni Relations, Student Life, and Guidance & College Counseling, this annual tradition is thriving thanks to the generosity of alumni with their time and the enthusiastic support from Prep’s administration.
Prep trustee Vito Germinario, ’70 served as the keynote speaker this year, addressing the full student body in the gym at the start of the day. Germinario is the co-founder and CEO of Glass Projects Resource, Inc., and has also served as chairman of the Make-A-Wish Mid-Atlantic Foundation and as a founding member and chairman of Feathers from Devon.
He began his speech by inviting everyone to stand and deliver a rousing “Hallelujah!”before sharing the story of his receiving his acceptance to Prep in 1966, and then a few months later being offered a scholarship
“What I’m telling you is my Prep education prepared me so well for life. It’s why I owe them a debt that I can never, ever, ever repay,” he said, and in calling to mind the values of honor, dignity, respect, integrity, and passion, he ignited our students as they continue their search for their own “Greater Perhaps.”
Prep’s current student body then adjourned to rooms throughout campus for 30-minute sessions with alumni. Our guests spanned decades of Prep graduation years and represented a range of industries that included education, engineering, journalism, finance, firefighting, athletics, aeronautics, and beyond.
Student Life Interns: Vital to Prep’s Vitality
Now in its second year, the Student Life Interns program is an opportunity for students to learn and lead while helping to enrich the Prep experience for everyone on campus. As Dean of Student Life Catherine Eppler explains, the program’s origins go back to her moving from the Science Department to her current role in 2021: “One of the biggest adjustments that I experienced stepping out of the classroom and into Student Life was moving from working with the same small groups of students each day, to working with every student in many different ways.” The first step to navigating this change was to establish student committees to help manage large-scale events like the Walkathon and the Mission Drive.
“These committees help with the work that normally occurs in the background of these events, while providing me student feedback directly,” she said. “In the spring of 2023, I proposed a program that would build on these committees and create a student group that would work with me all year. The Student Life internship was born!”
The program started with 14 students in 2024-25 and has now grown to 27—eight of whom are serving for a second year. Interns are selected through an application process, with both adults and existing interns providing input on the selection of next year’s group. From inventorying the Student Life storage room, to assisting with promotion and management of events, to providing valuable feedback on improving student life programming, Eppler noted, “their hard work, dedication and care for Student Life programming quickly became priceless.”
“In my short time in this role,” she added, “this group of students has become a true blessing and something I look forward to each day.”
“I’ve been working with Ms. Eppler since my freshman year casually,” said senior intern Zachary Kaspar, ’25, “but now this program has given me a group of guys I can work with and get to know while still helping out around my school.” Sophomore Kevin Aby, ’27 agreed. “It has allowed me to be much more involved at Prep,” he said. “I’ve met a lot of people through the program and I really enjoy working with Ms. Eppler and the other interns.”
The Student Life program continues to be one of Prep’s greatest assets, and the Student Life interns will no doubt continue to be a great asset to the program’s continued success!
Prep Community Answers the Great Ignatian Challenge
Many hands at Grand & Warren and beyond worked together to tackle hunger in the Hudson County community during Prep’s annual Thanksgiving Food Drive. Together, the Prep community collected just over 27,505 pounds of food during the campaign, which is part of the broader Great Ignatian Challenge, a friendly food drive competition among Jesuit schools.
Four storage PODS in the courtyard provided a daily reminder of the competition among classes to collect the most food, as donations were sorted by class and then weighed. Prep distributed the food to six local agencies to help local families in need: Hunger Free UIC, St. Matthew’s Food Pantry, The York Street Project, OLS Food Pantry, Hoboken Shelter and St. Lucy’s Shelter.
Once again leading the effort was Keith Cummings, ’10, Assistant Director of Campus Ministry for Christian Service. The Great Ignatian Challenge student committee, Prep’s Operations Department, and various student and adult volunteers provided logistical support throughout the drive. In additon, Kate Lillis-Magnus, Director of Engagement, helped to arrange an online shopping agreement with ShopRite of Metro Plaza, allowing members of the Prep community to shop online for food to be delivered to Prep, while ShopRite contributed an additional $50 in food for every $1000 spent.
Congratulations to the Class of 2028, who led the way with 6,388 pounds of food collected to win the class challenge, and thank you to all who supported the effort to help feed families in Hudson County.
Fr. Lito Salazar, S.J., Prep’s new Director of Ignatian Identity, presided at the Ash Wednesday Prayer Service. He previously taught theology at Prep from 1996-98.
A Well-Traveled Jesuit Returns to Prep
The road to becoming a Jesuit is long, and at times, not a straight path. For Fr. Lito Salazar, S.J., who recently returned to Grand & Warren after 27 years away, it spans continents and decades. From the island of Leyte, in the Philippines, to Cebu City—familiar to many in the Jesuits’ old New York province as an apostolate—to the Netherlands, New York, Massachusetts, and now a return to New Jersey, he’s been around! The Divine Word Missionaries provided him with a faith-based education in his early life, and he eventually completed a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering.
The next decade saw Fr. Lito working for Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum, as a refinery technologist and oil movements head in the Philippines, and as process design engineer in the Netherlands.
While living and working in The Hague for three years, he became an active member of an English-speaking parish consisting mostly of American, Irish, and British expatriates. It was their parish priest from Connecticut who first alerted Fr. Lito to a possible call to priesthood. “I was in a place where there were no cultural expectations and hardly any social burden while enjoying the company of European colleagues. It was such a privileged time that the further question insinuated itself: is this all there is to life? Serious consideration of a religious vocation began.”
The journey to priesthood was circuitous for Fr. Lito. He went to London to join the Mill Hill Missionaries, a British congregation serving the missions in Africa and Asia. After five years of formation with them, he earned his first degree in Theology (S.T.B.). He could not commit himself to the congregation, however. He felt a powerful desire to belong to a religious community with a strong spiritual tradition and an apostolate in education. His Benedictine spiritual director suggested that he join the Society of Jesus. Fr. Lito eventually applied to the Jesuits of (then) New York Province, and he was accepted.
The formation process of Fr. Lito took him to the Jesuit novitiate in Syracuse, practice teaching at Xavier in Manhattan and in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and a year of studies in St. Louis, Missouri.
Then Saint Peter’s Prep happened to him! He joined the Prep Theology Faculty as a regent from 1996 to 1998. That was followed by more studies in Boston for a Licence in Theology (S.T.L.) before ordination to priesthood in 2001. Prep community members celebrated both his ordination at Fordham University and first Mass at St. Peter’s Church.
Fr. Lito has been missioned to Fordham’s Campus Ministry twice (2000-05; 2015-24) and to Saint Peter’s University to teach Theology (2009-15). In between, he took Final Vows with the Society and completed his PhD in Theology in Nijmegen, The Netherlands (2007-09).
This winter, the peripatetic Jesuit has come back to Prep, serving in the new role of Director of Ignatian Identity.
“Being back here at Prep is coming home to the place where I truly fell in love with the work of the Society in the company of my brother Jesuits, my friends in the Lord,” he says. “And, of course, of the young men in my classes who made me laugh while challenging me to teach better at every turn. My memories of those two short but intense years are etched on classroom walls and the corridors of the Jesuit floors, together with the voices raised in prayer that still echo in the chapel.”
Fr. Lito has already met the sons of some of his students from his 1996-98 tenure at Prep. He looks forward eagerly to accompanying a new generation of young men, showing them the way to God, and guiding them to a faith that does justice and cares for the Earth. It’s a ministry inspired by the advice of Saint Ignatius of Loyola to the early Jesuits: “Enter through their door, so they might leave by yours.”
Joe Popovich, ’14 Joins Athletic Staff
Joe Popovich Jr., ’14 became the newest member of Prep’s Athletic Department staff this year, as the department’s first full-time Coordinator of Sports Information. This role has seen him take the lead in maintaining Prep Athletics’ web presence, creating printed materials like the season preview booklets, and verifying statistical information for Prep’s athletic record books and this year’s Athletic Hall of Fame selection process. Each day, you’ll find him posting “next game” graphics and updating state rankings and individual achievements.
“I was on Division 1 basketball staffs for nine years at Creighton, SMU, and Fairleigh Dickinson,” Popovich explains. “At all three schools I would work with the Coordinator of Sports Information or Sports Information Director, so I understand what the job entails.” Now, back at Grand & Warren, he balances his sports information responsibilities, based at the Perkins Athletic Center, with his work as a member of the Prep Basketball coaching staff.
Popovich takes great pride in his new role and in the opportunity to help boost the image of Prep Athletics to new heights. “I feel like it’s my responsibility as an alum to keep Prep Athletics in the spotlight,” he says. “I have a great understanding of Prep Athletics and the platform that it can give our student-athletes, and I want to help get their platform seen by as many people as possible.”
He adds, “I always had a feeling I would work at Prep full time one day, and now that it is here, I am enjoying it. Now, always, and forever...Prep For Life!”
Students Explore Sports Business Careers
This past November, the Guidance & College Counseling Department and the office of Student Life sponsored two events for students with an interest in sports business careers.
Through the New Jersey Devils’ “Meet the Executives” program, a group from Prep had the opportunity to meet with a member of the team’s group sales office at the Prudential Center to discuss career paths in the sports industry as well as the day-to-day life and special events experience of the team staff. Following the meeting, the group enjoyed that evening’s game vs. Montreal (a win for the Devils) and a postgame photo opportunity on the ice. Students and adults alike enjoyed what was an informative and entertaining evening and a great opportunity to build community.
Later in the month, a group of 47 students made the trip to MetLife Stadium for Jets Sports Business Day. The event offered a guided tour across suites, clubs, press boxes, the Jets locker room, and an on-field visit. Along the way, students heard from employees in various departments in the Jets organization, who spoke about their current positions with the team and how they got to where they are today. This was a great opportunity for students interested in future careers working in the sports industry, providing an inside look into how an NFL team operates!
Marauders on the ice at Prudential Center and on the field at MetLife Stadium!
WOMAN FOR OTHERS: Megan Klim, P’16
by Trish Fitzpatrick, P’07,’16
What do the arts give us? Why is it important? In the words of Megan Klim, Chair of the Fine and Performing Arts Department: “Art helps you problem solve, use critical thinking, and find joy. It dovetails with the Jesuit mission to foster a love of learning.” She is certainly in a position to know. For more than 20 years, Ms. Klim has been the guiding force in establishing and fostering the growth of a vibrant and rich art scene at Grand & Warren.
Born in North Bergen, she moved to Hamilton, New Jersey, where she attended a Catholic grammar school and then Notre Dame High School. Her earliest memories involve artistic expression; a large chalkboard at home was divided into four parts, for each of the children in the family. As time went on, the others lost interest, and she was the “only one left on the chalkboard.” Post graduation, she attended The College of New Jersey as a Fine Arts major, and it was here that she found a mentor who specialized in fiber.
After graduating, she searched for the elusive college teaching job but instead started in pre-school. This training, she said, has helped with high school boys. “You have to be clear and to the point, and be a good listener.” As school ended at 2:30, her normal routine would be to visit galleries all over New York, soaking in all they had to offer and interning at an art gallery. She moved on from the toddlers to the Academy of Saint Aloysius, where she was charged with developing an art program for the girls. She was also an adjunct at TCNJ, so she felt well prepared.
Gaining admission to the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan was a high point, as only ten spots in each discipline were offered. It was rigorous and often challenging as her work was critiqued by peers and department chairs. Later, she met her husband, Rich Hedden, a cartoonist and comic book artist. They moved to Jersey City and settled in with their son Matthew, Prep Class of 2016. Prep was searching for an art teacher not only for the classroom, but also to develop a fully-formed art department, which would offer a variety of options to students. Creative Writing, Architecture, and Drama are a few of the notable and very popular offerings, along with the classic courses in painting, sculpture, drawing & composition, and portfolio. On the performing arts side, Prep offers band, chorus, sound design, and songwriting.
Outside of Prep, Ms. Klim is “constantly showing” at galleries in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida and Virginia, and notably at ART BASEL. Summers are spent intensively working on new projects and realizing a vision in mixed media that occupies a space between painting and sculpture. She’s a mainstay at ArtFair 14C, New Jersey’s pre-eminent art fair. She is also a recipient of a 2023 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship.
Few if any other high schools can boast having working artists on the faculty, but Prep has two—Megan Klim and Patrick McCoy, P’28, who works primarily in sculpture and metal-working. Ms. Klim says that sharing her process with its emphasis on “problem-solving, new starts, revisions, and ups and downs” helps students realize their own vision, which is not always linear. She also says that learning should be student-centered, with the emphasis on opportunities and joy. “A student does not have to be talented, but might be great at observing art and talking about it, decoding what the artist is saying,” and this is as valuable as producing work. Her studio is a haven for many Prep men, and a great satisfaction in her work is that former students keep in touch and have even surprised her at some of her shows.
Her secret to supporting students and helping them unlock their artistic potential is straightforward and effective: “I give students the sense that I like them and I am glad to be their teacher.”
Megan Klim at a gallery opening with three of her former students from her first year at Prep. From left: David Ward, ’08 Curran Banach, ’08, and Michael Cortina, ’08.
Two Prep students and two alumni put their hiking skills to the test last summer as they attempted to reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. Lessons about teamwork, community, and resilience learned at sea level in Jersey City would prove vital at altitude in Tanzania. And lessons and memories from the mountain will last a lifetime.
Marauder Mountaineers
Standing in near-total darkness, high enough above the earth that the clouds were below him, Prep senior Dylan Sullivan, ‘25 could see each and every star across a “perfectly clear night sky.” A profound silence settled over him, he recalled, as he emerged from his tent to take in this once-in-alifetime view.
“It really is a spiritual trip because it’s a lot of internal reflection the whole time,” he said. “The whole time you’re moving throughout the mountain…you’re right in that raw African wilderness, and it’s just you and your thoughts. It’s kind of like you get to almost talk with God.”
And while this moment of solitude still resonates in Sullivan’s memory, the grueling adventure on which he and his companions found themselves that week proved one of resilience, one of perseverance, and one of teamwork.
In summer 2024, Prep students Dylan Sullivan, ‘25 of Kearny and William Wuillamey, ‘26 of Hoboken soared to new heights by tackling Mount Kilimanjaro, climbing Tanzania’s famous dormant volcano, which stands at 19,341 ft tall. It represents both the highest mountain in Africa and the world’s highest free-standing mountain above sea level.
“I was determined to summit because I have to always overcome challenges,” Wuillamey said. “Summiting is an extreme challenge that I had to overcome.”
Prep alumnus and former Prep faculty member Greg Morrissey, ‘08 led the trip through his organization, Mountain Goat Movement, the mission of which, he said, is to “bring primarily high school students on experiential learning projects all over the world,” through outdoor activities like trekking, hiking, skiing, surfing, and more.
Last summer’s group was joined by another Prep alumnus, Brennan Collier, ‘18, and a videographer, Tyler Lee, documenting the excursion for KAVU, an outdoor wear brand.
“With the Prep guys on this trip…it takes about 6 to 7 months of dedicated training and planning, so I met with Dylan, Will, and Brennan to do some local hikes in New Jersey,” Morrissey explained. “Then they were given a workout plan to complete over the course of six months.”
While Kilimanjaro is uniquely “accessible to motivated, seasoned hikers,” Morrissey added, serious preparation remains necessary because altitude sickness is a possibility for anyone, even “famous mountain climbers who’ve climbed mountains like Everest and K2.”
Brennan Collier, ’18, Dylan Sullivan, ’25, William Wuillamey, ’26 and Greg Morrissey, ’08 on day three of their journey up Kilimanjaro.
by Matthew Holowienka, ’11
Photos courtesy Mountain Goat Movement
“I’ve never really done a trip like this, camping, hiking, something completely new to me,” Collier said. “I think the things I learned about not only myself, but the people I was with, I grew so much as a person.”
“We’ve been up to the Catskills with my Boy Scout troop,” Sullivan said. “This was a whole other thing, and it was interesting to me to think—this is the farthest anybody in my family has gone from home. This is the farthest anybody I know has really gone.”
“I’ve always hiked outside, but it was always in this area,” Wuillamey added. “So, it isn’t as high as Mount Kilimanjaro. They were hard hikes, but basically, it wasn’t anything like it.”
In addition to his own background as a hiker, Wuillamey credited his experiences on Prep’s Crew team for helping to prepare him for the journey ahead. “[Being on the Crew team] helped because it’s a cardiovascular activity, and that’s helpful on hiking,” he said. “[On Kilimanjaro], I was hiking for like eight hours every day.”
The trip itself included long stretches across varied and challenging terrains, comprising climate zones like a Rainforest Zone, a Desert Zone, and an Arctic Zone, among others—taking place over several hours a day for an entire week.
“It takes about seven days to hike to the summit and back down,” Morrissey said. “And during that time, participants trek through all four seasons. You start out in summer, and by the time you’re on the winter, the summit is often snow-capped with huge glaciers. It can be as cold as zero or even in the negatives.”
The team had already weathered a long journey before the climb even began, traveling for more than 24 hours from the United States to Africa with a layover in Amsterdam. Dylan Sullivan recalled landing in Moshi, capital of Kilimanjaro Region in the Northeastern Tanzania.
“You leave that plane, and it’s just a whole different world. It was dark that night, and it’s not like the city surrounding an airport…Everything just feels different,” he said. “I had butterflies in my stomach, but at the same time, I was really just excited to see everything.”
Wuillamey’s own thoughts turned to the goal he was trying to achieve.
“Half of the people don’t summit, and I obviously want to summit,” he recalled. “I was kind of anxious if I was going to be able to.”
Accompanying the group were 15 porters, as required by Tanzanian law, led by head porter Yesse Lema, who has climbed Kilimanjaro 540+ times, and with whom Morrissey has worked on prior excursions.These dedicated guides help carry all the necessary equipment up the mountain and set up camp, as well as provide encouragement and support along the way.
“They are superheroes, and they often go up multiple times a month,” Morrissey said.
Another important aspect of a porter’s job is boiling and sanitizing water for the group, he explained. By partnering with a company called Grayl for this trip, Mountain Goat Movement provided special filtered water bottles to aid in this task. This equipment and its water-purifying purpose lent themselves to the science curriculum inherent in many Mountain Goat Movement excursions. “Mountain Goat is all about taking my background in the classroom and taking skills oriented around literature, history, environmental science, and building out outdoor curriculums, so that students, particularly high school students, can engage with the outdoors in new and meaningful ways,” Morrissey explained.
And after resting at their hotel, the group finally began their journey to the top.
“The first and the biggest layer is the rainforest, which is kind of the base, where everybody starts out. That’s where all the activity is, and, you see the most people, because as you get up, you see less and less people, people either going back down or people that are not ready for that type of journey,” Sullivan said.
FEATURE
The excursion itself moved at a slow but rigorous pace, he recalled, to allow for steady adjustment to increasing altitude. After a day of hiking, the group would often venture downard to camp and to allow time to continue to acclimate.
“I woke up, and I just remember seeing the mountain in the distance, the peak, and I was like: wow,” Sullivan said, remembering his first morning on the climb. “It was really something. Every time you got to see the peak, it just felt like it’s getting closer and closer.”
But as the team inched nearer and nearer to that final goal, they also had to push themselves to overcome physical challenges along the way. Dylan Sullivan recalled a moment moving along a slick wall, surrounded by clouds and fog, and “a foot away from you is a couple hundred-foot drop.” Undeterred, the team surged forward through each zone and eventually tackled the Barranco Wall, a 843-foot-tall vertical formation on the mountain’s side that required scrambling up narrow crevices, often in single-file.
“For making it up and over that wall, you have to really be a team and work together, and there’s a lot of hand holding with the porters,” Morrissey said. “You have to be pretty surefooted, and there’s a lot of breaks because you’re really starting to get into altitude, so it’s a slow-moving day. Altitude that’s higher than anywhere in the continental U.S., so those guys did a wonderful job of making it up and over the Barranco Wall. A lot of folks consider the Barranco Wall and then the summit push to be the most difficult aspects to Kili.”
And to that end, when Morrissey and videographer Tyler Lee fell ill shortly thereafter, Dylan, William, and Brennan, along with their team of porters, pushed valiantly onward as the others were escorted safely back down the mountain.
“What my Jesuit schooling experience taught me was that sense of community, that sense of brotherhood, and obviously that ‘men for others’ mentality,” Sullivan explained. “Out there, everything’s about you, and they care about what you want and are you okay….That was something that I was taught by the Tanzanian porters.”
However, moving on to the Arctic zone, Sullivan too began to feel the effects of the altitude and thus remained safely at camp as Brennan and Will made the final trek up to the summit and back. “I remember that night because when you get up to that camp, it’s the last camp before the summit, and you see all the people that you met along the trail and everything…they’re all gone,” Sullivan recalled, noting that many individuals cannot continue to the top and must turn back.
“When I was summiting, you hike at night, and you’re super exhausted. And it’s totally pitch black out, and because of the altitude, you aren’t having enough oxygen,” Wuillamey said, recounting the harrowing but rewarding experience of trying to reach the peak just as the sun rose over the horizon. “So you start trying to fall asleep as you’re hiking. And I was doing that….The porters were saying ‘Do not fall asleep.’”
Surging through this final trial with a true Prep spirit of determination, Wuillamey and Collier reached the top in a profound moment of triumph.
“You’re not looking too far ahead, but staying in the moment. I think throughout the entire trip, that was something that was integral. For a six-day or seven-day trek, [you’re] taking it step-by-step, and quite literally, physically one step at a time, focusing only on that next step and not thinking about the past or too far ahead,” Collier said. “Just staying in the moment; I think that’s something that I try and do more and more and I’ve tried to take from that trip.”
“It was a relief it was over. I summited. I did it,” Wuillamey said. “And that thought of me coming home without summiting is over.”
“The fact that he was able to summit Kilimanjaro as a rising junior is insane,” Morrissey said. “He was probably one of the youngest people on the mountain, out of thousands of people from all over the world, and so, I think, for him, he definitely left with a new sense of confidence and self-actualization that he might not have had before.”
From there, the group made the still challenging but somewhat less intensive trek downhill, back to the mountain’s base, where Morrissey, Lee, and the porters were waiting to greet and congratulate them.
“I think the reason why I enjoy bringing young people up Kilimanjaro is because it really is a life-changing trip,” Morrissey said. “The times that I’ve been on the summit…people cry because it’s such an emotional undertaking. You can see the curvature of the Earth from the summit. It’s freezing cold. There’s a realization that you’re in the highest point in all of Africa, one of the Seven Summits in the world, and it’s very much a spiritual journey.”
“Kilimanjaro taught me that I can overcome challenging obstacles, even if I have this unsure thought of: ‘could it be impossible to summit?’” Wuillamey said, noting how fulfilling he has found being able to share his experiences on this journey with others after returning home. “That taught me about how I can have an interview with people even if I have a stutter. If I hadn’t gone to Kilimanjaro, I would probably be hesitant on talking in front of people and on interviews.”
“Coming from the suburbs of New Jersey into a new city with a lot of new people from a lot of different types of places was a lot sometimes, especially as a freshman when you’re 14,” Collier said, recalling how his own Prep experience challenged him to tackle the unknown. “Those were situations where sometimes I felt uncomfortable, but that is the biggest place for somebody to grow, to put yourself out there in those situations and see what happens. You’ll be amazed at what you, as a person, can accomplish and what you’ll learn about yourself.”
“I really want to live every day like it’s a blessing, and I feel like if that happens, the future, you don’t have to worry about it,” Sullivan agreed. “You don’t have to stress about the future because you know that every moment that you’re going to live is going to be a great one. So, that’s something that was big that I learned. I think I took that back to try and influence that on my friends and my peers here.”
“If you can do Kilimanjaro, you can wake up at 6:30 in the morning and go to first period,” Morrissey joked. “It just completely changes your perspective, and I feel like the current Prep students, Will and Dylan, that’s particularly true. I think both those guys left with a new sense of confidence.”
$25 Million Gift Permanently Endows the Sheehan Scholarship Program
A Transformational Milestone
by Jim Horan,’70
“Use wisely”
In what has since become an entrenched part of Prep folklore, this succinct directive—hand-written on a simple note card—was all that accompanied the personal check for $1 million from Jerry Sheehan, ‘48 that arrived in the mailbox of then-Prep President Bob Reiser, S.J., back in December 2010.
It was the founding gift toward the creation of a unique merit-based scholarship program aimed at helping Prep attract “the best and the brightest” young men to join its student body tuition-free, with additional funding for enrichment activities. Not surprisingly, it quickly became a primary component of the school’s student recruitment initiatives.
Now, fifteen years later—with Mr. Sheehan’s ongoing support of that scholarship program already totalling a staggering $45 million—Prep has received its latest gift from this benefactor, this time in the form of a record-shattering $25 million.
Prep President Michael Gomez, Ed.D., ‘91 appropriately referred to this latest gift as “a transformational milestone.” He added, “Our gratitude goes so far beyond just acknowledging and celebrating the scope of this incredible gift. We see Mr. Sheehan as the embodiment of everything we value as a Jesuit institution—a true man for others. For many years, he has shown genuine passion for Prep and the work we do here and a commitment toward ensuring our continued success. It is contagious, and it inspires all of us each day.”
Specifically, this $25 million gift will be added to some of Mr. Sheehan’s other related scholarship gifts to create a new permanently restricted endowment fund totalling approximately $46 million, with annual investment proceeds providing funding for the Sheehan Scholarship Program in future years.
This endowed Sheehan Scholarship will be managed separate from, but parallel to, Prep’s own general endowment, which itself totals a similar
The first graduating class of Sheehan Scholars with their benefactors, Maureen and Jerry Sheehan, ’48, in 2015. Ten years after that first class graduated, a new gift of $25M will permanently endow the Sheehan Scholarship Program.
amount. Notably, when including Mr. Sheehan’s earlier direct (non-endowed) support of his scholarship since his initial $1 million gift in 2010, his total support of this endeavor exceeds $70 million.
For Jim Horan, ‘70, who in his role as Vice President for Planning & Principal Giving has been a primary point of contact with Mr. Sheehan and his team since the program’s early days, this latest gift catapults the “Sheehan legacy” at Prep to even greater heights.
“Even in the broader realm of major-gift fundraising at Jesuit high schools nationally, Jerry’s lifetime support of his alma mater, which totals over $73 million to various Prep initiatives, is a true game-changer, and this latest gift just underscores the magnitude of his commitment and his generosity,” Horan said. “We are so honored by his faith in us, as well as his passion for encouraging—and enabling—talented young men to benefit from the Prep experience as he did in an earlier portion of the school’s history. It’s a fabulous example of ‘Prep for Life’ in real time.”
For Mr. Sheehan, this latest gift was an endorsement of Prep’s 15-year stewardship of the Sheehan Scholarship Program to date, as well as a path to creating a new and permanent funding source.
“I owe so much to the Jesuit education I received at Prep, as it has played such an impactful role in both my personal life and my professional career to this day,” he said. “I have witnessed first-hand how these talented young men [Sheehan Scholarship recipients] have benefitted from this opportunity, and also the very positive impact their presence has on the broader Prep community. I would also like to acknowledge Trish Fitzpatrick and Jim Horan, whose leadership and guidance made this program so successful. It is very gratifying to know that this newly endowed fund will ensure that this program endures well into the future.”
Since the inception of the Sheehan Scholarship Program, Trish Fitzpatrick, P’07,’16, Prep’s Director of Marketing & Public Relations, has served as its hands-on executive director—a combination of administrator, counselor, and mentor. This includes overseeing all aspects of the Scholars’ academic performance and programming, as well as the enrichment opportunities that accompany the Sheehan Scholarship itself. She is assisted by two part-time directors who also are members of the faculty.
“Working with Jerry and [his wife] Maureen to realize their extraordinary vision of a top-notch academic scholarship program has been the greatest blessing for me professionally and personally,” she said. “When I think of all the brilliant students I’ve worked with, I am awestruck and grateful. It’s not always easy to spot potential in a 13-year-old, especially the ‘fire in the belly’ that will make him stand apart from his peers, but year after year, the program boasts the best and brightest at Prep. It’s beyond satisfying to witness the impact they have here at Prep, in college, and in the world, and I am so appreciative that Jerry has trusted me to work on this program for all these years.”
Fitzpatrick added that beginning with the scholarship’s inaugural graduates (17 members of the Class of ‘15), the Sheehan program has funded over 300 Scholars, and they have gone on to various and diverse endeavors. As examples she noted, among others:
• Clark Burnett, ’15, Yale graduate and now an associate producer for Florentine Films (Ken Burns’s production company)
• Nicholas Matos, ’22 (Fordham), who is making his Broadway debut in SMASH in April 2025 and whose previous stage credits include the Radio City Christmas Spectacular
• John Thorburn, ’21 (Georgetown), who is graduating this spring and has accepted an offer as a portfolio management analyst at BlackRock
• Victor Tyne, ’18 (U. of Chicago), who is engaged in quantum research and is co-founder and COO of Pharos Aerospace
• Quinn Williamson, ’15 (Howard/Tufts), a doctoral candidate at Brown University (Africana Studies) after spending the last two-plus years working on the Prison Initiative of Tisch College
• William Woltmann, ’18 (MIT), a field clinical engineer at medical device company NeuroPace after earning conference honors at MIT in football and shot put.
Prep President Michael Gomez, Ed.D., ’91, Trish Fitzpatrick, P’07’16 (Director of Marketing and Public Relations), Jerry Sheehan, ’48, and Jim Horan, ’70 (VP for Planning and Principal Giving) posed together during a recent meeting.
The Longest Run
by John Irvine, ’83, P’11
In the 153-year history of Saint Peter’s Prep, no one has amassed more years of service as a member of the faculty, staff, or administration as Jim Horan, ’70. What began as a one-year sprint for a recent college graduate—filling a vacancy in the English department — developed day by day, week by week, into a 51-year ultra-marathon. Now, with the finish line in sight, join us as we look back and celebrate the remarkable, impactful, unforgettable career of an alumnus whose love of Prep has seen him give back for fully 1/3 of the school’s existence!
“Jim, the runner.” That was how Jim Horan often was identified through his student days at Saint Peter’s Prep in the late 1960s, and then during his college years at Marquette while earning his degree in journalism. A stellar track athlete and a member of the 1968 Hudson County Championship cross-country team (“the first county title in 23 years,” he points out with pride), and then a two-year captain and MVP at Marquette, Jim was one of those guys who lived and breathed running.
Jim, the distance runner probably would have been a more accurate moniker.
The distance runner—a paradox of both poetry-in-motion and the mechanical repetition of a machine. Appearing to glide along almost effortlessly while, in actuality, pounding out step after step after step.
Jim, the distance runner—what a perfect metaphor for 51 years at Saint Peter’s, not including his student days. Before back surgery put an end to Jim’s running days in 1997, he had completed three marathons and won numerous road races. But a fourth marathon—this time, a symbolic ultra-marathon—had begun just four years after his 1970 Prep graduation.
THE STARTING LINE. In the summer of 1974, Jim was dating his future wife, Pat (née Presa), when her brother Donald Presa, ’75 mentioned that he and more than 100 of his classmates had signed up for a senior Communications elective, but the teacher recently had left Prep. Donald told Jim he should think about applying for the position. With a dream job in journalism at Newsweek waiting for him in five months, Jim most likely would have dismissed the idea, had the faculty member he most admired—Jack Casey, his sophomore English Honors teacher—not called to tell him he would be great for the position.
Jim’s father suggested he contact Newsweek to see if they would hold the position until June 1975 “when the teaching fantasy was done.”
They agreed to do so, and a meeting with then-Principal Fr. Earle Markey, S.J., ’49 sealed the deal. But the fantasy did not end, as Jim discovered he loved teaching. As he recalls, “I was only about four years older than the seniors that first year, and so it was a classic case of on-the-job training. But I embraced the challenge.” A few years later, English II was added to his course load, and as Jim reflects, “I thoroughly enjoyed all of that subject matter, the canon of American literature—Poe, Crane, Steinbeck, Salinger, Twain; it was a gift to teach it.” The ultra-marathon had begun.
Then came his signature course, journalism. Even years later, after he had stepped away from his full-time classroom position in 1986 to focus on the further growth of Prep’s external affairs initiatives, Jim continued teaching his beloved (by both Jim and his students) senior journalism elective until 2009. “It was the most natural course for me to teach,” he says. “Especially as the son of an author and editor, I enjoyed sharing and dissecting great reporting and feature articles to make the point that interesting and well-crafted writing could be enjoyable to produce, and that the secret is to do a lot of reading of this great writing, but with a sharp, analytic eye.”
MILE 6. Perhaps the most significant mile marker on Jim’s Prep run came in 1980. As part of his graduate work at Fordham, he had created “an extensive marketing and PR proposal for a non-profit institution.”
As he explains, “Of course, I had Prep in mind when I did this project. There was a great opportunity for the school to be much more strategic in its outreach to both prospective students and alumni. Yes, enrollment had been dropping for years, and downtown Jersey City had yet to experience its rejuvenation. But in my mind, despite this challenging
Prep’s 1968 Cross Country team won the program’s first Hudson County Championship in 23 years. Junior team member Jim Horan is pictured third from right.
OPPOSITE: “Jim, the runner” in action, from that championship 1968 season.
In 1974, Legendary Prep English teacher Jack Casey (left) encouraged recent Marquette grad Jim Horan to apply for an open position in the department. What began as a oneyear interlude before embarking on a career in journalism for the rookie teacher (right) turned out to be only the beginning. By 1977 (far right) Jim was well established as part of the Prep faculty...and his trademark beard was well established, too!
environment, there was still great value and attractiveness of Prep as a ‘Jesuit brand.’”
Jim brought his plan to Fr. Joe Parkes S.J., ’62, who was in his second year as Prep’s president, and with his whole-hearted support, the Office of Public Information (OPI) was created. It would have been a bold undertaking for someone to dedicate all of their time to it, but Jim was still teaching full-time, serving as editor and co-publisher of the bi-monthly Running New Jersey magazine, and training 70-plus miles each week as a competitive distance runner.
As luck would have it, Jim’s top student from the Class of ‘76 had just graduated from Fordham with a degree in communications. That former student, Dan Sorrenti, was still interviewing for jobs when Jim offered him the full-time co-director position in this new office. As Dan recalls, “We had no data; we were just putting into practice what we thought would work.” Much of what the Prep Admissions Office does today originated in those early days of OPI: middle school visits, the expanded scope of the Open Houses, advertising, and most significantly, what Jim refers to as “wall-to-wall press releases on even the smallest student and/or institutional achievement.”
When asked what it was like working with his former teacher, Dan remembers, “For some it may have been intimidating, but Jim was so welcoming, and we were putting those programs into practice, together.
It’s amazing to think that Jim was running into the office and working with me between classes and when he had a free period because he was still a full-time teacher.”
MILE 7. At the same time OPI was developing Prep’s student recruitment program, Jim and Dan also were complementing the work that Frs. Charlie Dolan, S.J., ’32 and Frank Hamill, S.J., ’46 were doing with alumni relations. “We looked at some of the better university alumni publications and said, ’we can do that here,’” Jim says. He humbly downplays its significance, but their creation of Prep Magazine at this time was a game-changer. As Dan (and others) have pointed out, “That first Prep Magazine set the standard by which many other Jesuit high school publications would be measured at that time.”
MILE 14. In 1988, Rosemarie Picone (later with the married surname of Flood) joined Jim as his assistant director in OPI, and her talent and vision allowed Jim to take on other initiatives within the school. Rosemarie remembers, “A professor in Fordham’s graduate communications program pointed me to Jim as someone who was on the cutting edge of high school public relations. He was truly a mentor and a friend, and so much of his advice continues to guide me.”
Prep President Joe Parkes, S.J., ’62 (left) heartily endorsed the launch of Prep’s Office of Public Information in 1980. A year later, a new tradition was born as Prep Magazine debuted in the fall of 1981.
While the call to serve Prep may have taken Jim Horan out of journalism, it never took the journalist out of Jim Horan. His background in that field has benefited Prep in many ways over the years, including Jim’s long-running journalism elective, his years as moderator for the Petroc (above, with the 1979-80 staff), and the creation of Prep Magazine in 1981, just to name a few.
Jim and Dan Sorrenti, ’76, as pictured in the 1981 Petrean. It was their first year as codirectors of the Office of Public Information (OPI). An outgrowth of Jim’s graduate work at Fordham, OPI was a precursor to three different administrative departments at Prep today: Advancement, Communications, and Admissions.
Rosemarie (Picone) Flood arrived at Prep in 1988 to become the new assistant director of OPI. Jim credits her outstanding work with enabling him to tackle expanded responsibilities in fundraising and project management, beyond the original scope of the Office of Public Information.
worked with over the years.” Initiatives and projects in OPI continued to expand, and yet during this time, Jim also was the driving force behind the creation of an active Parents’ Association and the Alumni Board, as well as becoming involved with initiatives of the Board of Trustees, including strategic planning, especially regarding the improvement of Prep’s physical plant. While many runners would be “hitting the wall,” Jim was hitting his stride.
MILE 17. In 1991, then-President Fr. Jim Joyce, S.J., appointed Jim to the newly created position of Vice President for Planning & External Affairs, overseeing fundraising, communications, alumni relations, marketing, and student recruitment. Jim remembers, “I didn’t expect ‘planning’ to be part of this new administrative position, and when I asked Fr. Joyce about it he just smiled and said, ’You’ll find out soon enough.’”
Jim also mentions, emphatically, that it was Rosemarie’s outstanding performance as assistant director of OPI that allowed him to take on the added administrative responsibilities of vice-president. “To this day, Ro Flood and Dan Sorrenti are arguably my two most significant hires since becoming an administrator in 1980,” he says. “They each were invaluable colleagues at just the perfect time, for both myself and for Prep. Personally and professionally, they were absolutely top of their game...and that is no slight to the many other talented individuals I have
MILE 19. In 1993, Prep experienced two landmark events: the school embarked on its first capital campaign, and a new tradition was born. Not surprisingly, Jim played a major role in both. As he recalls, “I learned that the ‘planning’ aspect that Fr. Joyce had included in my job title would have me overseeing a new capital campaign and assisting with the broader improvement of the campus. While I was becoming more comfortable as a fundraiser, I knew that acquiring ‘major gifts’ for a capital campaign would become a significant—and new—part of my job. As luck would have it, by that time Dan Sorrenti had co-founded his fundraising firm [Ghiorsi & Sorrenti], so once again I was on the phone to him…but this time with him being the mentor. Let’s just say he provided a crash course in raising major gifts—including prospect cultivation, various pledge options, endowed gifts, naming opportunities, etc.—enabling me to have a comfort level in this challenging new part of my growing responsibilities.”
Apparently, Dan’s tutelage was more than effective, as Prep went on to bring in gifts to date totaling over $221,000,000, including support of five capital campaigns, with Jim successfully soliciting many of the major gifts during those decades.
The new capital campaign, Keys to the Future, was Prep’s first major-gift fundraising effort in three decades and had a goal of $4 million, which it exceeded with total campaign support of $5.1 million. Those donations funded the new lobby-entrance to the gym and English Building, the refurbishment of the library, and the creation of a basement fitness center. Jim credits the efforts and leadership of the campaign’s chair, Kevin Collins, ’57, and lead donor Dr. Joe Braddock, ’47, coupled with great “networking assistance” from the Board of Trustees and the Prep Alumni Board, for its success. He also mentioned his great friend
Although his full-time teaching days ended in 1986, Jim continued to teach his popular elective in journalism until 2009. In this 1991 photo (left) he poses with English Department colleagues Fr. Bob Cregan, S.J., ’52, Fr. Mike Hoag, S.J., Jack Campion, and John Irvine, ’83, P’11.
Meanwhile Jim’s role in the reshaping of Prep’s campus was growing. In 1995, the dedication of the remodeled Prep Library (right) was an early highlight.
Jim Horan on the Warren Street Plaza in 2025. In Jim’s estimation, this conversion of an unremarkable side street into a unifying focal point for the campus is the most impactful of the many capital projects he has overseen. It would be hard to argue with that, but perhaps even more remarkable is that at the time of the plaza’s fall 2000 opening, Jim was only about halfway through his tenure at Prep, with nearly 25 years of further achievements yet to come...including the extensive renovation of both buildings behind him! Burke Hall became the Moriarty Science Center with its reimagining in 2011, and Mulry Hall (along with Hogan Hall around the corner) was completely restored outside in 2014 and remodeled inside during the summers of 2017 and 2018.
Ray Aumack, ’55 for helping to energize the broader alumni base in support of this campaign.
During that same year, Jim, along with his Prep and Marquette classmate Jack Meyers, ’70, spearheaded the creation of the Legends of Prep Awards Dinner. This new award would celebrate alumni and others in the Prep community who have had a truly profound impact on the school. As such, they would receive the highest honor presented by the Prep Alumni Association. It is just another example of Jim having a hand in something “so Prep” that it will last well into the school’s future.
MILE 26. As most runners would be nearing the end of their “traditional” 26.2-mile marathon, Jim was increasing his role as Prep’s internal project manager (or as he puts it, “the guy who connects the dots”) regarding a series of major, and dramatic, capital projects that were literally transforming the campus. While he is extremely proud of each project—including the initial English Building renovation, the creation of the Moriarty Science Center, Keenan Field, the Perkins Athletic Center, and the Mulry and Hogan renovations—he points to the one project that, in the long run, will likely have the greatest impact on the school. Jim reflects proudly, “The creation of the Warren Street Plaza in 2000 dramatically transformed the campus. It was a breathtaking improvement that had an immediate and very positive impact on the way alumni and visitors alike view the school. This plaza made a statement about Prep’s important role in this neighborhood, and beyond.”
As is a common theme, Jim always is quick to share the credit with others. “Tom Leane, ’65, P’04, Tom McGinty, ’71, and Paul Schaetzle, ’71 continue to be indispensable advisors to both me and to the school regarding every step of property development,’” he says, “and working so closely with them on the Master Planning Committee for three decades has been like attending a master class in that field, from architecture to construction. Also, to this day, former board chairs Jack Caulfield, ’71, P’00,’03 and Phil McGovern, ’76, P’11 remain crucial advisors and sounding boards for our strategic planning; and, of course, the late Joe Cooney, ’45, P’68,’76 was our real estate guru who served at least nine Prep presidents. Not surprisingly, they each have received the Legend of Prep Award—so well deserved!”
In particular, Tom McGinty, in his role as owner’s rep and supervising architect on all of Prep’s capital projects, has worked most closely with Jim during the past three decades of major campus development. “On Jim’s leading the fundraising drives and the Master Planning Committee, there is an old saying: ‘Presidents come and go, but Horan is forever.’“Tom says. He adds, “Jim provided key continuity in directing each fund drive and stabilizing the Master Planning Committee by keeping the rotating members focused on the tasks at hand as well as the long-range goals.”
MILE 33. The ultra-marathon continued. In 2009 Fr. Bob Reiser, S.J. changed Jim’s title to Vice President for Planning and Principal Giving. This would quantify major-gift fundraising as Jim’s priority, while also relieving him of the day-to-day duties overseeing the growing Advancement Office. This occurred just one year after Bill Bell, ’57, then the Vice Chairman of Comcast, became Prep’s first million-dollar donor. As Jim recounts, “Bill’s gift was such a momentous moment
As in this 2003 photo, Jim’s office in Shalloe Hall has often reflected the varied and extensive nature of his work, with many disparate projects in progress at any given moment. But if it has at times been a juggling act, Jim has excelled at keeping everything in motion with aplomb and attention to detail.
for me personally as a fundraiser and for Prep…similar to when Roger Bannister first broke the 4-minute mile in 1954. We, Prep, had done it—we finally had our first million-dollar gift, with similar high-end gifts following shortly thereafter.”
MILE 35. In 2009, at age 57 and in his 35th year as a Prep employee, Jim was inducted into the Legends of Prep, fittingly receiving the award he had helped create sixteen years earlier. As he recalls about that night, “It gave me the opportunity to step off the treadmill and look back and to enjoy and appreciate the extraordinary opportunities I had been given and to be part of so many significant ‘Prep things.’”
Phil McGovern, ’76, P’11, Prep’s legal counsel who served as Chair of the Board of Trustees (2012-23) in addition to his years as a board member, has worked closely with Jim on various projects over the decades, and he holds him in high esteem. He says, “Jim Horan first entered my life in 1975 as my Journalism teacher. He has done so much for me and an incalculable number of other alumni over the past five decades. If there were ever a ‘Mr. Saint Peter’s Prep,’ it is Jim Horan—he is the Legend of the Legends.” Another former trustee and board chair (2004-10), Jack Caulfield, ’71, P’00,’03, has been one of Jim’s closest alumni colleagues and confidants since the early 1980s. “His institutional knowledge is remarkable, and he has been a major asset for the school and its leaders,” Jack said. “Most importantly, Jim is a wonderful friend who treated me and my entire family with great kindness and generosity.”
Also in 2009, then-President Fr. Bob Reiser, S.J., cultivated a relationship with Jerry Sheehan, ’48, with the hope that Mr. Sheehan would help fund Prep’s new Imagine capital campaign through a major multi-year pledge. Jerry told Fr. Reiser that he wanted to do something different, rather than just “donate money to Prep.” From those conversations
The sight of Jim Horan welcoming alumni and donors to a new facility on campus became a common one at Prep in the 2010s. Here, during the dedication of the Moriarty Science Center in 2011, he discussed some of the building’s new features with an audience that included Eileen and Bob Moriarty —the wife and son of the facility’s namesake, the late Don Moriarty, ’48.
In 2009, Jim was inducted as a Legend of Prep, receiving the award he had helped to create in 1993. With him, as she has been at every step, was his wife, Pat. After all the years and all the moments Jim has experienced at Grand & Warren, there is no contest when it comes to naming the most significant Prep moment in his life: the October 1968 dance in the Prep gym where he and Pat met.
emerged the merit-based Sheehan Scholarship Program, with Jerry’s funding to date exceeding $70 million. (See related article on page 12.)
Since this extraordinary scholarship’s early years, Jim and Prep’s Director of Marketing & Public Relations, Trish Fitzpatrick, P’07, P’16, have been its primary stewards, with Jim being the conduit regarding the funding required to provide the millions of dollars annually for the Scholars’ tuition and enrichment activities. Jim often mentions that his relationship with, and personal regard for, Jerry Sheehan and his team is “an absolute highlight of my many connections with so many members of the Prep community.” He adds, “Of course, as Prep’s largest lifetime donor, Jerry’s generosity puts him in a category all his own. But equally as impressive is his humanity, his kind spirit, his brilliance as a businessman, and his passion for this school and its Jesuit tradition. The fact that I share a Prep diploma with Jerry is beyond humbling.”
As usual, Jim notes that any conversation about Jerry Sheehan must also mention Jerry’s Prep and Holy Cross classmate, Don Moriarty, who for decades was Prep’s largest donor, and whose close contact with Jerry kept him engaged regarding what was happening at Grand & Warren, especially while Don served as the first board chairman (1985-1991).
Conversely, Jerry has noted that his appreciation of Jim’s meticulous accounting and monitoring of his gifts to Prep, as well as his providing proposals for future Prep projects, have given him (Jerry) the confidence to continue, and to expand, this amazing support. “[Jim] truly embodies the values we hold dear at Saint Peter’s—intelligence, inquisitiveness, integrity, and accountability,” Jerry says. “Beyond these qualities, Jim possesses one of the most essential traits of all: fire in the belly!”
MILE 46. As initial planning began in 2018 for Prep’s sesquicentennial celebration, most agreed a book chronicling Prep’s 150-year history was a must. Prep’s then-President, Fr. Ken Boller, S.J.,
COVER STORY
On an April afternoon in 2023, after more than two years’ work, Jim came face to face with the fruits of his labor as he leafed through the first copy of Then. Now. Always. The 352-page illustrated history of Prep’s first 150 years was a dream project for an author with a lifelong love both of Prep and of journalism.
provided some initial research leads, and his successor, Michael Gomez, Ed.D., ’91, asked Jim to find an appropriate professional writer to take on the project…but it soon became clear that this individual, possessing both a wealth of Prep history and a proven career as a wordsmith, was right in the building.
“Although I thought it could be an intriguing project, initially I just did not think I had the time to take it on,” Jim says. Over the decades he had enjoyed a fairly extensive freelance writing career, including major articles published in New Jersey Monthly and Parade magazines, publishing his own running magazine, plus some corporate and retail PR…but nothing of this scope. However, given his journalism background, it was the proverbial offer he couldn’t refuse, and the result was a two-year research and writing odyssey that is both a literal and figurative testament to Jim’s knowledge and love of Saint Peter’s Prep.
“With great humility, I likely know more Prep history than almost anyone else on this planet,” he said with a laugh, “and my affection for this place runs just as deep.” The final product—the 352-page, 260,000word Then. Now.Always.—is comprehensive and intriguing; informative and entertaining. Jim did a masterful job, and it certainly helped that he had lived, and contributed to, a third of those 150 years.
MILE 51. Jim, the distance runner nears the end of his ultramarathon. He has passed every mile marker, at times making it look effortless even when the road was uphill, difficult, stormy or challenging. He has set himself apart, not just as Prep’s longest tenured employee—ever!—but as, quite possibly, the individual who has had the greatest cumulative impact on Saint Peter’s Prep.
“Somehow, it’s been 51 years,” he says with a smile. “How did that happen? So many memories, so many people, so many events. Towering colleagues—Jesuits such as Joe Parkes, Tony Azzarto, Jim Keenan; lay faculty such as Jack Casey, Rich (Doc) Kennedy, Clem O’Sullivan, Charlie Rooney; former students who have become so professionally successful and who embody the qualities and values we hope for in our graduates, such as Bill Ahearn, ’75 and Jack Raslowsky, ’79; great friends on campus, such as John Irvine, Trish Fitzpatrick, Anthony Keating, Kate
Lillis. Whenever people ask why I’ve stayed at Prep so long, these names immediately come to mind as a major part of the answer.”
THE FINISH LINE.
Jim pauses, and then adds, “But by far, ironically, the single most significant component of my Prep career occurred not during my five decades as an employee, but instead in late October of my junior year, 1968…and it’s not the cross-country team’s county championship. No, it occurred in the southeast corner of the Prep gym, at a jam-packed dance, when I tapped on the shoulder of a young lady and asked her to dance. That remains my life-altering Prep moment, as she (Pat) has been at my side throughout this Prep journey—57 total years.” He adds, smiling, “She probably didn’t realize that she, too, was signing up for what is now often referred to on campus as ‘Prep for Life.’”
THE
POST-RACE. Father Joe Parkes, S.J., ’62 once said, “Jim Horan’s fingerprints are on countless projects throughout Saint Peter’s.” The next time you find yourself on Prep’s campus, see how far you can walk before spotting something that has a connection to Jim. Since you will pass two or three before you even enter a building, perhaps the challenge should be to see just how many you can identify.
Jim, we thank you for loving Saint Peter’s Prep and for following your mother’s words when she advised you to “make any place you visit better than you found it.”
Jim in his element: artifacts of Prep history (in this case yearbooks) close at hand, a story in progress at the keyboard, ready with a smile and a joke built upon references to film, literature, or legendary Prep characters. Many at Prep have had the benefit of his mentorship and advice, and many more, perhaps without ever knowing it, have had the benefit of his efforts to leave Prep better than he found it...a mission unquestionably accomplished.
Streets Apart
Virtually nothing in this view of Warren Street, looking north toward York Street from just alongside Mulry Hall, would be familiar to today’s Prep students. At the right side of the image, about half of the buildings between York and Montgomery Streets still stand. Today, one of them contains the pizzeria that has fed untold thousands of Prepsters since the 1990s, known currently as Pizzeria Las Americas. Some would no doubt notice the building at left bears some passing resemblance to today’s Moriarty Science Center with a bit of imagination. But as far as similarities between this image from the 1967 Petrean and the equivalent view in 2025, that’s about it.
But at the beginning of that school year, in the fall of 1966, this is the Warren Street a freshman from Weehawken would have found as he arrived for orientation and found his way to Class 1F. There are few guarantees in life, even in the life of Saint Peter’s Prep where history rhymes perhaps even more than in the world beyond. But it is unlikely that anyone, not even that freshman himself, could have imagined how much this scene would change over the six decades to follow. And it is a virtual guarantee that no one, not even young Jim Horan, ’70 could have predicted how much influence he, personally, would have in changing it.
No one person has had a greater impact in unifying, remaking, and improving the campus of Saint Peter’s Prep, and in no single place is this decadeslong work more apparent than it is in Prep’s “front yard” along Warren Street. This forgettable side street packed with parked cars is now a bustling pedestrian plaza that ties the campus together, welcoming students, faculty, staff, and visitors. And Burke Hall, brand-new in 1966-67, is now the Moriarty Science Center, whose main lobby serves as a direct extension of the plaza as a gateway to campus. These are just two pieces among many in the incredible legacy of Prep’s longest-ever-serving employee...a legacy that includes Prep Magazine itself, and a legacy we look forward to celebrating on campus, June 11 (details on back cover).
PHOTO FILE:
RIGHT: The Class of 1970 filled the bleachers in the gym for freshman orientation, September 1966.
soccer//Prep Soccer had one of the greatest seasons in program history, finishing with a 19-3 record and the #4 state ranking. Highlights included a 1-0 win over Kearny and two shutout wins in the County quarterfinals and semifinals over Union City and Harrison. In the Hudson County Final at Red Bull Arena, Prep rallied back from a 1-0 halftime deficit, scoring three goals to defeat Kearny. The win secured Prep’s second consecutive Hudson County Tournament Championship, the program’s first back-to-back titles since 1998-1999.
Six Marauders received All County recognition, five received All Non-Public recognition, two received All state recognition, and Coach Josh Jantas, ‘95 received County Coach of the Year recognition. Goalkeeper Anthony Novello, ‘26, with 106 saves and 10 shutouts, racked up honors including Hudson County Player of the Year, third-team All State, and United Soccer Coaches National All-American. Anthony Bautista, ‘26 (20G, 5A) had second-team All State honors, and Philip Sayouwoh, ‘27 (6G, 14A) made third-team All State.
cross country// Finishing the season with a #7 state ranking, the team put together arguably the best Cross Country campaign in Prep history. The Marauders won the Shore Coaches Invitational Championship and South Hudson Championship and defended the Jersey City (9th in a row) and Hudson County (8th in a row) Championships. In addition, Prep finished second in the Non Public A Championship and seventh place in the Meet of Champions, the latter being the highest finish in school history.
Four Marauders received All Non Public recognition, and Coach Russell Jenkins received County Coach of the Year recognition. Tommy O’Brien, ‘25 and Aidan Prucher, ‘25 earned second team All Non Public honors, as did Chayan Ory-Hurley, ‘26. Abraham Went, ‘25 was selected third team All Non Public. Ory-Hurley and Wendt also made NJ.com’s season-end Fab 50, at #38 and #42, respectively.
Junior goalkeeper Anthony Novello finished the season with 106 saves, including eight in the county final. He was named a United Soccer Coaches All-American and Hudson County Player of the Year.
Junior Chayan Ory-Hurley and seniors Aiden Prucher and Tommy O’Brien (L-R) were NJ.com second-team All Non-Public selections.
football//
With one of the most demanding schedules in the state, the Marauders fought to a 4-6 record. The team was ranked in the Top 20 for eight weeks and earned a 5-seed in the Non-Public Group A bracket. Highlights of the season included wins over Seton Hall Prep, Pope John, and a ranked Union City team. Four Marauders received First Team Super Football Conference (SFC) All-Division selections, six received Second Team SFC All-Division selections, and one received a Honorable Mention SFC All-Division selection. First Team selections included DL Sammy Bartoszek, ‘25, DB Justin Gonzalez, ‘25, OL Emmett Haughney, ‘25, and DB Jordan Rodriguez, ‘26.
crew// Prep’s rowers had another successful fall season. At the Overpeck Fall Classic, the Marauders finished first in the 2V8, Freshman 8, and Novice 4 categories. The Head of the Fish Regatta saw Prep’s best overall team performance in program history, highlighted by a gold for the 2V, and bronze for the 3V and the Freshman 8. The Marauders also won the overall points trophy at the NYRA Invitational.
water polo//
Despite it being a rebuilding season with injuries to overcome, Coach Pat McCoy’s Marauders showed great effort in every game. Highlights included a win over Riverdale Country Day, and the program’s outlook is bright for next fall.
Junior QB Tyler Bell connected for 27 passing touchdowns this season, en route to a second-team all-SFC selection. His 5 TDs in the season opener at Union City tied a single-game Prep record. He then broke the record with 6 TDs in a wild 58-47 win over Pope John, as Prep honored the 1994 State Championship football team.
New Names and a New Game to Join Prep’s Athletic Hall of Fame!
SCAN FOR TICKETS AND MORE!
This May, Prep will honor four athletes and one team for their contributions to our tradition of athletic excellence. Our eighth class of Athletic Hall of Fame honorees represents the very best in Prep Athletics, across three decades and four sports, including our first ever induction for Bowling!
Join us this May as we welcome our newest inductees:
• Anthony Novello, ’93, P’26
• Paul Que, ’95
• Jeff Butler, ’01
• Najee Glass, ’12
• The undefeated state champion 2005 Football Team
May 28, 2025 Hudson House, Jersey City Tickets: spprep.org/HOF25
The Best Way to Raise a Glass to Prep!
Just in time for alumni to raise a Christmas or New Year’s toast in December, Prep partnered with Jersey City’s own 902 Brewing Company to offer a special, limited edition beer: Pride. Glory. Pilsner. This balanced, versatile lager is a true classic, a Jersey City original...just like Prep!
Beyond the vintage Grand & Warren-themed label design, crafted right here in Prep’s Communications Office, Pride. Glory. Pilsner. offers an even more important connection to Prep: 902 is generously donating 25% of all sales to Prep’s general scholarship fund!
Those factors combined to make the initial run of Pride. Glory. Pilsner. sell out within hours, prompting 902 to produce additional cases to meet a growing list of preorders.
As of this writing, 902 has sold 840 4-packs, and will be donating more than $3,700 to Prep...and with the beer back in stock, now is a great time to stock your fridge while also boosting both those numbers!
Pick up a 4-pack for $18 at 902 Brewing (101 Pacific Avenue in Jersey City) or have yours delivered within New Jersey by ordering online: spprep.org/902
Special thanks to 902 Brewing for their generosity and to former Prep alumni director Michael Wieners, ’04, currently a member of the 902 sales team, for his assistance in connecting two Jersey City institutions!
SCAN TO ORDER ONLINE (21+)!
Prep Welcomes Third Annual Veterans’ Panel
For a third consecutive year, Prep celebrated Veterans Day by inviting military veterans in our community to return home to Grand & Warren and share their experiences and insights with current students.
This year’s panel included four alumni and a Prep parent, who met with freshmen and sophomores during the weekly “Prep Man in the Morning” (PM in the AM) assembly time. The wide-ranging conversation gave the panelists an opportunity to discuss the paths that led them to enter the military, their varied career paths while serving, learning experiences in service, and the ways a Prep education resonates with the experience of military service.
Special thanks to our 2024 panelists: Ed Connell, ’71, US Army • Capt. Don Wilson, ’87, US Navy • Len Mrozak, ’63, US Marine Corps • Maj. Josh Tosi, ’07, US Army • Col. Justin Sapp, P’24,’26, US Army.
Col. Sapp, the first Prep parent to join the annual panel, is notable for another first: he is known as the first American soldier in Afghanistan, having arrived in the country in October 2001 as a special forces officer on detail with the CIA.
Seniors Lucas Hernandez, ’25, Liam Morrison, ’25, and Ebram Bishai, ’25 served as moderators for the assembly, which was organized by the History and Social Sciences Department, the Guidance and College Counseling Department, and the Office of Student Life.
A Faculty Mini-Reunion
Scan for video from the assembly, or visit spprep.org/vetspanel24
Former Prep President Bob Reiser, S.J., who currently serves as executive director of the Jesuit Schools Network, shared this photo from the JSN principals’ conference in St. Louis last fall, bringing together some Prep faces past and present. From left:
• Susan Baber, Associate Provincial Assistant for Secondary and Pre-Secondary Education, Jesuits East; Prep faculty member 1985-2003
• Fr. Reiser, Prep faculty member 1990-1993 and president 2006-2013
• Jim DeAngelo, ’85 Principal, Loyola School; Prep faculty member 1989-2004, 2006-07, and principal 2007-2022
• Current Prep Principal Chris Caulfield, ’03
• Tim Caslin, Provincial Assistant for Secondary and Pre-Secondary Education, Jesuits West; Prep faculty member 19932000.
IN FOCUS:
Michael Rizzo,
’10
by Mike Murcia, ’08
Michael Rizzo’s journey as a writer began long before he officially put pen to paper. His love for storytelling was nurtured at Grand & Warren, where he found inspiration from exceptional teachers who fueled his passion for literature, history, and creative expression. Now, as the author of Tales of Asterra and its sequel, To Sow a Fallow, Michael has carved a unique space in the world of fantasy literature.
Michael’s time at Saint Peter’s Prep played a pivotal role in shaping his creative journey. “Teachers like Mary Anne McElroy, Ken Dandorph, Jack Campion, Rosalie Romano, and Joy Hurd left a lasting impression on me,” he said. “The experiences in their classrooms gave me an appreciation for literature, history, and language.” His exposure to British literature classics such as Beowulf, Hamlet, and The Canterbury Tales ignited his imagination, inspiring him to craft his own stories. In fact, it was during his junior year at Prep that he wrote the first draft of what would later become To Sow a Fallow.
Though Michael initially pursued a career in finance, the loss of his beloved dog, Angel, in 2016 catalyzed him to revisit his passion for writing. Seeking comfort, he rewatched The Lord of the Rings trilogy, an experience that reignited his creative spirit. This ultimately led to the birth of Tales of Asterra, a fantasy anthology that explores the diverse people and realms within a richly detailed world.
Asterra, a continent composed of 50 to 60 realms, stands out due to its intricate world-building, immersive storytelling, and fusion of fantasy subgenres. Unlike many traditional fantasy novels, Michael’s work avoids common motifs, instead offering a fresh take on the genre with a unique magic system and an evolving language structure, similar to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings universe.
The road to publishing his work was not without its hurdles. Michael initially pursued traditional publishing in 2018 but encountered numerous obstacles in securing the right agent and publisher. In 2021, he shifted gears to self-publishing, enlisting Luminary Press and renowned illustrator Alejandro Colucci to bring his vision to life. The journey has been a continuous learning experience, but one that has granted him greater creative freedom and direct engagement with his readers.
Michael’s writing process is a blend of structure and spontaneity. He begins with extensive worldbuilding, jotting down ideas in a never-ending document before crafting a loose outline. While he prefers having a roadmap, he allows the story to unfold naturally, often writing in a free-flow mode to maintain creative momentum.
For aspiring writers, Michael offers simple yet powerful advice: “Keep writing, and don’t be discouraged. Writing can seem like an arduous process—it requires mental dedication and might seem scary, but you must keep moving forward. Don’t give yourself an insane daily goal. Try to write each day, but do it in a way that best supports your schedule and your emotions. Your story is important and needs to get out there.”
Michael is currently working on his third book, A Sleight Contingency, which leans more into action-adventure elements. He hopes to complete it within the next year or two. Beyond writing, he remains deeply involved in his community, serving in leadership roles for the Rutherford Chamber of Commerce, the Kip Center, and the Rutherford Public Library Foundation. For Michael, giving back to his community is an integral part of his life—rooted in the lessons and values Prep instilled in him and his father, Jimmy Rizzo, ’77, P’10.
As his literary journey continues, one thing remains clear—Michael’s stories are only just beginning. It’s a journey that brings him a genuine sense of fulfillment. “It feels incredible to have achieved something I desired to do in high school,” said Michael. “Everything beyond the writing process has been so fulfilling. Meeting other authors and learning about their stories has been inspiring. Speaking to a reader about their experiences consuming fantasy literature and media is always so rewarding. I’m surrounded by people who share a common love and appreciation for this art. That motivates me more and more.”
For those eager to explore the world of Tales of Asterra, Michael actively engages with fans through his website, talesofasterra.com, and via email at talesofasterra@gmail.com. You can also follow his writing journey on Instagram (@talesofasterra) or Facebook (Tales of Asterra)
As his literary journey continues, one thing remains clear—Michael Rizzo’s stories are only just beginning.
Share your photos, class notes and other news with us at spprep.org/classnotes or email info@spprep.org!
The ’50s
Dick Joel, ’52 continues to work full time at his law firm Joel and Joel LLP in Oradell, NJ, with two of his sons. Dick and his wife Lucille, a Rutgers professor, have 8 children and 23 grandchildren.
Ron Semple, ’52 has published his fourth book, On the Stoop, which chronicles his growing up in the old Jersey City, which, in his words, “has virtually vanished.” It includes his years at Prep, 1948-52. The book is available only at Barnes & Noble, online or in store.
Thomas Foley, ’55 and his wife Maryellen celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary on March 12, 2025. They met at St. Peter’s College and married in 1960. They have four children (one deceased) and now live at Shaker Pointe retirement community in Latham, New York.
Richard J. Macchia, M.D., ‘59 celebrated his 50th year in the practice of urology in 2024. He continues to work 3 days per week.
The ’60s
Al LaGratta, ‘69, now retired from a career in pharmaceutical marketing, has been enjoying a passion of occasionally working and appearing as a background actor in many major TV shows and movies.
Dan Nodes, ‘69 retired from his teaching post in the classics department of Baylor University in 2023. His rookie year as emeritus professor involved many of the beloved academic pursuits that include research and writing, conferencing, and even some teaching. A healthy blend of travel and long bike treks with Patricia, his wife of 52 years, made a satisfying first retirement year. Dan’s most recent books are a collection of essays on the Renaissance cardinal and luminary, Giles of Viterbo, and an edition of previously unpublished fourteenth-century sermons by a Franciscan known only as Frater Petrus. Dan adds that he is grateful to the Prep for its outstanding curriculum and lively, sporting atmosphere. The Latin classes especially set him on a career in classical and medieval studies at top universities, from the solid foundation laid in the secondary-school years.
The ’70s
Rev. Jim Croghan, S.J., ’73 celebrated his 50th anniversary as a Jesuit in October. Fr. Croghan currently serves as rector of the Jesuit community at Boston College High School in Massachusetts.
Sig Grudzinski, ’73 enjoyed a cross-country road trip last summer while helping his daughter, Victoria, move back to New York State from NAS Fallon, Nevada after nine years in the Navy. “We flew out and drove back in her car, taking our time over 3 weeks,” he writes.
“We visited: Hagerman Fossils Nationl Park, Shoshone Ice Cave, Shoshone Falls, Yellowstone National Park, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Monument (Experienced Bike Week at Sturgis even though we were 50 miles away), Lauritzen Gardens, Arabia Steamboat Museum, National World War I Monument, Gateway Arch, St. Louis Zoo, Mammoth Cave National Park, Ark Encounter, (and) Gettysburg National Military Park.”
The ’80s
Greg Fagan, ’81 has worked in the publishing industry for 35+ years. He will be co-chairing the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, which will be held in Baltimore in late May.
Huerta Johnson Neals, RA, NCARB AXP, LEED AP, ’87 notes that he recently discovered he is the first African-American architect born in Jersey City to be licensed both in New Jersey and in New York State, and he has opened his doors for work in both states after years of experience. “I have developed an understanding unique to my experience that lends itself to superior owner’s representation. A comprehensive understanding of the building systems, aesthetics and desired outcome along with historic preservation combined with new technology, fulfills a missing link in an owners portfolio,” he writes. Learn more at HJNConsulting.com.
A Homeroom 1G Reunion
When five members of the Class of 1971 gathered for lunch in West Palm Beach, Florida this past December, it wasn’t just a class reunion...it was a freshman homeroom reunion. Pictured at left (left to right) are Mike Stabile, Jim Sweeney, John Tavormina, John Wilkes, and Bob Zito... and for comparison, their class page in the 1968 yearbook.
Lifeguard turned Lawyer Saves the Day
Larry Lazzara, ’98, who currently practices law in Scottsdale, Arizona, put his prior training as a lifeguard to heroic use while snorkeling in Hawaii last November. Larry, who previously patrolled the beach in Belmar for more than a decade, spotted a man struggling in a rip current near a jetty and immediately sprang into action. “If I hadn’t gotten there when I did,” Larry told the City Sun Times in Scottsdale, “I gave him about 30 seconds before he’d smash into those rocks...I knew time was of the essence.” After helping the swimmer to the surface, and with an assist from a nearby surfer, Larry was able to bring the man safely back to shore.
He credited the rigorous training he received in Belmar with preparing him for the rescue. “The fact I was able to recognize the situation, see what was going on in the water, and still be able to execute what I was trained to do so many years ago is a great feeling.”
Terrence Curran, M.D., ’88, who was first elected to the Cranford Township Committee in 2022, was appointed by the committee to a one-year term as mayor of Cranford at the annual reorganization meeting in January. He continues to practice general and trauma surgery at Morristown Medical Center.
Americus Abesamis, ’89 is an actor in Los Angeles, CA. He is currently working on two projects, the feature film Christmas Movie Magic as Santa Claus and the web series Dok Sauvage: Man of Copper as the evil lead, Dr. Sylvester.
The ’90s
Rob Ryan, ’93 retired from the Bayonne Police Department in December of 2024 at the rank of Captain, “after 25 amazing years.” He adds, “I was blessed to work along many other alumni from Grand & Warren, including current Chief of Police Robert GeIsler, ’90.”
Santiago Fernandez, ’97 recently joined Hilton Worldwide as Senior Director-Senior Counsel Employment Law.
The ’00s
Arthur Olvesen, ’05 launched an educational foundation in late 2024,
“aimed at providing a meaningful solution to solving the educational crisis facing our nation.” The DREAMSTREAM Foundation is focused on “Designing Roadmaps for Everyone to Achieve More (DREAM) in Science, Technology, Recreation, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STREAM).
The ’10s
Brandon Wimbush, ’15 was selected as one of Forbes’ 30 under 30 in Sports for 2025. After cofounding and serving as chief athletic officer at MOGL, a marketplace that connects businesses with NCAA athletes for NIL marketing deals, he will transition to an advisory role in order to focus on a new venture: VP of strategic partnerships at Duæl Track, a new series of head-to-head running competitions, launching this year.
The ’20s
Michael Kennedy, ’15 graduated from Tufts University School of Dental Medicine last May. He then moved to Los Angeles from Boston to pursue a one-year general practice residency at UCLA Medical Center.
David Scobar, ’21 is graduating this spring from Pace University with a bachelors in digital media marketing and an associates in biochemistry, after which he will pursue a masters in marketing analytics. “The Prep community and brotherhood has lent me many lessons and prepared me for all the wonderful and challenging things college has brought me,” he writes. “I couldn’t be more thankful than I am today for that.”
Jack Sipperly, ’21 completed a 10-week internship last summer with Extremity Medical, a NJ-based medical device solutions firm before heading back to Syracuse University to complete his degree in bioengineering and biomedical engineering. The previous summer Jack took part in Invent@SU, placing first out of eight teams in the final judging for a medical device that incorporated practices from electrical, biomedical, and mechanical engineering.
Julian Rodriguez, ’24 has been named captain of the Lafayette College Crew team, as a freshman.
National Recognition for a Blue-Ribbon Principal
Nico Victorino, Ed.D., ’03, the principal of P.S. 150 Elementary School in Manhattan, was one of nine principals nationwide to be recognized with the U.S. Department of Education’s Terrel H. Bell Award for Outstanding School Leadership for 2024. The award honors school leaders who are committed to education as a powerful and liberating force in people’s lives. Principals are nominated for this award by their school communities during the National Blue Ribbon Schools selection process; P.S. 150 was concurrently recognized as a National Blue Ribbon school.
“Schools that raise the bar count on school leaders who raise the bar,” wrote then-U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “As recipients of the Terrel H. Bell Award, you have driven change, shaped school cultures, and fought for excellence in education. The Bell Award recognizes your relentless dedication and celebrates your impact on your school and your students.”
On a brilliantly sunny day at Saint Pius X church in Fairfield, Connecticut, Conor Finn, ’14 married his Boston College classmate and sweetheart, Bea Lynch, M.D. The ceremony was officiated by Rev. Brian Cummings, SSE, ’82, best friend and classmate of the groom’s father, David E. Finn, ’82. Bea and Conor celebrated with over 200 family and friends in Westport, Connecticut at The Inn at Longshore located on the Connecticut Sound. The venue was breathtaking, the food was amazing, and the celebration will be remembered as a joy- and love-filled occasion for a very long time!
Prep was well-represented by 17 alumni. LEFT TO RIGHT: Thomas Finn, ’87, Brendan Boardingham, ’14, Colin Carney, ’14, Matt Donofrio, ’14, Sean Finn, ’09, Maurice Caldarola, ’82, John Finn, ’81, William Finn, ’55, David E. Finn, Jr., ’08, David P. Finn, Sr., ’65, Ciaran Freeman, ’14, Conor Finn, ’14 (Groom), David E. Finn, Sr., ’82, Rev. Brian Cummings, SSE, ’82, Brian Haughney, ’89, Patrick Haughney, ’19, and Emmett Haughney, ’25.
Prep alumni are everywhere... even at a celebration of the 1999-2000 state champion Hudson Catholic hockey team! Terry Matthews, ’81 (President/ Principal of Hudson Catholic) and Robert Triebe, ’78 congratulated Frank McGady, ’78, currently Hudson’s head hockey coach, as he was inducted along with the 1999-2000 Hawks into the New Jersey ice Hockey Hall of Fame in 2024. Frank was an assistant coach on the 1999-2000 team.
LEFT: Two older Petreans, Art Askew, ’56 and Don Ullmann, ’60, both ended up serving at Mass together on All Saints Day at the Catholic Church of St. James in Conway, South Carolina. Art usually attends Mass on Sunday and Don on Saturday, but the holy day found Art as Lector and Don as Altar Server at the same Mass.
2007
Joe Crivelli, ’83, who has lived in Vicenza, Italy, for the past 20 years, welcomed his classmate Nino Giacchi, ’83 to his home last September. Nino writes, “It was great to see a Prep colleague overseas; catching up and talking about the ‘good ole days’ at Prep and soccer at Lincoln Park.”
ABOVE: A group of Prep alumni, who had traveled to Saint Maarten to welcome the new year with their families, made a new friend on the beach, proving Prep men really will manage to find each other just about anywhere! Standing are Chase Pease, ’22, Gregory Pease, ’19, Zack Joskowicz, ’17, Aaron Joskowitz, ’12, Erik Harrison, ’85, and Mike Hudacko, ’04. Kneeling is Curtis Johnson, ’69, who happened to run into the group!
RIGHT: Prep alumni (plus a Prep dad) in Munich for Oktoberfest 2024. Pictured are Benji Mowatt, ’17, Joaquin Harrell, ’17, Mark Chester, ’16, Dan Scagliarini, P’17, Adam Scagliarini, ’17, Adam Chester, ’17, and Michael Castaldo, ’17.
ABOVE:
classmates Anthony Addas, Gil Estupinan, Nick Lalumia, Tim Graham, Paul Curmi, Brian Urbanovich, Dave Finn, and Scott Cavanagh at the October 2023 wedding of Nick Lalumia and Elyse Schultz.
RIGHT:
ABOVE: Last summer, Griffin Gudaitis, ’18 hosted legendary author (and Bayonne native) George R.R. Martin on behalf of Oxford Writers’ House, where Martin spoke “On Writing Fantasy.” Along with Dr. April Pawar, Griffin accompanied Martin on a private tour of the university’s collection of original Tolkien manuscripts. Griffin, a second-year M.Phil. student in English Studies (Medieval Period) at Linacre College, Oxford, reports that Martin revealed he did apply to Prep, before ultimately accepting a larger scholarship offer from Marist.
A CORRECTION: In the Summer ’24 issue’s Class Notes, we listed Ben Sobsey, the brother of Dan Sobsey, ’09, and one of the founders of the Alfalfa restaurant chain, as a fellow member of the Class of ’09. Ben did not attend Prep; we regret the error.
A Prep Leading Man’s Broadway Debut
This spring, Nicholas Matos, ’22 is making his Broadway debut as Scott in the new musical SMASH. Adapted from the similarly-named 2012 TV series, SMASH is billed as “A Comedy About a Musical.” Previews began March 11, with an official opening on April 10 at the Imperial Theatre Nicholas is currently pursuing a BA in theater at Fordham University. In the spring of 2022, he earned a Paper Mill Rising Star nomination for the title role in Prep’s production of Jekyll & Hyde. His off-Broadway credits include The Radio City Christmas Spectacular, Regarding the Disappearance of Amy at Playwrights Horizons (Simon), and Shelter Me at the Midnight Theater (Zae).
a
The memorial golf outing has been a tradition since 2006.
Marquette
Cunningham, ’22, Brady Landsbergis,’24, Conleth Gorham,’24,
Brooker,’21, Jake Landsbergis, ’21, Alex Giattino, ’24, Brian Christman, ’23, and Shay Buckley, ’22.
A Football Reunion Like No Other
There are alumni games, and then there are alumni games.
When former Prep Football teammates RJ Oben, ’19 and Cody Simon, ’20 took the field in January, they did so on college football’s biggest stage, in the CFP National Championship. Both Marauders grabbed headlines during their respective runs to the final—Oben delivered a timely sack in the Sugar Bowl vs. Georgia that helped Notre Dame to a touchdown on the ensuing possession, while Simon was the Rose Bowl Defensive MVP with 11 tackles, including two sacks and another tackle for a loss.
In the end, of course, it was the Buckeyes who took home the title, with Simon’s eight tackles earning him the Defensive MVP for the championship game as well. But beyond the outcome, the 2025 CFP National Championship will forever be rememembered as the Prep Bowl!
LEFT: Eight members of the Class of ’73 enjoyed
round at New Jersey National Golf Course in August, in memory of their classmate Kevin Mulrain. L-R: John Sogliuzzo, Ralph Quaglia, Bobby Neal, Pat Walsh, Bill Ruane, Bob Colacurcio, Dan Cruoglio, and Bob Waldron.
BELOW: Former Prep President Bob Reiser, S.J. baptized Luca Charles Dodds, grandson of Bob Zito, ’71, in the Prep Chapel. The occasion brought together numerous Zito children and grandchildren who have been baptized at Prep over the years!
Notre Dame DL RJ Oben, ’19 and Ohio State RB Cody Simon, ’20 on the field in Atlanta
ABOVE:
freshman Conleth Gorham, ’24 shared this photo from a gathering of Prep alumni currently attending the Jesuit university in Milwaukee. From left: Bobby
Johnnie
ALUMNI
Alumni
Edward R. Roemke Sr., ’38
Richard A. Phalon, ’44
Father of Christopher Phalon, ’69
William J. Spendley Sr., ‘53
Brother of Walter Spendley, ’45 and Robert Spendley, ’47†; cousin of Raymond Wilhelm, ’45† and Gerard Spendley, ’55
Raymond D. Aumack, ’55
2007 Legends of Prep honoree; uncle of Sean Aumack, ’89 and Craig Aumack, ’93
Roger W. Breslin Jr., ’55
Brother of John Breslin, ’65; brotherin-law of Donald McLaughlin, ’58
William J. Connolly, ‘56
Franklin D. Gregory, ’56
Patrick J. Kelly, ’57
Frank H. Rocchio, ’56
Michael F. Bonifanti, ’58
Brother of Thomas Bonifanti, ’62†
Ralph A. DeSevo, ’58
John P. “Jack” McHale, ’58
Brother-in-law of Richard Mendles, ’56† and Jack Savage, ’57
Joseph P. Marino, ’59
Hugh B. McCormick, Jr., ’59
Brother of Albert McCormick, ’65
Michael C. Powanda, ’59
Francis A. Vincent, ’59
James N. Richardson, ’60
Richard J. Carroll, ‘61
Brother of Thomas Carroll, ’58†
Thomas R. Murtagh, ’62
Frederick J. Tomkins, ’63
Frank J. Martucci, ’65
Brother of Anthony Martucci, ’60 and Paul Martucci, ’77
Dennis J. Enright, ’66
Father of Jeffrey Enright, ’92
Richard M. Grumbach, ‘68
Robert W. Ruggieri, ’68
Raymond C. Walsh, ‘68
Ted Dylewski, ‘71
Chester M. “Mickey” Keller, ‘71
George E. Wyville, ‘71
Brother of Mark Wyville, ’76 and Thomas Wyville, ’80; Uncle of Graham Wyville, ’11 and Morgan Wyville, ’18
John F. Ellard Jr., ’77
Father of Mark Ellard, ’11
John J. “Jack” Buckman, ‘79
Father of Joseph Buckman, ’10; Brother of Robert Buckman, ’84; uncle of Scott Johnston, ’03, William Opel, ’03, John Opel, ’06, and Brian Johnston, ’07
Robert G. Griffith, ’79
Brian J. Loftus, ’80
Brother of Gary Loftus, ’76†; brotherin-law of Edward Siems, ’74 and Gary Siems, ’76; cousin of Ronald Szmerda, ’69
Frank P. Malvasi, ’80
Anthony J. Bullock, ’87
Raymond R. Rushforth, ’88
Brother of William Rushforth, ’86
Matthew Krywy, ’94
Michael Heredia ’10
Brother of Joseph Heredia, ’04
Michael D. Crowe, ’14
Family of Alumni
Gerald A. Bellotti
2005 Athletic HOF and Legends of Prep honoree; former football coach, athletic director, alumni director, and development director; father of Greg Bellotti, ’88; brother-in-law of Richard Urso, ’56
Charles N. Bowling
Father of James Bowling, ’80, Robert Bowling, ’82, and Brian Bowling, ’89; grandfather of Andrew Bowling, ’21
Cathleen Mancino Burns
Mother of Joseph Mancino Jr., ’86
Helen Calvanico
Mother of Thomas Calvanico, ’73 and Robert Calvanico, ’74; aunt of Andrew Filak, ’70, Ronald Filak, ’84, and Douglas Filak, ’89
Vittoria M. Corrado
Mother of Alexander Corrado, ’79
Timothy P. Cummings
Brother of William D. Cummings, ’67, Kevin Cummings, ’72, and Rev. Brian Cummings, SSE, ’82; Uncle of Kevin A. Cummings, ’05 and William H. Cummings, ’10
Through March 10, 2025
Andrew P. DeGeorge
Father of Paul DeGeorge, ’94
Jerry R. Dempsey
Brother of Robert Dempsey, ’62
Marta E. Donates
Mother of Marcus Donates, ’98 and Gianni Donates, ’00
Gregory Drummond
Brother of Gerry Drummond, ’58; uncle of Alex Drummond, ’94, Francis Drummond, ’97, Luke Drummond, ’99 and Peter Drummond, ’08
Charles V. Dullea
Father of Charles Dullea, ’07
William J. Fitzgerald
Father of William Fitzgerald, ’99
Alice Fitzpatrick Mauriello
Mother of Gregory Mauriello, ’71, Mark Mauriello, ’75, and Thomas Mauriello, ’79
Jennifer Giattino
Mother of Joseph Giattino, ’21, Jack Giattino, ’22, and Alexander Giattino, ’24
Michalena Icklan
Wife of Richard Icklan, ’60; mother of Richard Icklan Jr., ’90
William Lau
Father of Timothy Lau, ’89; uncle of John Cappadoccia, ’83
Thomas J. Kelly father-in-law of Jonathan Fencik, ’98
Karen Laudati
Wife of Joseph Laudati, ’73
Mary Anne B. Lembo
Wife of Stephen Lembo, ’63; sister-inlaw of Robert Lembo, ’67
Marie Metcalfe
Mother of Christopher Metcalfe, ’87; sister of Joseph Calderone, ’91
Charles K. Meuse
Father of Kevin Meuse, ’09 and Neil Meuse, ’13
Daniel J. O’Connell
Father of Patrick O’Connell, ’94
Eileen C. O’Donnell
Mother of Thomas O’Donnell, ’93 and Bill “Bubba” O’Donnell, ’95†; sister-inlaw of Edward Greene, ’66
Kathleen M. Pedati
Wife of Brian Pedati, ’73
Rosaria “Nella” Pugliese
Mother of John Pugliese, ’77
Angelina Presa
Mother of Donald Presa, ’75† and Stephen Presa, ’86; mother-in-law of James Horan, ’70 (Prep VP for Planning & Principal Giving)
Jeanne “Jan” Russoniello Gillen
Sister of John Russoniello, ’74 and Mark Russoniello, ’80
Kerrie San Giacomo
Mother of Douglas San Giacomo, ’07
Nancy E. Seaman
Sister of George Taite, ’73 and Louis Taite, ’89; aunt of Luca Taite, ’11
Mary Ann Stabile
Mother of Jeff Stabile Jr., ’86
Robert Sugrue
Father of Robert Sugrue, ’90 and Michael Sugrue, ’94
Amelia S. Villar
Mother of Anthony Villar, ’86
Gregory “Wiz” Wieczorek
Father of Steven Wieczorek, ’00
Family of Faculty & Staff
Karen Magnus-Fischbach
Sister-in-law of Kate Lillis-Magnus, Director of Engagement)
Serafina Romano
Mother of Rosalie Romano (World Languages department chair)
Former Faculty & Staff
Donald B. Guide
Head volleyball coach, 1998-2013; 2013 Athletic HOF honoree.
Edward A. Roselle
Former freshman football coach, assistant varsity football coach, and assistant wrestling coach
WEDDINGS | BIRTHS
WEDDINGS
Nick Lalumia, ’07 and Elyse Schultz
August 25, 2023
Tom Fitzpatrick, ’07 and Kathleen O’Neill
August 10, 2024
Conor Finn, ’14 and Bea Lynch
August 31, 2024
Richard Myrlak, ’06 and Carolyn Pasternak
September 28, 2024
William Bricki, ’04 and Rebeca Mora Valdez
January 4, 2025
BIRTHS
Danielle and Chris Delaney, ’02
son James Christopher, January 26, 2024
Christina and James Ferretti, ’94
daughter Angelena Veronica, June 28, 2024
Jillian and Vinny Chisari, ’99 daughter Channing Gioia, August 11, 2024
Trinity Campbell and Keith Cummings, ’10 (Assistant Director of Campus Ministry) Daughter Tatum Helene, September 21, 2024
Adriane Kiss and Ben Reed, ’03 daughter Cecilia Frances, October 7, 2024
RIGHT: Tom Fitzpatrick, ’07 and Kathleen O’Neill, married August 10, 2024, in Santa Barbara, California. They are flanked by Tom’s sisters, Jeanne and Maggie, his parents Bill and Trish (Prep’s Director of Marketing and Public Relations) and his brother Billy, ’16. Not pictured here, but also on hand from Prep, was Matt Kiebus, ’05.
BELOW: Former Prep chaplain Fr. Tom Benz, S.J. presided at the September 28 wedding of Richard Myrlak, ’06 and Carolyn Pasternak, at St. Ignatius Loyola Church in Manhattan. Also representing Prep were some of Richard’s 2006 classmates: Jack Opel, James Braddock, Eric Ingles, and Ray Pascuo.
Nicole and Kevin De Pinto, ’08 daughter Sadie, November 25, 2024
Patty Riady and Daniel Kiczek, ’04 son Lucas, November 26, 2024
Lily Huerta Murcia and Mike Murcia, ’08 (Director of Alumni Relations) son Maximiliano Miguel, January 3, 2025
Shannon and Jordan Roldan, ’03 daughter Ivy Leigh, February 11, 2025
William Bricki, ’04 and Rebeca Mora Valdez, married January 5, 2025
James Delaney, born January 26, 2024, is the son of Chris Delaney, ’02 and the grandson of Mike Delaney, ’73
Angelena Ferretti, born June 28, 2024
Max Murcia, born January 3, 2025
Sonny Lalumia, born October 3, 2024
ABOVE: Nicole, Kevin, and Abigail De Pinto welcomed Sadie, born November 25, 2024.
LEFT: Conor Finn, ’14 and Bea Lynch, married August 31, 2024. Prep was well-represented at their wedding in Connecticut...see page 30!
Lucas Kiczek, born November 26, 2024
We invite the entire Prep family to join us on campus as we wish Jim Horan a happy and healthy retirement and congratulate him on a record-setting tenure that has impacted so many areas of Prep life…including, to name just one, the creation of the Plaza where we will gather to celebrate!
A Retirement Celebration for Jim Horan, ’70
Wednesday, June 11, 2025 (Rain date: Thursday, June 12, 2025) • 6:00 PM Saint Peter’s Prep Warren Street Plaza There is no charge to attend, but your RSVP is appreciated: spprep.org/Horan