O'Keefe, Peter .xml
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Part of Peter O'Keefe Oral History
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PETER O’KEEFE
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, New York
Transcribed by Mary Ellen Lent
For Marist College Archives and Special Collections
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Interview Peter O’Keefe
Interviewee
: Dr. Peter O’Keefe
Interviewer
: Gus Nolan
Date
: May 16, 2002
Location
:
Marist College Library in the Archive Room of the James A. Cannavino Library
Topic
: Marist College History
Subject Heading
:
Peter O’Keefe
Marist Brothers –United States-History
Marist College—History
Marist College—(Poughkeepsie, New York)
Marist College—Social Aspects
Summary:
In the following interview, Peter O’Keefe speaks of his years at Marist College as a
History professor. The interview begins with Peter O’Keefe’s introduction to Marist College and
continues on to touch upon his involvement with the college, for example with the Bridge
Program. Peter O’Keefe speaks of the development of the core program from the 60-60 program
and the changes among the college, in terms of the student body, faculty, and physical
development of the college.
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G.N.
Good morning. This is an interview with Dr. Peter O’Keefe. It’s taking place in the
Marist College library in the Archive room. It’s part of an ongoing project to develop the
Archives. This is an oral interview aspect of it. The date is May 16
th
and it’s about ten o’clock
in the morning.
Good morning Peter.
P.O.’K.
Good morning Gus.
G.N.
Peter,
I’d like to start with an overview of your past, your biological and your personal
life in the development of the person that we know as Dr. O’Keefe. What is your full name?
P. O’K.
Peter O’Keefe.
G.N.
Where you named after any member of the family?
P. O’K.
An uncle who spent a year in MountJoy for his participation in the rebellion of 1916.
G.N.
And how long did he live after the rebellion?
P.O’K.
Not too long. He came over here and died in 1932 of some pneumonia complication
that could have been cured with penicillin today. He didn’t live very long. He didn’t have any
children.
G.N.
Yes, where and when were you born?
P.O’K.
South Bronx on 140
th
Street.
G.N.
When?
P.O’K.
1930, February 2
nd
.
G.N.
And about your early education, where did you go to grade school?
P.O’K.
St. Luke’s grammar school and then St. Pius grammar school, graduated elementary
school in January 1944 and spend six months in Rice High School...124th and Lenox Ave. I
spent the next twelve years in the seminary with an organization called The Divine Word
Fathers. This was the first German Missionary Order.
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I spent my four high school years( 1944-48) at Miramar which was the minor seminary in
Duxbury, Massachusetts. After high school I did my two year novitiate In Techny Il which is
north of Chicago. From 1950-52, I spent two college years at Epworth, Iowa. For the remaining
four years were spent at Techny where I completed two years of philosophy and two years of
theology.
G.N.
Okay and in your own family at home did you have siblings, brothers or sisters?
P.O.’K.
Yes, there where seven of us, five boys and two girls in the family and I’m the second
oldest.
G.N.
And your parents, what where their names and what did your father do?
P.O.’K.
My father was Michael and he was a mechanic and came from county Kerry in Ireland
in the 1920’s. Originally he was a mechanic. He owned two cab medallions but during the
depression he become a bus driver. My mother came from county Leitram also in the 1920’s.
She was a nurse’s aid at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and married my father in Jean de
Baptist Church in 1926.
G.N.
Was your father on the run from the IRA?
P.O.’K.
No, no. [Laughter]
G.N.
Alright, moving along a little fast forwarding now. What about your own personal life,
your marriage to Alice and your children, could you say something about that? When where you
married and how did you meet Alice?
P.O.’K.
In June 1961 and I met Alice through my sister; she actually had been a classmate of
my younger sister in grammar school. I didn’t meet her through Bridget, I met her through my
other sister, who happened to be on a subway train one day coming home from work. We went
together for a while and got married in Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Queens, say in ’61
by my father’s first cousin, who was an Auxiliary - Bishop in Boston. He played football for
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Georgetown way back in 1924, ‘25 and ’26 and was secretary to Cardinal O’Connell and later
Chancellor of Boston when the Cardinal died. In 1973, my uncle died of heart attack in Ireland
on his way back from Rome.
G.N.
What about the children, you have three girls and a boy now.
P.O’K.
Three girls and a boy. Mary is a nurse and is now the Director of Infectious Diseases in
Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, NY. Alice is Program Director at AT&T and Theresa is
married and has my two grandchildren and lives in Wappingers Falls. Recently, she got her real
estate license.
G.N.
Yes, say something about Peter.
P.O’K.
Well, Pete is a Marist Grad, a Political Science major and took advantage of the
internship in Washington during his junior year, which was a turning point for him and his
commitment to politics. After volunteering in two local campaigns, he took a job with Geraldine
Ferraro who was running for the U.S. Senate. In December of 1991, he left Geraldine Ferraro to
sign up with the William Jefferson Clinton, a young politician from Arkansas who was running
for President. He worked on the Clinton campaign in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and
Kentucky. After the election of 1992, Pete became a Fund Raiser for the Democratic Party.
[Inaudible recording]
G.N.
Now did he actually work at the White House over the years?
P.O’K.
Oh, yes, after the 96 campaign, Harold Ickes offered him a job in the White House,
where he spent the next year and half. Then he decided to take the opportunity to attend the
London School of Economics, where he received his Master’s degree. When he returned to the
US, he became a fund raiser for the Clinton Library Foundation.
G.N.
Did he travel much?
P.O’K.
Yes, he has been to South America Africa, India, Japan and so on.
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G.N.
Have you had an occasion to get to the White House?
P.O’K.
Yes, on several occasions and I also attended St. Patrick’s Day celebration three years in
a row.
G.N.
Okay, let’s come back and put more focus on your own development. Where did you do
your graduate work and then what were some of your first teaching jobs?
P.O’K.
After
I left the seminary, I had no formal degrees despite all the education. I was able
to get a degree from Iona after taking 38 credits in one year. I subsequently went to Hunter
College where I received a Master Degree in History. I went on to Fordham University for a
Ph.D. in 1971. In the meantime I taught Latin and English at Bergin Catholic High School in
New Jersey, two years teaching history at Copiague High School, Long Island, NY, about four
years in Saunders High School in Yonkers, where I taught German and History and finally I
spent two years at John Adams High School in NYC. John Adams turned out to be a turning
point in my life because there I met a young lady named Elizabeth Slevin and the conversation
you know one day what are you going to punch the clock? I told her I was working on my
doctorate at the time and I was interested in college. She said would you ever be interested in
Marist College? I said I was interested in anything at that point, you know [Laughter] and so she
had contacts. I said I’d love to meet Augustine Nolan and I happened to have had Augustine
Nolan’s brother at Manhattan College when I was teaching back in the city part-time. Luck
happened there was an opening and I was brought up for an interview in March of ‘67 and I was
told I had the job.
G.N.
Do you recall coming up here and seeing, who did you see when you first came here?
P.O’K.
Cashin, Dr. Cashin.
G.N.
Dr. Cashin
,
Ed Cashin was here.
P.O’K.
I also met with Lou Zuccarello, Jerry White and Brother Murphy.
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[Inaudible recording]
G.N.
[Laughter] It’s a small world.
And when you did come here, what were your first teaching
assignments, do you remember? Was it just History?
P.O.’K.
Yes, it was all history. It wasn’t much medieval. I had some medieval you know but
yet history in those days we had the two sequences you know that kids had to take all the
questions into two parts, one part up to the middle ages and then the second part, the 1500 to the
present.
G.N.
That’s quite a sweep you know.
P.O’K.
Oh yes, now they don’t make it in one course. [Laughter] There’s twelve credits
required in History, twelve required in Philosophy, twelve required in Language. You know this
is going to be a corporate thing.
G.N.
How many years were you just teaching before you got involved in other activities here?
P.O’K.
As a full time teacher probably down to 1974 and then LaPietra put me in charge of the
Bridge Program which I started here and found working with LaPietra interesting.
G.N.
LaPietra is Richard LaPietra for the shake of our historical record here.
P.O’K.
[Laughter] Our historical record, I had a great year on APC working with LaPietra.
That year was a good year and one of the things that we did that year.
G.N.
Just a foot note what is APC?
P.O’K.
That was the old Academic Policy Committee that took care of all the academic
components with respect to faculty, leadership and academics and as on.
G.N.
As against the FPC which was the Faculty Policy Committee.
P.O’K.
Yes, today [ ] we really have to remain straight I think [ ] and system have to change
the names I felt that the combination we had was so much [ ]. Then we had the [ ] which is
really [ ] the faculty and then we had the [ ] which was a
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[ ] representing the president in fact when he was, elected recognized faculty and then the
chairperson of the [ ] and then the [ ]. It was really a neat system I thought and then we did this
other crazy stuff and got all complicated. [Laughter] Anyway I had very good working
relationship with LaPietra, I think it was one of my high points, that was the year that I put the
Bridge together.
G.N.
Did the Bridge come before taking the evening division or was that part of the same?
P.O’K.
No, the Bridge came first, it came in ’74, we started the Bridge.
G.N.
Okay let’s stop for a second, what is the Bridge?
P.O’K.
The Bridge is, I got the idea from a Pace High School guy who started the first one he
was teaching down in Chaminard High School, is sending faculty into Chaminard doing full a
full college year and the students seem to be [ ]. So select students were taking a full college
program at [ ] okay, and I came back we where all excited about the possibility for this so we
came up with the idea here in doing a [ ] Bridge, mainly three courses on the high school taught
by Marist faculty and then the high school students would come over to Marist for the rest of the
program, that was a new angle so we called it the Bridge Program. The first one was Lourdes,
the second one was Spackenkill and then subsequently let’s see who else came in… Roosevelt
came but they never really followed through, these were the two [ ]. Then we added on to
another program I know called the School College Course Program and then called School
College Program came in and that is why we came up with the idea of getting credit for certain
advanced courses on the high school taught by high school faculty that would be supervised by
Marist. So that was kind of a new wrinkle to the group and that became very popular. You
know that’s [ ] in Kingston and then we had let’s see Walt [ ] and Denny [ ]. I think the
Wappingers boys eventually came in for a while. You see politics keep the Kingston and the
Wappingers boys out, the president of the [ ] got very uptight about this and was putting a lot of
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pressure on so they said backed off and Wappingers backed off. You know the programs have
done very well.
G.N.
Do you see those as a kind of an enticement for these students to pick Marist?
P.O’K.
Well, it was strange enough we knew from the beginning that we could probably be
very little trade off on that regard especially with [ ] we had pretty advanced students here with
these students and stuff you know. That was not a major thing but we felt that it was great a
exposure for Marist and that other students and the fact they got to know Marist that they could
become students. Now subsequently more students began to stay and [ ], you know but in the
beginning in was a small percentage of students would actually stay on you know. I think that’s
a much better percentage today, but the other thing that we got into [ ] was we took the lead in
articulation and that was a big thing going on in the state. We pushed to try to accelerate the
sequence from elementary school to finishing college and the idea of pulling together the last
year of high school to the first year of college. There’s a lot of stuff going on taking about it and
we went out in the fore front with this program so Nequest, who the Commissioner chose Marist
to launch the statewide campaign for articulation, so he came here in ‘75 to recruit for us and he
gave the speech you know announcing that the state was going to be putting articulation and
stuff. And subsequently I ran two articulation conferences here, I didn’t follow up a few years
after. And that’s only one of the regrets that I have not following through and we were state
leaders in ’77 and ‘78 with this whole thing. Marist was much more versatile working that. And
the biggest mistake I ever made I took the continuing Ed job in ‘78 and it turned out to be a
distraction, you know and I took it accidentally. I didn’t plan to but first let me tell you about
continuing Ed. I started continuing Ed. What we had was an evening school, you know and I
had start dreaming about this continuing Ed stuff so I went to pay a couple of visits that Brian
made down the way to IBM.
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G.N.
Dr. Desilets.
P.O’K.
Dr. Desilets yes, and we had to find out, you know we were working on the [ ] and we
were looking for new ways to market this continuing Ed,
which was really weird taking an
English course and turning it into more marketing and getting independent from the other
graduate program. You could do more initiative kind of stuff you know and so on and so forth.
We started going around to get more ideas because these places were visiting us you know, LaPi
went ahead and actually applied for the
first time he hired but it was worth the time the committee was looking elsewhere and one of the
candidates by the way was Andy Molloy. I knew LaPi went to bat for Andy and I could tell
from the rest of the committee that it was probably going in a different direction so I called Andy
in at first and it turned out that Andy didn’t get it because this guy [ ], you know sold himself
and it was good and he had a lot of professional stuff. He was a marketer and had all the kind of
skills you needed for that and you would hear that two later he had no intension of doing that but
I was struggling.
[Inaudible recording]
G.N.
Let’s move on, talk about the development of the college and as a focus what are some of
the things you played a part in like the core program, the development of the whole core, and
then the move to divisions and then the move to schools.
P.O’K.
I consider one of my more important contributions I think is in the core program. I
don’t think people realize the role I played. If you remember we had the push for the “Four
Modes of Consciousness Core.” This was a core back in 1980- 81. It was a unique idea to build
a core around the idea of the modes of consciousness but no content. It was going to be a 12
credit core. You took a course in the mythopoetic mode, the scientific mode and course I felt
this was going in the wrong direction because we were now having trouble in the late 1970's and
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80's because our kids had no content and no background so here was a core that was a great idea
but it had no content. The student would be taking general courses in the poetic mode and so
there was a battle going on and it caused a lot of wounds. So I proposed a core that would
contain 36 credits, core that would stress the content but also suggested some integrated work
with History and English. It was a 36 credit core.
G.N.
That core involved the liberal arts, the Math, the Science, the 6 credits in
Literature, etcetera, etcetera.
P.O’K.
And in the end, the Academic Policy Committee wrote the present core which
they put 12 more credits on top. They put in 6 credits in writing, a capping course, and they
added an arts course. But the whole push in that core was the content. It was a pretty good core.
I think our present core right now, potentially, is one of the best cores in the whole country. It
has a lot of room to grow. We took it so far but we did not take it as far as we could have. But I
tell you I have been around the country as Core Director, and we have a potential inside our core
that is great. When I had Gerry Gaff come in who is the national authority on cores as a speaker
when I was Core Director, he said, “You guys are so far ahead!” He was awed, he was awed.
We had so much stuff going for us...
G.N.
We had come from a 60-60 though hadn’t we?
P.O’K.
We had come from a 60-60. We had thrown out our core. We had 60- 60 which meant
we gave the students “carte blanche” to do what they want.
12
G.N.
The students decided what they want with the first 60 and the department decided the
other 60.
P.O’K.
Most of the departments didn’t even use the 60 so the students had more than 60 credits
to use. It was a disaster. So then Lou began to work to his credit to develop a value focus. So
that began the idea of coming back to a core concept and so on, and it was the nucleus of the 21
credit core. Then we moved back to the thematic. Then what I was pushing for was the content.
And by the way, I should mention I developed
the Origins course (Origins of History) which was the required course.
G.N.
O.K. That is the academic part of it. How about the faculty part of it; the idea of
divisions?
P.O’K.
O.K. One of the worst mistakes I made after Murray (President Murray) came was I
voted for divisions and pushed it and that is one of the dumbest things I did was change my
stance on divisions and it cost me dearly and other reasons too. My argument was before I
changed my position and supporting it was leave it alone, it is evolving . Already there was a
natural collision developing the art, and literature and communication were already making and
it should have been left that way, just kind of evolve. Once you start going to these mechanical
systems, you start crossing over and it becomes too artificial. It was the worst step we ever
made. And now we got back to a little more sanity at the end, we have departments back. Our
division suffered most from this thing because we were going outside. Other divisions didn’t
suffer because they had the same chair they had before, it did not make much difference. You
guys, Communication and History [departments] got hurt on this because we kept going outside
and it just wasn’t happening.
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G.N.
O.K. Let’s go to the physical plant. Do you recall your first days here and what Marist
College looked like when you came here in 1968? Was it a farm?
P.O’K.
I came a little bit beyond the farm stage. I always consider our group in 1967 as the
new era. You guys and Casey and those guys came in 1963, you were pre-dorm and stuff. By
the time I came, Champagnat and the dorms were up already. But we were no where near where
we are today. We were all still in Donnelly Hall and my office was a table with me, and Lou,
and Vinny and Gerry White all on one table. We were just at one table, half the size of this that
we are sitting at now. And we were in Donnelly, and that was the beauty in a way, we were just
one family.
G.N.
You must have had great interaction.
P.O’K.
Oh, it was great. You look at the new building now and it is different. There is not
much you can do about it. How can you re-create what we had? And the beauty of Marist is that
it was a real blue collar college, and everybody, they had parents that came from blue collar
backgrounds.
G.N.
The kids were in their first college experience.
P O’K
The kids came from that background. There was a closeness between secretaries and
maintenance and faculty. We were rated and one. We all came from the same roots. Those
years were great years. There was a dynamism there; I look back now and I said this to Artin
(Academic Vice President). Looking back now
we had a collection of talent in the 60' and 70's I think that would have matched any small
college in the country. We were blessed really with a real good collection of talent in different
areas and then we had this tremendous dedication. I always regret we did not appreciate the
talent we had. As years went on, Lou would say you don’t find it outside. And this was across
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the board, different aspects of talent and the people coming out of the novitiates (student Marist
Brothers). We were an unusual collection of people in the 1970's.
G.N.
And looking back it is hard to figure how you ever made it, if you just take the library and
walk through your experience you would wonder seriously is this a library?
P.O’K.
Oh, I would dread it. I remember with visitors we would try to avoid it. It was so
small.
G.N.
What was your first [library location], was it Donnelly or Adrian?
P.O’K.
First library was Donnelly oh yes, Donnelly.
G.N.
The computer area?
P.O’K.
Right!
G.N.
Then it was moved over to Fontaine.
P.O’K.
I remember Fontaine well. That was where Tony Camipilli (CFO) was and I had to
check out the business stuff with him when I first came.
G.N.
Any other building? What do you think of the library now? Isn’t this kind of a myth you
would never have thought would happen?
P.O’K.
Oh, when I saw this thing going up I said, “Oh man, the Admission guys will
have a breeze now. If they could bring students in with the old library, what ‘s going happen
now?” But you know we always had a solid academic image. I meet guidance counselors in the
city, particularly a guy at Hayes [Clark] and they always saw Marist as a serious place. It was a
young place coming on, and when you looked at Marist with respect to Manhattan [College] and
others, there was always a respect for Marist. We had a solid academic program. We always
did.
15
G.N.
What do you think are the worthy assets or are the assets of Marist today? What do we
have going for us?
P.O’K.
Today? Location number one... you cannot beat that. And the beautiful campus. You
have to give Murray credit for that. He has a good taste and keeps this campus immaculate. He
has good taste for buildings. You look at the outside design of Fontaine. It is beautiful. Murray
has a good taste for buildings and when you look at the buildings he has put up in the last years,
he has a good taste for the use of space. He has an aesthetic sense, not the depression kind of
culture where we’d squeeze every inch of space we had for practical use. He is keen on keeping
the campus clean. That is a tremendous aspect. And he has a good marketing sense. I was
talking vander Heyden and asked him what do you think Murray’s best talent is? Without
hesitation he said “Marketing!” He is better than Harry Woods.
G.N.
Harry Woods was the Admissions Director?
P.O’K.
Yes, and vander Heyden said Woods was good but Murray is better. He knows what
parents will look at when they come. Without question, Murray is an excellent marketer. But
now, to get back to your question, (What are the assets of Marist?) the campus, the cleanliness,
the buildings are new. There is a class to this place. People come on campus and they are
impressed: the campus is beautiful, the cleanliness, the buildings are new...
G.N.
Well, what about the tradition? Has that survived?
P.O’K.
Yes, the tradition...where is it going? Well, it is fading alright. But there is a potential
for continuation and I am just hoping the young ones grab it. I think the values centered core,
which is something that I have tried to push the last couple of years when I was Core Director.
We tried to get that grant for the core, using Human Rights as the central theme. But then human
rights theme becomes an almost natural secular continuation of the whole values core and so it is
an opportunity to continue the tradition you had without the religious context which is an
16
obstacle for some, but those not concerned about the religious aspect it is the same basic
principles and the idea of Marist is making a statement, is doing something particular with
values. That is the potential that is there. I don’t know if it is going to be followed because the
emphasis on scholarship now is getting so high that what I am seeing now is the traditional
pattern that we will probably move more along the scholarship line and seek recognition in terms
of scholarship and maybe miss the chance of doing something unique, something particularly us.
You know I was down at Princeton a couple of months ago and I was reading something about
their background and that is just where we are going…
[Inaudible recording]
G.N.
What about the student body? How do you see the maturity, the scholarship, the teams,
the balance
between the males and the females? That has changed dramatically, hasn’t it?
P.O’K.
Bringing the females was a great addition. I wonder why they opposed it in the late
1950's but you know what made me oppose it, at the time of course there was no vote in those
days, but I had them (females) in high school and I‘ve seen these girls wrap these guys around
their finger and they were able to get these guys carry their books around and they could push
them all over the place and that kind of stuck with me a little bit. But no, it was a great move.
Early on I had a lot to do with the development of the first courses in “Female Studies” but in
terms today, of the students themselves. I feel so sorry for them and the way they are living and
their experiences. First of all, their skills have been undermined tremendously. We were giving
the kids term papers to do in the late 60's and early 70's that these kids couldn’t do them. In fact
we were moving away from textbooks in the late 60's and coming up with monographs... you
know you could read four different books and then instead a of a textbook, you take your lecture
notes. Well by the late 1970's kids are having a hard time reading textbooks and that process has
17
gotten worse. I don’t blame the kids, it is the culture that they come from. And of course, the
other thing about these kids is really hurtful, I feel so sorry for them, is they come out of culture
that has taught them to identify themselves from the outside. They are object oriented. They
don’t really appreciate their own experience. They don’t get in touch with their own resources as
much because they are bound by the culture. They are perpetually grading it with the outside.
They are so inundated with nightmare-ish stuff down to 9/11, which is the beginning of the
culmination of the nightmare. Well, these kids have had a whole history of the stuff beginning
with nuclear and environmental and AIDS and you name it. A kid grows up in a world today
where I think that the only way they will survive is having little cells inside, and just close down.
They don’t hope. Oh, they have little hopes, like they will get a good job, get married but it is
always small packages. They don’t have an opportunity to dream big and to think of great
possibilities out there. They are crushed ...I feel so sorry for them, I really do. I don’t get angry
when I see the trouble they are dealing with. To me it is a challenge and I say to myself these
poor kids. Now what they really should do is have an education which gets away from all the
information, kind gets them to meditate and get inside of themselves and get them to believe in
themselves. A little quiet time. One thing about being in the Seminary is you know what quiet
time is. We had a lot of time to be inside of ourselves and that is the thing that is lacking with
kids today.
G.N.
They need to learn to be alone.
P.O’K.
They need to learn to be alone and appreciate themselves and a lot of potential there is
out there.
G.N.
O.K. Let’s move it up a little bit and talk about the administration and the administrative
development. When you came here Dr. Foy was in position and would you say something about
your experience as Foy as Head of the College and then as Murray as Head of the College.
18
P.O’K.
First of all, Foy’s great contribution and I come to appreciate it more as the years go on
was “Hands off,” let us do our best. And that’s important. I almost get scared when I think of
somebody as a “management type,” in those years could have killed a lot of stuff. Foy gave us
freedom. Foy empowered us. We could do whatever we want. I was amazed in the mid 70's at
where I was going and the contacts I was making. I had such freedom as long as it did not cost
too much money. I think Foy’s great, great contribution is really that I think and Foy probably
would have been happier if a little earlier he had said “I have done my thing..” I think there was
a point around ‘74 or ‘75 where Foy had done his best work. But you see, if Cashin (Dr. Edward
Cashin,VP) had stayed on, if Foy had worked out something with Cashin and Cashin has stayed
on. I am going to take three or found more years and then you take it. You know what I mean,
what a nice transition that would have been. But I think the mistake Foy had made, which is a
mistake people make… I think he stayed on too long and I got the impression at the end that he
wasn’t really into it. I could see that he could get bored after a while. You can spend so many
years on the job...
G.N.
Well he was here for twenty years!
P.O’K.
Twenty years, you can’t be fired up for twenty years. We never thought we would ever
again have a President for twenty years, for as long as Foy, and Dennis (President Murray) is in
his 22
nd
year. That is why, what I say is that I think, at that time in our history we were lucky to
have someone like Foy at the top. We had talent, we had people, and Foy liked new ideas. Foy
was not hung up on background, we had not dogma here. Everything was even handed... there
wasn’t a freer college in the country than Marist. You could do just about anything. It was just
wide open in terms of ideas, opportunities and so on. And that was a big thing and the older you
get and you look back. In the present minute you do appreciate it because you see others things
and you say we should do this, and we should do that, but that thing was so important when I
19
look back, it was worth whatever limitations that we had. And Foy was an easy guy to like,
nobody disliked Foy. He would sit down with anybody. He was a common man. There was
never any heavy handedness.
G.N.
And what is Murray’s (Pres. Dennis Murray) major contribution?
P.O’K.
Murray has done...I remember when we were talking about the transition and we were
talking about who we wanted and one time we sat down and said “What do we really want in the
next president?” Do we want someone who is very active politically? And I remember Gerry
White saying “He has got to have some savoir- faire. And of course, that was the only thing that
Foy lacked. Foy was a Bronx kid, like most of us with blue collar parents. Savoir-faire was not
exactly what we grew up. And I always remembered that. And Tom (Prof. Casey) talked a lot
about that and he was onto something. And I think Foy lacked that, and I think Murray has a
sense of savoir faire even in a sense of all of the rituals for inauguration like bringing in the
“mace” into the ceremony and so on and then of course, in terms of the campus, and how the
campus looks…
G.N.
Image.
P.O’K.
And the grounds. And talking to Lou one time we talked about accidents and
substance. And it seems the accidents are more important than the substance. [Laughter] And
Murray knows that, the significance of that whole area [buildings, cleanliness, grounds.] And I
think that has been his great contribution.
G.N.
O.K. We have talked a lot about the college and the changes in the college, and what the
college has changed to, what it has gained and lost maybe. From your perspective where is it
going, what about the technology, what about the future, distance learning, - do you see this as
part of where we will be, or is important to us?
20
P.O’K.
Oh yes, we have to keep exploring and we have to take these things but make sure they
will not take us in directions that are counter-productive in terms of our development, then know
enough to back off but given the changes you have to be into distance learning. I see and have
concerns about this too... and the danger, the danger of watering stuff down. But you have to
explore it, you have to see where the possibilities are. So far as the technology, the same thing. I
just do not want to see happen and that is what gives me concern, if do not have the faculty that
is concerned and fighting as tenaciously as we did in respect to the liberal arts if they are
preoccupied with other things and can’t put the time in. I just hope that in the whole expansion
they don’t forget the tremendous potential of the core and of our liberal arts tradition and that
they do not let that become secondary. I think then, we really would hurt ourselves.
G.N.
What about our graduate education? Should we do more of it in history and
communication?
P.O’K.
Again this is a decision Marist is going to have to make. And how far do you
want to take that. It is the whole graduate thing. Now Vassar stays away from that
because its undergraduate is really where it is at. So it really doesn’t really take that
route. But if we follow the traditional pattern we will probably be generalists and stay in that
pattern. Here again, it is a typical thing to say “No, I want Marist to really retain a primary
commitment to undergraduate and do something creative in that area” but it is really difficult to
do that because you have to have some really creative ideas about what you want to do with the
undergraduate degree. We will probably have some guys who will want to go graduate degree.
21
G.N.
I have on the paper that I gave you anything that I didn’t ask that you would like to
mention but before I get to that I have something. What about the people that you have met
here? Could you, without getting tearful… [Laughter]
P.O’K.
Oh God, there are a whole array and some I have been in battles with and maybe hurt a
lot people, put it that way. But you know, that is one thing about Marist of all the people I have
battled with, it never ended up being bitter. And I have noticed in the last six or seven years,
more and more we want to get away from that and more and more getting back to the way it used
to be. We can’t go through a whole transition
and that battles about division without conflicts. One of the regrets I have is I wish my style was
not so explosive, not so aggressive. I have no doubt about the issues I was fighting for but I
think I could have done it.
G.N.
Sometimes the vocabulary.
P.O’K.
I wish I was more like Lou (Zuccarello). I mean every issue I fought Lou
agreed with, but Lou had a much nicer style. I tend to do that, and I regret that part of it.
There was a tremendous alienation at one time.
G.N.
But without the support of other people though like Tom Casey and so on.
P.O’K.
Oh, I had friendships that have come out of here that are unbelievable. I mean,
22
Tom Casey, Lou Zucarrello in particular, but others, you know, but those two in particular,
friendships that are cemented together. And John Griffin who died, you would not trade them in
for anything. Yes, it has been such a tremendous place in terms of friendships. And even that
tension, when you think about it how many people were really fired up there. We had these
arguments, we had these fights but that showed what a lively place we had. There was so people
who had some opinions. They felt strong about them so even the people you were fighting, you
admire... again the energy and the commitment. That was the kind of place it was. As I said
before, we had an unusual collection of people. And in terms of this, the friendships and growth
personally that went on as a result of the friendships. It really was unique, there is no question
about it.
G.N.
For a guy who is retired, you are pretty busy. What are you doing?
P.O’K.
Well, I am not fully retired. I have four courses coming up next Fall.
G.N.
Well, what are you talking about? We had a dinner for your retirement? We
gave you an award.
P.O’K.
Well, I will tell you what I did this spring. This spring was my first dead time.
So I got into to teaching a course in the “Life Time Learning” And that was really great because
it was an opportunity to re-think old material in a different way with a different audience, and I
found myself stepping back and not worry about making sure the student has got this and this
covered, and therefore being able to be more creative and more personal on how you handle
23
material. And it has forced me to study different things. I did a course on the Christianity as a
basis of Europe, the formation of Europe. The idea is that Christianity is the central ingredient
for creating Europe. Of course that forced me back into an earlier period because I knew I was
going to have a segment that was going to be Jewish. So what I did was to do a lot more
homework in terms of the early Christian/ Jewish relationships. And that was fascinating. And
there too, there was a lot of stuff I hadn’t touched before. And now I am reading Augustine,
Brown’s life on Augustine, because I got so into a lot of things. So really, it has turned out to be
a tremendous stimulus because I insist I am going to continue the intellectual challenge. I have a
textbook I used and revised and I keep promising to revise for the Origins [of History] course,
and I would really like to get my tail down to do that. Even if it is only something for my kids,
putting together my summary about what I feel about the evolution of history from the Greeks on
up. Yes, I am busy right now.
G.N.
Yes, 8:30 AM in the morning you are in here, or 8:00 AM.
P.O’K.
Well, I am always been a morning person. By 6:00 AM in the morning.
G.N.
Anything else? We are 58 minutes into this. We have two minutes to go. [Laughter]
P.O’K.
Oh, well yes, the Science of Man, that was the result of a program at APC (Academic
Policy Committee). I was looking for a program for a 3 year degree and Xavier Ryan had the
whole concept... the Science of Man concept and that is how that came together. Now I do not
want to take any credit for the content of the Science of Man, after all that is all Xavier Ryan.
But there never would have been a Science of Man if I wasn’t pursuing the three year degree and
some rationale for having the three year degree. That is how that came about.
G.N.
That is an interesting point. Well, thank you very much.
24
PETER O’KEEFE
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, New York
Transcribed by Mary Ellen Lent
For Marist College Archives and Special Collections
2
Interview Peter O’Keefe
Interviewee
: Dr. Peter O’Keefe
Interviewer
: Gus Nolan
Date
: May 16, 2002
Location
:
Marist College Library in the Archive Room of the James A. Cannavino Library
Topic
: Marist College History
Subject Heading
:
Peter O’Keefe
Marist Brothers –United States-History
Marist College—History
Marist College—(Poughkeepsie, New York)
Marist College—Social Aspects
Summary:
In the following interview, Peter O’Keefe speaks of his years at Marist College as a
History professor. The interview begins with Peter O’Keefe’s introduction to Marist College and
continues on to touch upon his involvement with the college, for example with the Bridge
Program. Peter O’Keefe speaks of the development of the core program from the 60-60 program
and the changes among the college, in terms of the student body, faculty, and physical
development of the college.
3
G.N.
Good morning. This is an interview with Dr. Peter O’Keefe. It’s taking place in the
Marist College library in the Archive room. It’s part of an ongoing project to develop the
Archives. This is an oral interview aspect of it. The date is May 16
th
and it’s about ten o’clock
in the morning.
Good morning Peter.
P.O.’K.
Good morning Gus.
G.N.
Peter,
I’d like to start with an overview of your past, your biological and your personal
life in the development of the person that we know as Dr. O’Keefe. What is your full name?
P. O’K.
Peter O’Keefe.
G.N.
Where you named after any member of the family?
P. O’K.
An uncle who spent a year in MountJoy for his participation in the rebellion of 1916.
G.N.
And how long did he live after the rebellion?
P.O’K.
Not too long. He came over here and died in 1932 of some pneumonia complication
that could have been cured with penicillin today. He didn’t live very long. He didn’t have any
children.
G.N.
Yes, where and when were you born?
P.O’K.
South Bronx on 140
th
Street.
G.N.
When?
P.O’K.
1930, February 2
nd
.
G.N.
And about your early education, where did you go to grade school?
P.O’K.
St. Luke’s grammar school and then St. Pius grammar school, graduated elementary
school in January 1944 and spend six months in Rice High School...124th and Lenox Ave. I
spent the next twelve years in the seminary with an organization called The Divine Word
Fathers. This was the first German Missionary Order.
4
I spent my four high school years( 1944-48) at Miramar which was the minor seminary in
Duxbury, Massachusetts. After high school I did my two year novitiate In Techny Il which is
north of Chicago. From 1950-52, I spent two college years at Epworth, Iowa. For the remaining
four years were spent at Techny where I completed two years of philosophy and two years of
theology.
G.N.
Okay and in your own family at home did you have siblings, brothers or sisters?
P.O.’K.
Yes, there where seven of us, five boys and two girls in the family and I’m the second
oldest.
G.N.
And your parents, what where their names and what did your father do?
P.O.’K.
My father was Michael and he was a mechanic and came from county Kerry in Ireland
in the 1920’s. Originally he was a mechanic. He owned two cab medallions but during the
depression he become a bus driver. My mother came from county Leitram also in the 1920’s.
She was a nurse’s aid at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and married my father in Jean de
Baptist Church in 1926.
G.N.
Was your father on the run from the IRA?
P.O.’K.
No, no. [Laughter]
G.N.
Alright, moving along a little fast forwarding now. What about your own personal life,
your marriage to Alice and your children, could you say something about that? When where you
married and how did you meet Alice?
P.O.’K.
In June 1961 and I met Alice through my sister; she actually had been a classmate of
my younger sister in grammar school. I didn’t meet her through Bridget, I met her through my
other sister, who happened to be on a subway train one day coming home from work. We went
together for a while and got married in Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Queens, say in ’61
by my father’s first cousin, who was an Auxiliary - Bishop in Boston. He played football for
5
Georgetown way back in 1924, ‘25 and ’26 and was secretary to Cardinal O’Connell and later
Chancellor of Boston when the Cardinal died. In 1973, my uncle died of heart attack in Ireland
on his way back from Rome.
G.N.
What about the children, you have three girls and a boy now.
P.O’K.
Three girls and a boy. Mary is a nurse and is now the Director of Infectious Diseases in
Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, NY. Alice is Program Director at AT&T and Theresa is
married and has my two grandchildren and lives in Wappingers Falls. Recently, she got her real
estate license.
G.N.
Yes, say something about Peter.
P.O’K.
Well, Pete is a Marist Grad, a Political Science major and took advantage of the
internship in Washington during his junior year, which was a turning point for him and his
commitment to politics. After volunteering in two local campaigns, he took a job with Geraldine
Ferraro who was running for the U.S. Senate. In December of 1991, he left Geraldine Ferraro to
sign up with the William Jefferson Clinton, a young politician from Arkansas who was running
for President. He worked on the Clinton campaign in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and
Kentucky. After the election of 1992, Pete became a Fund Raiser for the Democratic Party.
[Inaudible recording]
G.N.
Now did he actually work at the White House over the years?
P.O’K.
Oh, yes, after the 96 campaign, Harold Ickes offered him a job in the White House,
where he spent the next year and half. Then he decided to take the opportunity to attend the
London School of Economics, where he received his Master’s degree. When he returned to the
US, he became a fund raiser for the Clinton Library Foundation.
G.N.
Did he travel much?
P.O’K.
Yes, he has been to South America Africa, India, Japan and so on.
6
G.N.
Have you had an occasion to get to the White House?
P.O’K.
Yes, on several occasions and I also attended St. Patrick’s Day celebration three years in
a row.
G.N.
Okay, let’s come back and put more focus on your own development. Where did you do
your graduate work and then what were some of your first teaching jobs?
P.O’K.
After
I left the seminary, I had no formal degrees despite all the education. I was able
to get a degree from Iona after taking 38 credits in one year. I subsequently went to Hunter
College where I received a Master Degree in History. I went on to Fordham University for a
Ph.D. in 1971. In the meantime I taught Latin and English at Bergin Catholic High School in
New Jersey, two years teaching history at Copiague High School, Long Island, NY, about four
years in Saunders High School in Yonkers, where I taught German and History and finally I
spent two years at John Adams High School in NYC. John Adams turned out to be a turning
point in my life because there I met a young lady named Elizabeth Slevin and the conversation
you know one day what are you going to punch the clock? I told her I was working on my
doctorate at the time and I was interested in college. She said would you ever be interested in
Marist College? I said I was interested in anything at that point, you know [Laughter] and so she
had contacts. I said I’d love to meet Augustine Nolan and I happened to have had Augustine
Nolan’s brother at Manhattan College when I was teaching back in the city part-time. Luck
happened there was an opening and I was brought up for an interview in March of ‘67 and I was
told I had the job.
G.N.
Do you recall coming up here and seeing, who did you see when you first came here?
P.O’K.
Cashin, Dr. Cashin.
G.N.
Dr. Cashin
,
Ed Cashin was here.
P.O’K.
I also met with Lou Zuccarello, Jerry White and Brother Murphy.
7
[Inaudible recording]
G.N.
[Laughter] It’s a small world.
And when you did come here, what were your first teaching
assignments, do you remember? Was it just History?
P.O.’K.
Yes, it was all history. It wasn’t much medieval. I had some medieval you know but
yet history in those days we had the two sequences you know that kids had to take all the
questions into two parts, one part up to the middle ages and then the second part, the 1500 to the
present.
G.N.
That’s quite a sweep you know.
P.O’K.
Oh yes, now they don’t make it in one course. [Laughter] There’s twelve credits
required in History, twelve required in Philosophy, twelve required in Language. You know this
is going to be a corporate thing.
G.N.
How many years were you just teaching before you got involved in other activities here?
P.O’K.
As a full time teacher probably down to 1974 and then LaPietra put me in charge of the
Bridge Program which I started here and found working with LaPietra interesting.
G.N.
LaPietra is Richard LaPietra for the shake of our historical record here.
P.O’K.
[Laughter] Our historical record, I had a great year on APC working with LaPietra.
That year was a good year and one of the things that we did that year.
G.N.
Just a foot note what is APC?
P.O’K.
That was the old Academic Policy Committee that took care of all the academic
components with respect to faculty, leadership and academics and as on.
G.N.
As against the FPC which was the Faculty Policy Committee.
P.O’K.
Yes, today [ ] we really have to remain straight I think [ ] and system have to change
the names I felt that the combination we had was so much [ ]. Then we had the [ ] which is
really [ ] the faculty and then we had the [ ] which was a
8
[ ] representing the president in fact when he was, elected recognized faculty and then the
chairperson of the [ ] and then the [ ]. It was really a neat system I thought and then we did this
other crazy stuff and got all complicated. [Laughter] Anyway I had very good working
relationship with LaPietra, I think it was one of my high points, that was the year that I put the
Bridge together.
G.N.
Did the Bridge come before taking the evening division or was that part of the same?
P.O’K.
No, the Bridge came first, it came in ’74, we started the Bridge.
G.N.
Okay let’s stop for a second, what is the Bridge?
P.O’K.
The Bridge is, I got the idea from a Pace High School guy who started the first one he
was teaching down in Chaminard High School, is sending faculty into Chaminard doing full a
full college year and the students seem to be [ ]. So select students were taking a full college
program at [ ] okay, and I came back we where all excited about the possibility for this so we
came up with the idea here in doing a [ ] Bridge, mainly three courses on the high school taught
by Marist faculty and then the high school students would come over to Marist for the rest of the
program, that was a new angle so we called it the Bridge Program. The first one was Lourdes,
the second one was Spackenkill and then subsequently let’s see who else came in… Roosevelt
came but they never really followed through, these were the two [ ]. Then we added on to
another program I know called the School College Course Program and then called School
College Program came in and that is why we came up with the idea of getting credit for certain
advanced courses on the high school taught by high school faculty that would be supervised by
Marist. So that was kind of a new wrinkle to the group and that became very popular. You
know that’s [ ] in Kingston and then we had let’s see Walt [ ] and Denny [ ]. I think the
Wappingers boys eventually came in for a while. You see politics keep the Kingston and the
Wappingers boys out, the president of the [ ] got very uptight about this and was putting a lot of
9
pressure on so they said backed off and Wappingers backed off. You know the programs have
done very well.
G.N.
Do you see those as a kind of an enticement for these students to pick Marist?
P.O’K.
Well, it was strange enough we knew from the beginning that we could probably be
very little trade off on that regard especially with [ ] we had pretty advanced students here with
these students and stuff you know. That was not a major thing but we felt that it was great a
exposure for Marist and that other students and the fact they got to know Marist that they could
become students. Now subsequently more students began to stay and [ ], you know but in the
beginning in was a small percentage of students would actually stay on you know. I think that’s
a much better percentage today, but the other thing that we got into [ ] was we took the lead in
articulation and that was a big thing going on in the state. We pushed to try to accelerate the
sequence from elementary school to finishing college and the idea of pulling together the last
year of high school to the first year of college. There’s a lot of stuff going on taking about it and
we went out in the fore front with this program so Nequest, who the Commissioner chose Marist
to launch the statewide campaign for articulation, so he came here in ‘75 to recruit for us and he
gave the speech you know announcing that the state was going to be putting articulation and
stuff. And subsequently I ran two articulation conferences here, I didn’t follow up a few years
after. And that’s only one of the regrets that I have not following through and we were state
leaders in ’77 and ‘78 with this whole thing. Marist was much more versatile working that. And
the biggest mistake I ever made I took the continuing Ed job in ‘78 and it turned out to be a
distraction, you know and I took it accidentally. I didn’t plan to but first let me tell you about
continuing Ed. I started continuing Ed. What we had was an evening school, you know and I
had start dreaming about this continuing Ed stuff so I went to pay a couple of visits that Brian
made down the way to IBM.
10
G.N.
Dr. Desilets.
P.O’K.
Dr. Desilets yes, and we had to find out, you know we were working on the [ ] and we
were looking for new ways to market this continuing Ed,
which was really weird taking an
English course and turning it into more marketing and getting independent from the other
graduate program. You could do more initiative kind of stuff you know and so on and so forth.
We started going around to get more ideas because these places were visiting us you know, LaPi
went ahead and actually applied for the
first time he hired but it was worth the time the committee was looking elsewhere and one of the
candidates by the way was Andy Molloy. I knew LaPi went to bat for Andy and I could tell
from the rest of the committee that it was probably going in a different direction so I called Andy
in at first and it turned out that Andy didn’t get it because this guy [ ], you know sold himself
and it was good and he had a lot of professional stuff. He was a marketer and had all the kind of
skills you needed for that and you would hear that two later he had no intension of doing that but
I was struggling.
[Inaudible recording]
G.N.
Let’s move on, talk about the development of the college and as a focus what are some of
the things you played a part in like the core program, the development of the whole core, and
then the move to divisions and then the move to schools.
P.O’K.
I consider one of my more important contributions I think is in the core program. I
don’t think people realize the role I played. If you remember we had the push for the “Four
Modes of Consciousness Core.” This was a core back in 1980- 81. It was a unique idea to build
a core around the idea of the modes of consciousness but no content. It was going to be a 12
credit core. You took a course in the mythopoetic mode, the scientific mode and course I felt
this was going in the wrong direction because we were now having trouble in the late 1970's and
11
80's because our kids had no content and no background so here was a core that was a great idea
but it had no content. The student would be taking general courses in the poetic mode and so
there was a battle going on and it caused a lot of wounds. So I proposed a core that would
contain 36 credits, core that would stress the content but also suggested some integrated work
with History and English. It was a 36 credit core.
G.N.
That core involved the liberal arts, the Math, the Science, the 6 credits in
Literature, etcetera, etcetera.
P.O’K.
And in the end, the Academic Policy Committee wrote the present core which
they put 12 more credits on top. They put in 6 credits in writing, a capping course, and they
added an arts course. But the whole push in that core was the content. It was a pretty good core.
I think our present core right now, potentially, is one of the best cores in the whole country. It
has a lot of room to grow. We took it so far but we did not take it as far as we could have. But I
tell you I have been around the country as Core Director, and we have a potential inside our core
that is great. When I had Gerry Gaff come in who is the national authority on cores as a speaker
when I was Core Director, he said, “You guys are so far ahead!” He was awed, he was awed.
We had so much stuff going for us...
G.N.
We had come from a 60-60 though hadn’t we?
P.O’K.
We had come from a 60-60. We had thrown out our core. We had 60- 60 which meant
we gave the students “carte blanche” to do what they want.
12
G.N.
The students decided what they want with the first 60 and the department decided the
other 60.
P.O’K.
Most of the departments didn’t even use the 60 so the students had more than 60 credits
to use. It was a disaster. So then Lou began to work to his credit to develop a value focus. So
that began the idea of coming back to a core concept and so on, and it was the nucleus of the 21
credit core. Then we moved back to the thematic. Then what I was pushing for was the content.
And by the way, I should mention I developed
the Origins course (Origins of History) which was the required course.
G.N.
O.K. That is the academic part of it. How about the faculty part of it; the idea of
divisions?
P.O’K.
O.K. One of the worst mistakes I made after Murray (President Murray) came was I
voted for divisions and pushed it and that is one of the dumbest things I did was change my
stance on divisions and it cost me dearly and other reasons too. My argument was before I
changed my position and supporting it was leave it alone, it is evolving . Already there was a
natural collision developing the art, and literature and communication were already making and
it should have been left that way, just kind of evolve. Once you start going to these mechanical
systems, you start crossing over and it becomes too artificial. It was the worst step we ever
made. And now we got back to a little more sanity at the end, we have departments back. Our
division suffered most from this thing because we were going outside. Other divisions didn’t
suffer because they had the same chair they had before, it did not make much difference. You
guys, Communication and History [departments] got hurt on this because we kept going outside
and it just wasn’t happening.
13
G.N.
O.K. Let’s go to the physical plant. Do you recall your first days here and what Marist
College looked like when you came here in 1968? Was it a farm?
P.O’K.
I came a little bit beyond the farm stage. I always consider our group in 1967 as the
new era. You guys and Casey and those guys came in 1963, you were pre-dorm and stuff. By
the time I came, Champagnat and the dorms were up already. But we were no where near where
we are today. We were all still in Donnelly Hall and my office was a table with me, and Lou,
and Vinny and Gerry White all on one table. We were just at one table, half the size of this that
we are sitting at now. And we were in Donnelly, and that was the beauty in a way, we were just
one family.
G.N.
You must have had great interaction.
P.O’K.
Oh, it was great. You look at the new building now and it is different. There is not
much you can do about it. How can you re-create what we had? And the beauty of Marist is that
it was a real blue collar college, and everybody, they had parents that came from blue collar
backgrounds.
G.N.
The kids were in their first college experience.
P O’K
The kids came from that background. There was a closeness between secretaries and
maintenance and faculty. We were rated and one. We all came from the same roots. Those
years were great years. There was a dynamism there; I look back now and I said this to Artin
(Academic Vice President). Looking back now
we had a collection of talent in the 60' and 70's I think that would have matched any small
college in the country. We were blessed really with a real good collection of talent in different
areas and then we had this tremendous dedication. I always regret we did not appreciate the
talent we had. As years went on, Lou would say you don’t find it outside. And this was across
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the board, different aspects of talent and the people coming out of the novitiates (student Marist
Brothers). We were an unusual collection of people in the 1970's.
G.N.
And looking back it is hard to figure how you ever made it, if you just take the library and
walk through your experience you would wonder seriously is this a library?
P.O’K.
Oh, I would dread it. I remember with visitors we would try to avoid it. It was so
small.
G.N.
What was your first [library location], was it Donnelly or Adrian?
P.O’K.
First library was Donnelly oh yes, Donnelly.
G.N.
The computer area?
P.O’K.
Right!
G.N.
Then it was moved over to Fontaine.
P.O’K.
I remember Fontaine well. That was where Tony Camipilli (CFO) was and I had to
check out the business stuff with him when I first came.
G.N.
Any other building? What do you think of the library now? Isn’t this kind of a myth you
would never have thought would happen?
P.O’K.
Oh, when I saw this thing going up I said, “Oh man, the Admission guys will
have a breeze now. If they could bring students in with the old library, what ‘s going happen
now?” But you know we always had a solid academic image. I meet guidance counselors in the
city, particularly a guy at Hayes [Clark] and they always saw Marist as a serious place. It was a
young place coming on, and when you looked at Marist with respect to Manhattan [College] and
others, there was always a respect for Marist. We had a solid academic program. We always
did.
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G.N.
What do you think are the worthy assets or are the assets of Marist today? What do we
have going for us?
P.O’K.
Today? Location number one... you cannot beat that. And the beautiful campus. You
have to give Murray credit for that. He has a good taste and keeps this campus immaculate. He
has good taste for buildings. You look at the outside design of Fontaine. It is beautiful. Murray
has a good taste for buildings and when you look at the buildings he has put up in the last years,
he has a good taste for the use of space. He has an aesthetic sense, not the depression kind of
culture where we’d squeeze every inch of space we had for practical use. He is keen on keeping
the campus clean. That is a tremendous aspect. And he has a good marketing sense. I was
talking vander Heyden and asked him what do you think Murray’s best talent is? Without
hesitation he said “Marketing!” He is better than Harry Woods.
G.N.
Harry Woods was the Admissions Director?
P.O’K.
Yes, and vander Heyden said Woods was good but Murray is better. He knows what
parents will look at when they come. Without question, Murray is an excellent marketer. But
now, to get back to your question, (What are the assets of Marist?) the campus, the cleanliness,
the buildings are new. There is a class to this place. People come on campus and they are
impressed: the campus is beautiful, the cleanliness, the buildings are new...
G.N.
Well, what about the tradition? Has that survived?
P.O’K.
Yes, the tradition...where is it going? Well, it is fading alright. But there is a potential
for continuation and I am just hoping the young ones grab it. I think the values centered core,
which is something that I have tried to push the last couple of years when I was Core Director.
We tried to get that grant for the core, using Human Rights as the central theme. But then human
rights theme becomes an almost natural secular continuation of the whole values core and so it is
an opportunity to continue the tradition you had without the religious context which is an
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obstacle for some, but those not concerned about the religious aspect it is the same basic
principles and the idea of Marist is making a statement, is doing something particular with
values. That is the potential that is there. I don’t know if it is going to be followed because the
emphasis on scholarship now is getting so high that what I am seeing now is the traditional
pattern that we will probably move more along the scholarship line and seek recognition in terms
of scholarship and maybe miss the chance of doing something unique, something particularly us.
You know I was down at Princeton a couple of months ago and I was reading something about
their background and that is just where we are going…
[Inaudible recording]
G.N.
What about the student body? How do you see the maturity, the scholarship, the teams,
the balance
between the males and the females? That has changed dramatically, hasn’t it?
P.O’K.
Bringing the females was a great addition. I wonder why they opposed it in the late
1950's but you know what made me oppose it, at the time of course there was no vote in those
days, but I had them (females) in high school and I‘ve seen these girls wrap these guys around
their finger and they were able to get these guys carry their books around and they could push
them all over the place and that kind of stuck with me a little bit. But no, it was a great move.
Early on I had a lot to do with the development of the first courses in “Female Studies” but in
terms today, of the students themselves. I feel so sorry for them and the way they are living and
their experiences. First of all, their skills have been undermined tremendously. We were giving
the kids term papers to do in the late 60's and early 70's that these kids couldn’t do them. In fact
we were moving away from textbooks in the late 60's and coming up with monographs... you
know you could read four different books and then instead a of a textbook, you take your lecture
notes. Well by the late 1970's kids are having a hard time reading textbooks and that process has
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gotten worse. I don’t blame the kids, it is the culture that they come from. And of course, the
other thing about these kids is really hurtful, I feel so sorry for them, is they come out of culture
that has taught them to identify themselves from the outside. They are object oriented. They
don’t really appreciate their own experience. They don’t get in touch with their own resources as
much because they are bound by the culture. They are perpetually grading it with the outside.
They are so inundated with nightmare-ish stuff down to 9/11, which is the beginning of the
culmination of the nightmare. Well, these kids have had a whole history of the stuff beginning
with nuclear and environmental and AIDS and you name it. A kid grows up in a world today
where I think that the only way they will survive is having little cells inside, and just close down.
They don’t hope. Oh, they have little hopes, like they will get a good job, get married but it is
always small packages. They don’t have an opportunity to dream big and to think of great
possibilities out there. They are crushed ...I feel so sorry for them, I really do. I don’t get angry
when I see the trouble they are dealing with. To me it is a challenge and I say to myself these
poor kids. Now what they really should do is have an education which gets away from all the
information, kind gets them to meditate and get inside of themselves and get them to believe in
themselves. A little quiet time. One thing about being in the Seminary is you know what quiet
time is. We had a lot of time to be inside of ourselves and that is the thing that is lacking with
kids today.
G.N.
They need to learn to be alone.
P.O’K.
They need to learn to be alone and appreciate themselves and a lot of potential there is
out there.
G.N.
O.K. Let’s move it up a little bit and talk about the administration and the administrative
development. When you came here Dr. Foy was in position and would you say something about
your experience as Foy as Head of the College and then as Murray as Head of the College.
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P.O’K.
First of all, Foy’s great contribution and I come to appreciate it more as the years go on
was “Hands off,” let us do our best. And that’s important. I almost get scared when I think of
somebody as a “management type,” in those years could have killed a lot of stuff. Foy gave us
freedom. Foy empowered us. We could do whatever we want. I was amazed in the mid 70's at
where I was going and the contacts I was making. I had such freedom as long as it did not cost
too much money. I think Foy’s great, great contribution is really that I think and Foy probably
would have been happier if a little earlier he had said “I have done my thing..” I think there was
a point around ‘74 or ‘75 where Foy had done his best work. But you see, if Cashin (Dr. Edward
Cashin,VP) had stayed on, if Foy had worked out something with Cashin and Cashin has stayed
on. I am going to take three or found more years and then you take it. You know what I mean,
what a nice transition that would have been. But I think the mistake Foy had made, which is a
mistake people make… I think he stayed on too long and I got the impression at the end that he
wasn’t really into it. I could see that he could get bored after a while. You can spend so many
years on the job...
G.N.
Well he was here for twenty years!
P.O’K.
Twenty years, you can’t be fired up for twenty years. We never thought we would ever
again have a President for twenty years, for as long as Foy, and Dennis (President Murray) is in
his 22
nd
year. That is why, what I say is that I think, at that time in our history we were lucky to
have someone like Foy at the top. We had talent, we had people, and Foy liked new ideas. Foy
was not hung up on background, we had not dogma here. Everything was even handed... there
wasn’t a freer college in the country than Marist. You could do just about anything. It was just
wide open in terms of ideas, opportunities and so on. And that was a big thing and the older you
get and you look back. In the present minute you do appreciate it because you see others things
and you say we should do this, and we should do that, but that thing was so important when I
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look back, it was worth whatever limitations that we had. And Foy was an easy guy to like,
nobody disliked Foy. He would sit down with anybody. He was a common man. There was
never any heavy handedness.
G.N.
And what is Murray’s (Pres. Dennis Murray) major contribution?
P.O’K.
Murray has done...I remember when we were talking about the transition and we were
talking about who we wanted and one time we sat down and said “What do we really want in the
next president?” Do we want someone who is very active politically? And I remember Gerry
White saying “He has got to have some savoir- faire. And of course, that was the only thing that
Foy lacked. Foy was a Bronx kid, like most of us with blue collar parents. Savoir-faire was not
exactly what we grew up. And I always remembered that. And Tom (Prof. Casey) talked a lot
about that and he was onto something. And I think Foy lacked that, and I think Murray has a
sense of savoir faire even in a sense of all of the rituals for inauguration like bringing in the
“mace” into the ceremony and so on and then of course, in terms of the campus, and how the
campus looks…
G.N.
Image.
P.O’K.
And the grounds. And talking to Lou one time we talked about accidents and
substance. And it seems the accidents are more important than the substance. [Laughter] And
Murray knows that, the significance of that whole area [buildings, cleanliness, grounds.] And I
think that has been his great contribution.
G.N.
O.K. We have talked a lot about the college and the changes in the college, and what the
college has changed to, what it has gained and lost maybe. From your perspective where is it
going, what about the technology, what about the future, distance learning, - do you see this as
part of where we will be, or is important to us?
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P.O’K.
Oh yes, we have to keep exploring and we have to take these things but make sure they
will not take us in directions that are counter-productive in terms of our development, then know
enough to back off but given the changes you have to be into distance learning. I see and have
concerns about this too... and the danger, the danger of watering stuff down. But you have to
explore it, you have to see where the possibilities are. So far as the technology, the same thing. I
just do not want to see happen and that is what gives me concern, if do not have the faculty that
is concerned and fighting as tenaciously as we did in respect to the liberal arts if they are
preoccupied with other things and can’t put the time in. I just hope that in the whole expansion
they don’t forget the tremendous potential of the core and of our liberal arts tradition and that
they do not let that become secondary. I think then, we really would hurt ourselves.
G.N.
What about our graduate education? Should we do more of it in history and
communication?
P.O’K.
Again this is a decision Marist is going to have to make. And how far do you
want to take that. It is the whole graduate thing. Now Vassar stays away from that
because its undergraduate is really where it is at. So it really doesn’t really take that
route. But if we follow the traditional pattern we will probably be generalists and stay in that
pattern. Here again, it is a typical thing to say “No, I want Marist to really retain a primary
commitment to undergraduate and do something creative in that area” but it is really difficult to
do that because you have to have some really creative ideas about what you want to do with the
undergraduate degree. We will probably have some guys who will want to go graduate degree.
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G.N.
I have on the paper that I gave you anything that I didn’t ask that you would like to
mention but before I get to that I have something. What about the people that you have met
here? Could you, without getting tearful… [Laughter]
P.O’K.
Oh God, there are a whole array and some I have been in battles with and maybe hurt a
lot people, put it that way. But you know, that is one thing about Marist of all the people I have
battled with, it never ended up being bitter. And I have noticed in the last six or seven years,
more and more we want to get away from that and more and more getting back to the way it used
to be. We can’t go through a whole transition
and that battles about division without conflicts. One of the regrets I have is I wish my style was
not so explosive, not so aggressive. I have no doubt about the issues I was fighting for but I
think I could have done it.
G.N.
Sometimes the vocabulary.
P.O’K.
I wish I was more like Lou (Zuccarello). I mean every issue I fought Lou
agreed with, but Lou had a much nicer style. I tend to do that, and I regret that part of it.
There was a tremendous alienation at one time.
G.N.
But without the support of other people though like Tom Casey and so on.
P.O’K.
Oh, I had friendships that have come out of here that are unbelievable. I mean,
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Tom Casey, Lou Zucarrello in particular, but others, you know, but those two in particular,
friendships that are cemented together. And John Griffin who died, you would not trade them in
for anything. Yes, it has been such a tremendous place in terms of friendships. And even that
tension, when you think about it how many people were really fired up there. We had these
arguments, we had these fights but that showed what a lively place we had. There was so people
who had some opinions. They felt strong about them so even the people you were fighting, you
admire... again the energy and the commitment. That was the kind of place it was. As I said
before, we had an unusual collection of people. And in terms of this, the friendships and growth
personally that went on as a result of the friendships. It really was unique, there is no question
about it.
G.N.
For a guy who is retired, you are pretty busy. What are you doing?
P.O’K.
Well, I am not fully retired. I have four courses coming up next Fall.
G.N.
Well, what are you talking about? We had a dinner for your retirement? We
gave you an award.
P.O’K.
Well, I will tell you what I did this spring. This spring was my first dead time.
So I got into to teaching a course in the “Life Time Learning” And that was really great because
it was an opportunity to re-think old material in a different way with a different audience, and I
found myself stepping back and not worry about making sure the student has got this and this
covered, and therefore being able to be more creative and more personal on how you handle
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material. And it has forced me to study different things. I did a course on the Christianity as a
basis of Europe, the formation of Europe. The idea is that Christianity is the central ingredient
for creating Europe. Of course that forced me back into an earlier period because I knew I was
going to have a segment that was going to be Jewish. So what I did was to do a lot more
homework in terms of the early Christian/ Jewish relationships. And that was fascinating. And
there too, there was a lot of stuff I hadn’t touched before. And now I am reading Augustine,
Brown’s life on Augustine, because I got so into a lot of things. So really, it has turned out to be
a tremendous stimulus because I insist I am going to continue the intellectual challenge. I have a
textbook I used and revised and I keep promising to revise for the Origins [of History] course,
and I would really like to get my tail down to do that. Even if it is only something for my kids,
putting together my summary about what I feel about the evolution of history from the Greeks on
up. Yes, I am busy right now.
G.N.
Yes, 8:30 AM in the morning you are in here, or 8:00 AM.
P.O’K.
Well, I am always been a morning person. By 6:00 AM in the morning.
G.N.
Anything else? We are 58 minutes into this. We have two minutes to go. [Laughter]
P.O’K.
Oh, well yes, the Science of Man, that was the result of a program at APC (Academic
Policy Committee). I was looking for a program for a 3 year degree and Xavier Ryan had the
whole concept... the Science of Man concept and that is how that came together. Now I do not
want to take any credit for the content of the Science of Man, after all that is all Xavier Ryan.
But there never would have been a Science of Man if I wasn’t pursuing the three year degree and
some rationale for having the three year degree. That is how that came about.
G.N.
That is an interesting point. Well, thank you very much.
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