Retirement at Fordham

For 13 years he had been what he calls "a cross between a businessman and a nightclub entertainer." But next Feb. 2, Fordham University's president, the Rev. Robert I. Gannon S.J., will exchange his budget juggling, administrative conferences, luncheon dates, and after-dinner speeches for a more peaceful program of prayer, study, sermonizing and spiritual direction of laymen. He will become Superior of the Jesuit Retreat House at Manresa, Staten Island, N.Y.

Gangrene & Thin Gruel. Last week when his transfer was announced, pink-cheeked Father Gannon stretched back from his littered desk with feelings of relief and regret. At 55, he still had plenty to say about education; he acknowledged that he had not accomplished all that he wanted in his 13 years at Fordham. Thinking back on it, Father Gannon remarked that his assignment had been "interesting" and "constantly varied" but there had been drawbacks. He had felt "illiteracy climbing up my legs like gangrene," seen his own writing turn to "thin gruel." Moreover, there had been little time for reading, scarcely moments enough to read his priestly office.

Football & Mumbo Jumbo. There had been time, though, to speak his mind, and some of his dicta on U.S. education had made him a controversial figure. He had called academic freedom "mumbo jumbo," said that "a piece of rubber hose is at times worth ten years of the new [educational] psychology." He had come to Fordham in the days of its great mid '30s football teams, had taken a wartime opportunity to halt football altogether, allowed it to return (in 1946) on only a very chastened scale. Said Gannon: "We want to get [it] off the vaudeville stage and . . . back to the campus."

Last week as he prepared to hand over his job to Father Laurence J. McGinley S.J., of New York, Father Gannon made it clear that he still hopes Fordham will have no part of plans (such as are called for by the President's Commission on Higher Education) for still more greatly increased college enrollments. His remarks ended with a typical Gannon snapper: "Instead of accepting more & more as the number of applicants increase, we intend to screen our students with more & more care . . . Unless we have this type of aristocracy . . . our Jeffersonian democracy will soon be a Russian rubble heap."

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