This volume contains seventy-five interviews with Fordham administrators, faculty, and staff who share their rememberances of the University. The occasion for the project is Fordham's Sesquientennial celebration as the University completes its one-hundred and fiftieth year and the excerpts range from Fordham's earlier days to current events. Collectively, this book is an informal history of Fordham and its people, both as a community which is vital and growing, and a university whose past is rich in tradition. In a "Message from the President," Rev. Joseph A. O'Hare, S.J. summarizes the importance of the project in this way, "A university, like any great institution, transcends the experience of any single generation. At the same time, the people who make up the university shape the meaning of its tradition and give it heart and voice.
Through this Oral History Project, many of the men and women who played important roles in Fordham's history express their own memories of the University. Each adds a special angle of vision on the many-sided life of Fordham. Their words, captured in living testimony and recorded in these excerpts, keep the sense of Fordham's past alive and help us translate that past into a promise for the future."
For readers associated with the Fordham Community this volume captures this one-time event in a unique way. To any reader it offers an entertaining, insiders view of history of the Jesuit University of New York.