Anthony Campilii Oral History Transcript
Media
Part of Anthony (Tony) Campilii Oral History
content
Tony Campilii
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, NY
Transcribed by Nancy Decker
For the Marist College Archives and Special Collections
Transcript – Anthony Campilii
Interviewee:
Anthony Campilii
Interviewer:
Gus Nolan
Interview Date:
30 November 2001
Location:
Fontaine Building at Marist College
CD No.:
Subject Headings:
Campilii, Anthony
Marist College—Administration
Marist College History
Marist College (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.)
Summary:
In this interview Mr. Campilii comments on his position as Chief Financial
Officer and his 40 plus years at Marist. This includes: his unique experiences in developing a
staff and the Business Office, his thoughts on the presidencies of Dr. Linus Richard Foy and
Dr. Dennis J. Murray and how Marist has changed over the past forty years.
Anthony Campilii 1
[BEGINNING OF INTERVIEW]
Gus Nolan:
Good morning, this is an interview with Anthony
Campilii, Vice President for
Business Affairs and the Chief Financial Officer at Marist College. The date is November
30
th
; we’re interviewing Mr. Campilii in the new [Library] building at Marist College.
Good morning Tony.
Anthony Campilii:
Good morning Gus.
GN:
Tony could you give us your full name please?
AC:
Anthony Vincent Campilii. With two “I”s on the end, like in Hawaii.
GN:
Were you named after another member of the family?
AC:
I was, my Dad. Anthony is a family name and so in my father’s family every branch of
the family has a son derivative of Anthony with one of the children.
GN:
Where were your born and when?
AC:
I was born in Poughkeepsie, I assume it was Poughkeepsie, but in Dutchess County,
July 17, 1941.
GN:
Do you have any siblings and what are their names?
AC:
I had a sibling. I had a sister and her name was Lorraine and unfortunately she passed
away so now I’m an only child.
GN:
Where did you grow up and tell me about the home-town.
AC:
I grew up in a small little village called Wappingers Falls, a little village of about Five
thousand people. My wife also comes from the village of Wappingers Falls. We both went
to school in Wappingers Falls, at St. Mary’s, for the first eight grades. It’s a charming little
town. Even though the surrounding area has grown rapidly, the village has stayed relatively
the same and it’s wonderful to see that little town maintains its character. I went to a Catholic
High School for one year in Newburgh, St. Patrick’s High School, but I also, at the time, I
Anthony Campilii 2
realized that I was the only one in the village that was going there and I was a lonely child for
one year. I decided that I wanted to go where all the rest of the kids went and so I transferred
as a sophomore to Wappingers Central School, at the time. I proceeded to have my
sophomore, junior, and senior years in Wappingers.
GN:
Can you tell me about your parents names and their occupations?
AC:
My mother’s name is Venzie, which is a derivative of Venchezza or Vincent for the
male name. She was, at first a seamstress, and then with very nimble hands and a very acute
business sense she went to work in a local dress factory where she became a fore-lady and
virtually the assistant manager who ran the store for the, who ran the factory virtually for the
owner. She gave me my first job. I had a job when I was six years old and I worked in that
dress factory doing a variety of things until I graduated High School. This was my source of
revenue, and the only caveat was, since I was underage, if I saw the suits walk in the front
door, I was to run like hell out the back door [Laughter] and that was the caveat to that. She
was a seamstress until she retired, oh probably twenty- five years ago and she basically
retired because of ill health. Had very serious back difficulties and other kinds of problems.
My dad is a unique story because even though he didn’t have great command of the English
language, he was born here, and of his family, he’s the only American citizen. But when he
was three years old his mother became ill and the entire family moved back to a little town
called Nocciano in Italy, which is directly across from Rome on the Adriatic Sea. He lived
there with his mother and father and his five siblings until he was nineteen. As my uncle
recalls it, when he was nineteen, he was called into the Italian military. My uncle who lived
in the United States, called him and said, as an American citizen you have no responsibility,
if you don’t want to, to go into the Italian military. So, he called my father over and my
Anthony Campilii 3
father came here, dropped what he had picked up a small little suitcase, got on the boat, my
uncle had given him passage, and landed in New York City. He came to Wappingers Falls
where he lived with his aunt and uncle for quite some time. As he recalls it, he was so lonely
that if he had had the money, within two or three months he would have turned around and
gone right back home because he was terribly, terribly lonely. He didn’t know the language,
knew no one, he was an outsider because he didn’t speak the language, had difficulty getting
a job, but he persisted and then went to work for New York Trap Rock where he worked
himself up as a laborer to one of the guys who went up and down the Hudson River with the
tugs. He became... He had no formal schooling but had quick knowledge and was a quick
learner; had nimble hands and a great mind and was able to pick up engineering and all kinds
of things where they promoted him and promoted him. Why he left, I never really knew but
then he went to work for Lumb Woodworking Company where he was their boiler man and
also the mechanic on duty that fixed all the machines did everything; however, they wanted
to promote him probably umpteen times. He turned them down because my father got
through his entire career with no one (where he worked) ever knowing that he couldn’t read
and write. When he had to order parts or what have you, he went to one of his good friends
and he said this is what I need, this is how many I need and here’s the part. You write it
down, you order it, and then just have them ship it to me. He went through probably fifty
years without anyone knowing that he did not have command of the English language. He
memorized all the road signs; he memorized the alphabet so that he could pass the exam for
his driver’s license. When he went for his driver’s test he could say I know, he knew what
the letter was, he didn’t know how to piece them all together.
Anthony Campilii 4
GN:
Beautiful story. About your own personal life, how long have you been married to
Ginny?
AC:
Ginny and I have been married for thirty-nine years this last October. We were
grammar school sweethearts; we were high school sweethearts. We went our separate ways;
each of us had different boyfriends, and girlfriends. I went away to the University of Buffalo
as a sixteen-year-old senior and college freshman. I only lasted a week at the University of
Buffalo because I was homesick. I may have had the brains, but I did not have, I think, the
social skills or the maturity that probably a college freshman should have, so I came home
and went to Dutchess Community College. Ginny having graduated from the same class as I,
from Wappingers; was going to Dutchess Community College. Since she and her family had
a car, we drove together for two years back and forth to school and gradually our relationship
that we had as sophomores in high school rekindled and we went on from there.
GN:
Tell me about the children now.
AC:
We have three great kids. I have a daughter Susan, who’s our first. If you’re going to
ask me their ages, I think she’s thirty-seven. I keep putting it out of my mind because I don’t
want to have children that old. My son is thirty-five, his name is Christian and then my
youngest daughter Allison is thirty-one. Allison is the only one of my children who came to
Marist College and had a wonderful experience. The other two, are graduates of the
University of Notre Dame.
GN:
Have you stayed active in community activities? I see from your resume, you really
have been involved in the community in Wappingers in various kinds of social and religious
activities. Are you still active?
Anthony Campilii 5
AC:
Oh, I’m very active. That’s one of the things that keep me going. I enjoy my work
here, and going into the community I have an opportunity working to represent myself and
my family and my background, but also to represent Marist College. In many things, United
Way, and I’ve been on our local Grinnell Library Board. I keep telling them that as a kid, I
was a pretty mean kid and I got thrown out of the library so many times that I said at some
point I have to come back and make amends. It’s a small little library that’s the same small
little library and so I said I have to go back and do something for the number of times that
poor librarian had to throw me out for raising holy hell.
GN:
Are you still active in it?
AC:
Oh yes, I’ve been a former president and now I’m still on the Board of Directors, very,
very active. It happens to be right down the street from where I live and I’m the second
caller if there is an emergency after the library is closed. The cops call me and say, "Will
you come down?" I have a key. "Will you come down and help us search the library and
find out why the alarm system went off?" The librarian, she used to live in the library, and
she would come out in her nightgown with her coat on. I could hear the alarm go off from
my house and I would slip on my clothes and I kept telling her we have to stop meeting like
this at two o’clock in the morning; you in your nightgown and me with very little on other
than a pair of slacks and a coat [Laughter].
GN:
Okay, let’s move on to your coming to Marist College. Let me ask you this, what made
you select Marist for finishing your undergraduate work? You could have studied anywhere.
AC:
I could have gone anywhere, it was honestly a matter of convenience, and you have to
understand, at the end of my two years at Dutchess, my plan was, and it always bothered me,
that I didn’t have the maturity to last at a residential campus. And so, my goal was, I was
Anthony Campilii 6
going to go back to the University of Buffalo and I was going to make my mark there and
prove to myself and my family that I could handle this, that I was mature enough. So, after I
graduated with an associate degree in Business, I applied and was readmitted to the
University of Buffalo. I went up there, spoke to the Dean, got my credits approved, and was
going in, registered to go in, as a full-fledged junior. Left home drove up there, got to the
Dean’s office and he informed me that since I was going to get a degree, at that time, in
accounting, from the University of Buffalo, I had to start from scratch. All my accounting
credits and the business courses that I had taken at Dutchess Community College were no
longer valid. I questioned him as to why; I had these letters, I had this commitment and now
he said “Well, we've had to change our mind.” At that time, you also have to understand,
Ginny and I were the first graduating class from Dutchess Community College; so Dutchess
Community College was an untested product, so maybe they were a little squeamish. I said
there was no way I was going to put my father, the minimum I would have to stay at the
University of Buffalo was three years. I said that I was not going to put my mother and
father through that kind of expense. I packed my bags and left the University of Buffalo
again. This time, not because I was not mature and homesick, but because I had my Italian
temper up and I just said this is not for me. I knew at the time, before I left, I had checked in
on Marist, as to whether or not, I knew this was a local school because by the time I left I
knew this was going to be very difficult to get into someplace else. I checked with Marist;
Marist had started a week later. So, when I came home, much to the chagrin of my mother
and father, because I flew home and again they thought, oh he couldn’t handle it and
everything so I had to explain it to them and they didn’t understand. I started Marist two
Anthony Campilii 7
days later. At that time, they thought for sure I was going to be a priest or a brother because
all they knew was Marist, the Brothers, the cloisters up the road in Poughkeepsie.
GN:
Now, you come to Marist and you’re here for two years; you graduated in sixty-two.
How did you move from a graduating senior to the financial office at the college? What was
the connection there?
AC:
The connection was a lady by the name of Mary Travis. Mary Travis happened to be a
very dear friend of my unmarried aunt, my mother’s sister. I got to know her through who
we called Aunt Mill, and I also knew that once every semester I had to go up to some office
and plunk my money down, which at that time was three hundred dollars for the entire
semester. As I became a senior, I started looking around and I’m saying to her, who handles
the books? Who handles the finances? Who handles this who handles that? And she kept
saying I do, and at that time, Richard Foy or his name at that time was Brother Linus Foy
was away on a second novitiate in Rome. There was an acting President; his name was
Brother Daniel Kirk. I started asking questions of Brother Dan Kirk as to whether or not
there might be any interest in me as a graduate to handle some of the finances, because there
was a Business Program in the evening division, but there was no business major in the day
division. I was the first person who was going to graduate with a degree in Business
Administration, because all the other men were at night, and they weren’t as far along as I
was. I came in with sixty credits, so I was able to graduate in two years. The Business
Program hadn’t been open that long, so I was able to muster enough credits to get through the
program in two years. I had applied for other jobs, had sought an accounting firm, but still
had my mind; I saw an opportunity here because there was nobody here to do what I thought
had to be done and that I could probably do. So, I kept hounding Dan Kirk, and he kept
Anthony Campilii 8
saying I don’t have the authority to hire; however, I’ll pass this along to Linus Foy when he
returns. Well, I thought that was a great put off and kind of resigned myself that nothing was
going to come of it. After graduation I applied for a job in a county firm in Newburgh, a
CPA firm. They were kind enough after a series of interviews, I beat out the other candidates
and they offered me a job. Well in the interim, through my college career, I worked at the
A&P on a part-time basis with a great manager who understood the fact that I was going to
college and worked my schedule around my class schedule and around my crew program.
He said that I could stay there as long as I wanted to, even on a full-time basis. That’s what I
did after graduation. I stayed there until I was hired. Ginny and I were engaged at the time,
we were going to get married in October. He allowed me to stay and that was my source of
revenue until this new job was supposed to start. In the interim, I guess it was the day after
the fourth of July, July fifth. I was in bed and my mother gets this telephone call from a
Brother Linus Foy, whom she had no knowledge of. Linus Foy calls me and says, listen, I
hear that you are looking for a job, and that you have been interested in Marist. I know that
you are a graduate, how would you like to come up and talk? I said all right, give me an hour
or two to shave and shower and I’ll come up and I would like to meet you. We talked,
probably that afternoon for maybe three or four hours. I immediately connected with this
man. He was an ideal person. You could see he was so genuine, down to earth. I had no
experience whatsoever in terms of what I was asking him to accept on faith; things that I
knew I could probably do. He said, well, we don’t have a lot of money around here; we need
somebody to do this because Mary Travis is retired from Central Hudson. She’s not a
bookkeeper, she’s not an accountant. We need somebody to do the job, so yes, if you are
interested, we’ll take you on. We would like to… the only trouble is we can only pay you
Anthony Campilii 9
eighty-five dollars a week. Well eighty-five dollars a week, even back then, was considered
poverty level. I knew that I had expenses of furnishing a house and getting married or what
have you. Or I should say, furnishing an apartment. I went home and talked to, at that time,
my fiancée and said well, what do you think? I kind of weighed the pros and cons of having
to cross the Newburgh Beacon Bridge, the tolls and the gas back and forth and I said, you
know, it might be worth while since I was able to beat out all these other guys for this first
job, chances are I can do it again. If I don’t like what I see at Marist, I can always quit and
get another job. So I called Rich Foy, Linus Foy, and I said if you still want me, I’d like to
take the job. I started on July sixteenth, 1962, which was about two months after I graduated
from the college. I often tell people that the reason why they offered me the job since I was
their first Business graduate; they didn’t know what to do with me and they were afraid to let
me loose. They didn’t want me to go out and embarrass them, so they put me on the payroll.
[Laughter]
GN:
Well actually, historically, Linus was probably one of the youngest college’s presidents
at the time and in parallel you were probably one of the youngest financial officers in a four-
year college at the time.
AC:
It was the truth. As a matter of fact, a mention was made of that. Probably a year after
I started, or two years, we had a Middle States evaluation. I believe, if we research some of
the comments; they alluded to the youth of the administration of the college, which they were
not terribly much in favor of. There was Tom Wade who was probably twenty-three or
twenty-four; there was Brother John Malachy who was the Registrar, who was in his early
twenties. They looked at Linus Foy, who at that time was the youngest College President in
Anthony Campilii 10
the United States. They looked at this snot nosed kid who was handling the finances and said
you guys don’t have your act together.
GN:
Tell me about the beginning of the development of the office. When did you first start
to begin to get a staff in the financial corner of the college?
AC:
Well, I would say for the first year or two, Mary Travis was then doing the
bookkeeping; she dumped everything and said now this is all yours. Which was great
because, that’s how I learn… theoretically I learned on the job. I knew the skills from
bumper to books; but never had to actually sit down and do it. Linus was a great teacher.
His office and my office were next to each other, and we had a door between us and that door
was always open. I heard what he did; he heard what I did; only if he had a private meeting
did he ever close that door. So he mentored me, he showed me what he wanted me to do, he
said, ok, now you figure this out and I certainly made my share of mistakes. At first, I had to
do the payroll, which I had never done before, learning all about income taxes and things of
that nature. Then I had to learn the billing for the fall semester. Then I had to learn
purchasing; I had to learn the rudiments of personnel and hiring. The fact that I was their
only businessperson, all of that fell on my shoulders. He said this is what you have to do
from here on in. It was a beautiful education, but it was an education on the job, because
there was nobody else to do it and that was my function. I often think about payday, and I
was the most popular person on campus at the end of the month when everybody got paid.
Everybody was concerned about my welfare; is he going to be in today, are we going to get
paid today? Things like that. At that time then, for probably for a year or two, Mary Travis
was working for me partially, doing some of the bookkeeping, and was Linus Foy’s
secretary, we both used her. Then we realized, as we started to take on a few more students,
Anthony Campilii 11
that Mary Travis, and again it was a part time job for her; that she really couldn’t handle all
of my work that was starting to expand, and all of Linus Foy’s work. So, I began to search
around, and there was a lady, who also was a friend of Mary Travis who was on the staff in
the evening division, as a secretary to Dr. John Schroeder, who was looking for a day job. If
you look at the Marist of that day, we didn’t have a lot of women on campus and there were
only like two secretaries. I said, I need somebody who can type, I need somebody who can
take dictation, I need somebody who is good with figures and this lady filled the bill. Her
name was Marion Strictland. She was the best thing that ever happened to me, my career,
and my office. She was my secretary for twenty-five years from that time forward. She and
Mary Travis began to share an office and then I still had my office and Richard Foy had his
office.
GN:
Related to this point that you’ve touched on; and that is, keep me abreast of the
regulations the legal the regulations regarding taxes, deductions and so on, was there an
opportunity to learn this from seminars? Did you get a chance to share your experiences with
other college people like yourself or did the MBA program itself take care of most of it?
AC:
No, I never started the MBA program until quite some time later. Linus sent me to a
number of workshops…. he sent me to a week-long seminar in Washington, D.C. to learn the
ropes. I went to insurance seminars; I went to accounting seminars; wherever I could pick up
and basically learn the trade of higher education. I also became a member of the National
Association of College and University Business Officers. I literally found out that when you
went to a convention, you didn't learn anything there, it was a good… let's socialize. Where
you really learned was the workshops, the round table discussions and so after a few junkets
at their national association, I realized that that was not the place for me. I wanted to go to
Anthony Campilii 12
the regional, sometimes even local seminars where you sat there and you literally came out
and felt, I have really learned something today, and then hopefully brought that all back as
part of my bag of tricks. What I was doing was not totally what I was trained for, I was
trained to be an accountant and all of a sudden Linus, the college had these needs. I didn't
know how to interview for a secretary, and I didn't know how… the questions that you were
supposed to ask and the questions that you weren't supposed to ask. You learned by going to
a seminar on personnel, inter-office communication, those kinds of things. I was very, very
fortunate that the College was that young and didn’t need the gross expertise of someone that
you would hire today. I learned on the job, Linus, I always have said this and I will go to my
grave saying this, he took a big chance, he took a gamble. I would like to think that that
gamble paid off, but he did take a gamble on a youngster with two years of an untested
program that Marist offered because there was nobody that graduated that was out there in
the community doing what I was doing. We learned together, he learned and of course he
wasn't a businessman either; so I learned, I shared my information, as he learned, he shared
his in information and the beauty of Linus Foy was, that if you made a mistake it was as
though he made the mistake. You got called for it, never in a demeaning way, he always
insisted that you learn from you mistakes; he never hung you out to dry, we can tolerate other
mistakes, but don't make the same mistake again.
GN:
Ok, I think it's only fair to say that he saw quality in the bud here and eventually that
the roles would bloom, and we are very happy with that. In a new direction, when did you
first get a suspicion that Marist was really going to grow and become what it is? Was it the
beginning of the building programs, or was it the beginning of new students coming in?
When did you see that?
Anthony Campilii 13
AC:
I think I began to see a light at the tunnel for me in terms of staying or leaving when
Champagnat first went online, which was in 1965. At that time, that was a building that was
going to house four hundred students, we didn't have four hundred students. With Leo and
Sheahan we didn’t have four hundred students to fill that, and part of the design was that
building was going to open but we weren't going to fill it the first year. We had to put
admissions things into place, so that in year two, we could stand probably one year of a loss,
ok, but we couldn't stand two years and so all of a sudden, the Admissions Office became a
much more valuable function. You could see the plan for the fact that this College was going
to grow. Then I think the next step for me was when we added women. Having an all-male
institution was great, I was a part of it for two years as a student, saw what it did. When I got
out, I became an administrator, but in the modern world, in all male or all female institution,
my gut told me that this was going to be a thing of the past. I think that it was to our benefit
that we began to take on women. It added a different character to the institution, it rounded
out, I mean some of the men were sloppy here. They had no social skills. They didn't know
how to treat women. They treated them as second-class citizens and that is not a way to
leave any type of educational function, going out as though women were toys on a shelf. I
think adding women added such a rounding for the collegiate experience. I never thought
they would dominate as they do today with maybe fifty-eight to forty two percent women to
men, but that's what we're mirroring, what society is out there.
GN:
Let me mention two individuals who would be from the academic standpoint but really
from the more business types of running an institution. One would be from the bookstore; do
you remember Tony Dangelo?
AC:
I do, I remember him with great fondness.
Anthony Campilii 14
GN:
Did you bring him on board?
AC:
He was one of my first hires. I can't honestly remember the date, but let's say it was in
the mid-sixties when the bookstore was in Donnelly Hall. I remember he came from Niagara
University as a former cop and all the things that had been going wrong with the bookstore,
as we interviewed, he had all the right answers. Plus, the fact that he was a former cop and
we were having lots of theft. In all deference to our students there was pilferage and that was
showing up on the bottom line in the bookstore, we weren't making a profit. He came
through as this former cop, putting all these new things, all these new procedures and he ran
the bookstore for years and years and years.
GN:
The second person who played a significant role, I think, in keeping the ship afloat
would be a fellow by the name of Andy Pavelko. Where did he come from? What was his
background?
AC:
Andy, again, I hired Andy because at that time, again, I was learning on the job.
All of a sudden, the Physical Plant came under my jurisdiction where we had to buy toilet
paper and rolls of this and I had to understand electricity and I realized that I couldn't do this.
Brother Niles Donnelly, who was then our kind of clerk of the works was trying to get out of
the day-to-day operations of the College and go more into the planning and construction, so
we knew we needed someone on board to handle maintenance, janitorial services, custodial
services, and all the physical plant needs. Andy, I can't remember where he came from, now I
remember, it was the Guardian Life Building, he always told me, he was from the Guardian
Life Building in New York City. That's what he ran, and he wanted to move to the country,
had the expertise had the personality and we hired him. He was great for the College at that
particular point in time.
Anthony Campilii 15
GN:
Other areas dealing with the maintenance of the College and the support, how were
decisions made and what kind of research went into choosing food services and security and
directions of the staff development in terms of grounds that we have today? Any one of
those, off the top, food services perhaps?
AC:
Well, food service. When we go back, we had an outfit initially called Brady Food
Service. Don't ask me why I remember this, but they were terrible. The students hated it,
and at that time, our tuition, our room and our board was very, very low. We were a great
bargain at the time, and we decided that we would go out to bid, and when we did we found
out that first of all what Brady Food Service was charging us were pittance and that's all we
were getting, was pittance on the table. There were other companies out there who were
literally the gentlemen of the industry. The first one that comes to mind was the Saga Food
Service. We said, listen, we've been down at the bottom; what we had better do in order to
build a quality and the reputation of this institution, since we were going to be a residential
campus, we have to do something with food service. We have the facilities for the residents
with brand new facilities, now we better do something about the dining service. We bid it
out and we decided that we were going to bring on Saga Food Service at a substantial
increase in cost, and we realized that that was the time we took a quantum leap in terms of
tuition, room and board in order to get the Saga Food Service here on campus, to raise the
level of dining service on campus. So, we did, we went out to bid. We went to some of their
facilities, we had interviews with some of there managers, with the students at other campus',
what they thought and of course you always looked at the trade papers, and they were, at that
time, the gentlemen of the industry. They had taken collegiate feeding and brought it to
another level.
Anthony Campilii 16
GN:
How did it work in terms of other areas of concern? Like, maintenance of the College
campus, was there an organization or a staff person you could put in charge of that? How did
that develop?
AC:
Well, for instance, when I hired Andy Pavelko, my dealings were always with Evelyn
Fisher and Niles Donnelly. Then when Andy Pavelko came on board, he reported to me. I
had other things to do from a financial perspective so I could not be on the grounds. I could
not be supervising the custodians; I could not be supervising the mechanics, so he became a
member of my team. At that time, I was called the Business Manager. So the Business
Manager began to develop not only a clerical staff, but a professional staff. Andy Pavelko
was a member of the professional staff; Tony Dangelo from the bookstore was a member of
the professional staff. I'm trying to think of what other function we then began to hire. We
looked at security and the first guy, I think his name was Ron Aderholdt who came on board,
and he was a member of my staff. Security became part of my responsibilities and then we
realized that I couldn’t continue for every job that became available, I could not continue the
hiring and the firing and what have you? We developed the beginnings of a Human
Resource department which at that time we called Personnel. Her name I think was Ann
Haggarty, and she was a student and then she became part-time personnel director. She
became part of my staff. We had staff meetings, and we discussed the needs and then my
needs went along with the academic needs, which went along with the student service needs,
which at that time we used to have what was called the Dean of Students. The Dean of
Students took care of the student welfare, the Academic Vice President took care of the
faculty, and I took care of all the stuff that nobody else wanted; that they knew how to do or
even wanted to do came on my plate.
Anthony Campilii 17
GN:
You can't mention the word Dean of Students without bringing up one of the
outstanding figures of Marist College. Who do you think this person is?
AC:
Right off the bat, it's Brother Paul Stokes of course. Again, he was a mentor. I think he
may have had a little trouble dealing with me at first, because all of a sudden, I was a
member of the staff, and I think a lot of the faculty who were here, kind of resented that this
twenty year old, and I was twenty when I started, this twenty year old all of a sudden had a
position here on campus; where two months ago, he was a student and you took orders from
the faculty. Now, I was at least an equal, and in some cases giving discussions with a new…
that I had probably more so than anybody else that I had the ear of the President. For eight,
ten, twelve hours a day, he and I talked about everything. I think the first year was probably
the hardest, including Brother Paul Stokes, until he understood who I was, and I did literally
have to earn the respect. I didn't have it at first. At first, I was Linus' boy, and until I was
able to prove the fact that I earned my salary and then some and could contribute to a
conversation and to the administration of the campus. That was a little bit difficult.
GN:
Other people served in that role; I'm thinking of Brother John O'Shea. Do you
remember him?
AC:
Oh, I remember him with fondness.
GN:
Contrast him to Brother Paul Stokes.
AC:
A contrast to Brother Paul Stokes, who was a disciplinarian from the word go, and I'm
from the old school, I believe in discipline. So, he and I were always on the right track.
Brother John O'Shea was much more lenient, he was kind of the father figure, the kind of
father figure that put his arm around you; where Brother Paul Stokes was the father figure
that banged a ruler on the table and say, "you will do this". The funniest story that I
Anthony Campilii 18
remember about John O'Shea was I had denied the students some lounge furniture in
Champagnat Hall. I was brow beaten through the campus newspaper. This guy shouldn't be
in this job, he doesn't know anything. Which personally, took me by surprise and I was
devastated for about two or three months. I realized that that comes with the territory; you
couldn't control what went on in the student newspaper. What they did, to get back at me,
they advertised my job in the Poughkeepsie Journal. The ad was no training; doesn't have to
know anything, will take anybody off the street. I mean it was… people started calling me for
my job. I didn't see it until… but then what they did, was, they sent me to my home, which
my wife was absolutely flabbergasted, how could I bring something like this into our home.
They sent me a subscription to
Playboy
magazine. Now you had to know, at that time,
Playboy
was the ultimate in what was considered pornography; even though it's not. My
wife gets this magazine in a brown paper wrapper, and she opens it up and she sees
Playboy
magazine. Of course, she had never seen it before, she opens it up, calls me up "how could
you do this, I'm so disappointed in you" and I said, "I don't know what you're talking about."
Well, what they did, what I found out, was, I called
Playboy
magazine and I wrote to them
and said I want you to stop and they said, "well, we’ll send you six free months" and I said,
"I don’t want you to do this!" What the student's did was send the bill to John O'Shea and I
said to him, "Brother John, you didn't send this magazine," and he said, "of course you know
I wouldn't send you a magazine". In order to get back at me, the students sent me a
subscription, as a gift from him. We had a number of laughs over that.
GN:
Tell me about another development; the building projects, specifically the move from
the Marian gym to the building of the McCann Center. Were you involved? When was that
decision made and how was it made, or who made it?
Anthony Campilii 19
AC:
Well, there was as part of our overall strategic plan, the fact that we had to develop a
campus that was well-rounded. We had hired, at that time, I think Tom Wade, was our
basketball coach, and Tom went into other things, he was then the Director of Admissions.
We realized that if Marist was going to make a move, in reaching not only academic levels,
in terms of reputation, we would probably have to go from a division III school to a Division
II or I. That is not a whole lot of difference between Division III and II, but there is a whole
lot of difference between Division III and Division I. As part of going to Division I, it meant
that we had to take a facility, which was Spartan, and I'm being gracious in saying that it's
Spartan, had no, I don't even think it was regulation size that may be from memory, I'm not
sure. We couldn't attract people to come to our basketball games because they had to stand,
there was no place for them to sit so they had to stand along the sidelines; so we came up
with this vision, I'm sure it was Linus Foy along with Jack Gartland. That perhaps what we
really needed to bring us to the next level was a facility and at that particular point in time,
we talked about a gymnasium, and then we talked about the possibility of a swimming pool
and the locker rooms, all of what went with it. Now the financing for that was very, very
difficult because we didn’t have the money. What the McCann Foundation did was to
guarantee that if we were to open this facility to the community that they would be willing to
upfront money for us to put up the shell of the building and to put in the gymnasium. Well,
that was the plan that was the plan all the way through until we were about ready to dig the
foundation. The more we thought about it, we said, when will we ever have enough money
to complete the building. The way the finances were going at that time, every year was a
struggle to make ends meet, and we said well maybe this is the time for us to go out for a
loan, a long term bond and finish the building and do it right. Do it once, do it right and get
Anthony Campilii 20
it finished. At that point in time, we said, all right, we're going to go for broke. We took the
money from the McCann Foundation, and we added another, I think it was a one point seven
million dollar loan from at that time, the Dutchess Bank. We finished the natatorium, which
was the swimming pool, the diving well, the rowing tank, the locker rooms and we said can
you have a basketball court without locker rooms? Where are these guys’s going to change,
at that time it was only men, where are these guy's going to change? Ok, you can't have them
go into a pit, so you need the locker rooms. Well, if you’re going to do the plumbing for the
locker rooms, you might as well take the next step, bring the masons in and put in a
swimming pool. So, one thing led to another and it was probably one of the best decisions
we ever made. Then, we had the best facility of all the schools we competed with, for
students, between New York and at that time it wasn't even Albany, it was Montreal. We
had the best facility.
GN:
Ok, we've talked a lot about the past, maybe we can switch into another decade and
Linus is replaced eventually by Dennis Murray. You've worked with both for more than
twenty years. Could you just comment on leadership and on the style of management that
Dennis brought after Linus was here?
AC:
They’re two completely different personalities. Linus was definitely an internal
President, knew what was going on, he had the ability to leave you on your own as long as he
knew that you knew what you were doing. It was, I think, an administration of compatibility,
not that we always saw eye-to-eye, but we had the right to disagree. Now, when Dennis
came along, Dennis's style is a little bit different. Dennis is an external President or was hired
to be an external President and so a lot of his focus is to fund raising and to the external
public and basically taking what, he called at that time, the finest unknown secret in higher
Anthony Campilii 21
education. Nobody knows who you are and it’s going to be my job to bring that out to the
public. I have had a great relationship with Dennis in this regard. I think he has recognized
in me… One of his expertises is not finance; Dennis' regime is… he also can be hands-on
person. I have been one of the fortunate ones, that while I don't directly report to him, I have
what is called the dotted line to the President. The Chief Financial Officer should always
have the ear of the Chief Executive Officer, and in that regard, I do report to him. Truthfully,
he has left me to my own merits. I think he and the Board of Trustees have given me, I think,
the kind of authority, that probably, I won't say I shouldn't have, but would be more directly
related to the President and so I have been very fortunate that Dennis Murray has let me run
my own ship, with guidance, with direction. I think that he is a little bit more volatile than
Richard Foy, but he has also… He is a great reader of people as was Linus Foy. Dennis has
been able to gather round him, over the course of his twenty years, I think, a group of
administrators, individually, we all have our faults, collectively, I say, we're one hell of a
team. I think that Linus Foy had that same we were a good team at that time. I know a
couple of times they have gone, both of them have said this, they've gone elsewhere, on
Middle States visits or what have you and they say you know, sometimes I come back and
I'm kind of belaboring you and moaning and groaning about that you don't do this and you
don't do that, but he says you know, I’d match my team with some of the teams of the best
universities in the United States and I still think that we can come out on top. That's always
nice to hear. It's not said very often, but it's always nice to hear once in awhile.
GN:
Like the Middle States Report which you will be doing again shortly, could you now,
from your position, just say two or three things that might be, say, the weakness of Marist,
that wouldn’t have to be strengthen or should be what are it’s strengths what are the best
Anthony Campilii 22
points that you might say about Marist in terms of where they are at the beginning of this
new century?
AC:
Well, one of our strengths is… I think we offer probably one of the finest quality
educations that you could possibly get, and we offer it at what I consider a reasonable, it's not
low, but it's not high, at a very, very reasonable cost factor. I think we have a depth and
breadth of programs. I think we have an absolute, and we're getting better, an absolutely
fantastic faculty. I think that we have a great administrative team who have their pulse to the
guts of higher education. I think we're at the cutting edge of technology and marrying
technology with all of those kinds of ethereal things; with religion, with education, with
philosophy, bringing technology and the liberal arts together. I don't think there are too
many people who are doing that kind of thing of what we are doing. There is a place for
both. Most importantly, something which comes through the tread over my forty years is the
fact that when people leave here, one of the things that Dennis Murray has said over and over
"you have been given a gift by your parents and by this institution for an education; when
you leave here, you have got to go out and give back." You see many, many of our graduates
who have done extremely well and who are involved, totally immersed in either their religion
or their community and they’re giving back to the community, and I think that stems from
what we offer here. We ask people to get involved while they are students, and I think that
carries through right on after they graduate and after they get into their own homes. They are
involved with their kids; they are involved with their church; they are involved with their
community and I think that we have given them that here; and I hope that we always have a
chance to do that.
Anthony Campilii 23
GN:
One point that we really should look at, perhaps would be diversity. Would you think
that's a choice?
AC:
Of course, we all believe in diversity. It depends on what we mean by diversity.
Diversity can mean many things to many people; is it a male female relationship? It's no
longer, diversity used to mean black and white. It's no longer black and white; it's now all
the new wave of immigrants that are coming to this country with different cultures. I think
we have a responsibility to infuse in our students, recognition of those cultures. It's no longer
a middle European culture now, it's a world culture. I think a lot of our students have
difficulty dealing with that and I think that's probably going to be one of our next biggest
goals. Diversity, absolutely.
GN:
Well, thank you very much Tony.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, NY
Transcribed by Nancy Decker
For the Marist College Archives and Special Collections
Transcript – Anthony Campilii
Interviewee:
Anthony Campilii
Interviewer:
Gus Nolan
Interview Date:
30 November 2001
Location:
Fontaine Building at Marist College
CD No.:
Subject Headings:
Campilii, Anthony
Marist College—Administration
Marist College History
Marist College (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.)
Summary:
In this interview Mr. Campilii comments on his position as Chief Financial
Officer and his 40 plus years at Marist. This includes: his unique experiences in developing a
staff and the Business Office, his thoughts on the presidencies of Dr. Linus Richard Foy and
Dr. Dennis J. Murray and how Marist has changed over the past forty years.
Anthony Campilii 1
[BEGINNING OF INTERVIEW]
Gus Nolan:
Good morning, this is an interview with Anthony
Campilii, Vice President for
Business Affairs and the Chief Financial Officer at Marist College. The date is November
30
th
; we’re interviewing Mr. Campilii in the new [Library] building at Marist College.
Good morning Tony.
Anthony Campilii:
Good morning Gus.
GN:
Tony could you give us your full name please?
AC:
Anthony Vincent Campilii. With two “I”s on the end, like in Hawaii.
GN:
Were you named after another member of the family?
AC:
I was, my Dad. Anthony is a family name and so in my father’s family every branch of
the family has a son derivative of Anthony with one of the children.
GN:
Where were your born and when?
AC:
I was born in Poughkeepsie, I assume it was Poughkeepsie, but in Dutchess County,
July 17, 1941.
GN:
Do you have any siblings and what are their names?
AC:
I had a sibling. I had a sister and her name was Lorraine and unfortunately she passed
away so now I’m an only child.
GN:
Where did you grow up and tell me about the home-town.
AC:
I grew up in a small little village called Wappingers Falls, a little village of about Five
thousand people. My wife also comes from the village of Wappingers Falls. We both went
to school in Wappingers Falls, at St. Mary’s, for the first eight grades. It’s a charming little
town. Even though the surrounding area has grown rapidly, the village has stayed relatively
the same and it’s wonderful to see that little town maintains its character. I went to a Catholic
High School for one year in Newburgh, St. Patrick’s High School, but I also, at the time, I
Anthony Campilii 2
realized that I was the only one in the village that was going there and I was a lonely child for
one year. I decided that I wanted to go where all the rest of the kids went and so I transferred
as a sophomore to Wappingers Central School, at the time. I proceeded to have my
sophomore, junior, and senior years in Wappingers.
GN:
Can you tell me about your parents names and their occupations?
AC:
My mother’s name is Venzie, which is a derivative of Venchezza or Vincent for the
male name. She was, at first a seamstress, and then with very nimble hands and a very acute
business sense she went to work in a local dress factory where she became a fore-lady and
virtually the assistant manager who ran the store for the, who ran the factory virtually for the
owner. She gave me my first job. I had a job when I was six years old and I worked in that
dress factory doing a variety of things until I graduated High School. This was my source of
revenue, and the only caveat was, since I was underage, if I saw the suits walk in the front
door, I was to run like hell out the back door [Laughter] and that was the caveat to that. She
was a seamstress until she retired, oh probably twenty- five years ago and she basically
retired because of ill health. Had very serious back difficulties and other kinds of problems.
My dad is a unique story because even though he didn’t have great command of the English
language, he was born here, and of his family, he’s the only American citizen. But when he
was three years old his mother became ill and the entire family moved back to a little town
called Nocciano in Italy, which is directly across from Rome on the Adriatic Sea. He lived
there with his mother and father and his five siblings until he was nineteen. As my uncle
recalls it, when he was nineteen, he was called into the Italian military. My uncle who lived
in the United States, called him and said, as an American citizen you have no responsibility,
if you don’t want to, to go into the Italian military. So, he called my father over and my
Anthony Campilii 3
father came here, dropped what he had picked up a small little suitcase, got on the boat, my
uncle had given him passage, and landed in New York City. He came to Wappingers Falls
where he lived with his aunt and uncle for quite some time. As he recalls it, he was so lonely
that if he had had the money, within two or three months he would have turned around and
gone right back home because he was terribly, terribly lonely. He didn’t know the language,
knew no one, he was an outsider because he didn’t speak the language, had difficulty getting
a job, but he persisted and then went to work for New York Trap Rock where he worked
himself up as a laborer to one of the guys who went up and down the Hudson River with the
tugs. He became... He had no formal schooling but had quick knowledge and was a quick
learner; had nimble hands and a great mind and was able to pick up engineering and all kinds
of things where they promoted him and promoted him. Why he left, I never really knew but
then he went to work for Lumb Woodworking Company where he was their boiler man and
also the mechanic on duty that fixed all the machines did everything; however, they wanted
to promote him probably umpteen times. He turned them down because my father got
through his entire career with no one (where he worked) ever knowing that he couldn’t read
and write. When he had to order parts or what have you, he went to one of his good friends
and he said this is what I need, this is how many I need and here’s the part. You write it
down, you order it, and then just have them ship it to me. He went through probably fifty
years without anyone knowing that he did not have command of the English language. He
memorized all the road signs; he memorized the alphabet so that he could pass the exam for
his driver’s license. When he went for his driver’s test he could say I know, he knew what
the letter was, he didn’t know how to piece them all together.
Anthony Campilii 4
GN:
Beautiful story. About your own personal life, how long have you been married to
Ginny?
AC:
Ginny and I have been married for thirty-nine years this last October. We were
grammar school sweethearts; we were high school sweethearts. We went our separate ways;
each of us had different boyfriends, and girlfriends. I went away to the University of Buffalo
as a sixteen-year-old senior and college freshman. I only lasted a week at the University of
Buffalo because I was homesick. I may have had the brains, but I did not have, I think, the
social skills or the maturity that probably a college freshman should have, so I came home
and went to Dutchess Community College. Ginny having graduated from the same class as I,
from Wappingers; was going to Dutchess Community College. Since she and her family had
a car, we drove together for two years back and forth to school and gradually our relationship
that we had as sophomores in high school rekindled and we went on from there.
GN:
Tell me about the children now.
AC:
We have three great kids. I have a daughter Susan, who’s our first. If you’re going to
ask me their ages, I think she’s thirty-seven. I keep putting it out of my mind because I don’t
want to have children that old. My son is thirty-five, his name is Christian and then my
youngest daughter Allison is thirty-one. Allison is the only one of my children who came to
Marist College and had a wonderful experience. The other two, are graduates of the
University of Notre Dame.
GN:
Have you stayed active in community activities? I see from your resume, you really
have been involved in the community in Wappingers in various kinds of social and religious
activities. Are you still active?
Anthony Campilii 5
AC:
Oh, I’m very active. That’s one of the things that keep me going. I enjoy my work
here, and going into the community I have an opportunity working to represent myself and
my family and my background, but also to represent Marist College. In many things, United
Way, and I’ve been on our local Grinnell Library Board. I keep telling them that as a kid, I
was a pretty mean kid and I got thrown out of the library so many times that I said at some
point I have to come back and make amends. It’s a small little library that’s the same small
little library and so I said I have to go back and do something for the number of times that
poor librarian had to throw me out for raising holy hell.
GN:
Are you still active in it?
AC:
Oh yes, I’ve been a former president and now I’m still on the Board of Directors, very,
very active. It happens to be right down the street from where I live and I’m the second
caller if there is an emergency after the library is closed. The cops call me and say, "Will
you come down?" I have a key. "Will you come down and help us search the library and
find out why the alarm system went off?" The librarian, she used to live in the library, and
she would come out in her nightgown with her coat on. I could hear the alarm go off from
my house and I would slip on my clothes and I kept telling her we have to stop meeting like
this at two o’clock in the morning; you in your nightgown and me with very little on other
than a pair of slacks and a coat [Laughter].
GN:
Okay, let’s move on to your coming to Marist College. Let me ask you this, what made
you select Marist for finishing your undergraduate work? You could have studied anywhere.
AC:
I could have gone anywhere, it was honestly a matter of convenience, and you have to
understand, at the end of my two years at Dutchess, my plan was, and it always bothered me,
that I didn’t have the maturity to last at a residential campus. And so, my goal was, I was
Anthony Campilii 6
going to go back to the University of Buffalo and I was going to make my mark there and
prove to myself and my family that I could handle this, that I was mature enough. So, after I
graduated with an associate degree in Business, I applied and was readmitted to the
University of Buffalo. I went up there, spoke to the Dean, got my credits approved, and was
going in, registered to go in, as a full-fledged junior. Left home drove up there, got to the
Dean’s office and he informed me that since I was going to get a degree, at that time, in
accounting, from the University of Buffalo, I had to start from scratch. All my accounting
credits and the business courses that I had taken at Dutchess Community College were no
longer valid. I questioned him as to why; I had these letters, I had this commitment and now
he said “Well, we've had to change our mind.” At that time, you also have to understand,
Ginny and I were the first graduating class from Dutchess Community College; so Dutchess
Community College was an untested product, so maybe they were a little squeamish. I said
there was no way I was going to put my father, the minimum I would have to stay at the
University of Buffalo was three years. I said that I was not going to put my mother and
father through that kind of expense. I packed my bags and left the University of Buffalo
again. This time, not because I was not mature and homesick, but because I had my Italian
temper up and I just said this is not for me. I knew at the time, before I left, I had checked in
on Marist, as to whether or not, I knew this was a local school because by the time I left I
knew this was going to be very difficult to get into someplace else. I checked with Marist;
Marist had started a week later. So, when I came home, much to the chagrin of my mother
and father, because I flew home and again they thought, oh he couldn’t handle it and
everything so I had to explain it to them and they didn’t understand. I started Marist two
Anthony Campilii 7
days later. At that time, they thought for sure I was going to be a priest or a brother because
all they knew was Marist, the Brothers, the cloisters up the road in Poughkeepsie.
GN:
Now, you come to Marist and you’re here for two years; you graduated in sixty-two.
How did you move from a graduating senior to the financial office at the college? What was
the connection there?
AC:
The connection was a lady by the name of Mary Travis. Mary Travis happened to be a
very dear friend of my unmarried aunt, my mother’s sister. I got to know her through who
we called Aunt Mill, and I also knew that once every semester I had to go up to some office
and plunk my money down, which at that time was three hundred dollars for the entire
semester. As I became a senior, I started looking around and I’m saying to her, who handles
the books? Who handles the finances? Who handles this who handles that? And she kept
saying I do, and at that time, Richard Foy or his name at that time was Brother Linus Foy
was away on a second novitiate in Rome. There was an acting President; his name was
Brother Daniel Kirk. I started asking questions of Brother Dan Kirk as to whether or not
there might be any interest in me as a graduate to handle some of the finances, because there
was a Business Program in the evening division, but there was no business major in the day
division. I was the first person who was going to graduate with a degree in Business
Administration, because all the other men were at night, and they weren’t as far along as I
was. I came in with sixty credits, so I was able to graduate in two years. The Business
Program hadn’t been open that long, so I was able to muster enough credits to get through the
program in two years. I had applied for other jobs, had sought an accounting firm, but still
had my mind; I saw an opportunity here because there was nobody here to do what I thought
had to be done and that I could probably do. So, I kept hounding Dan Kirk, and he kept
Anthony Campilii 8
saying I don’t have the authority to hire; however, I’ll pass this along to Linus Foy when he
returns. Well, I thought that was a great put off and kind of resigned myself that nothing was
going to come of it. After graduation I applied for a job in a county firm in Newburgh, a
CPA firm. They were kind enough after a series of interviews, I beat out the other candidates
and they offered me a job. Well in the interim, through my college career, I worked at the
A&P on a part-time basis with a great manager who understood the fact that I was going to
college and worked my schedule around my class schedule and around my crew program.
He said that I could stay there as long as I wanted to, even on a full-time basis. That’s what I
did after graduation. I stayed there until I was hired. Ginny and I were engaged at the time,
we were going to get married in October. He allowed me to stay and that was my source of
revenue until this new job was supposed to start. In the interim, I guess it was the day after
the fourth of July, July fifth. I was in bed and my mother gets this telephone call from a
Brother Linus Foy, whom she had no knowledge of. Linus Foy calls me and says, listen, I
hear that you are looking for a job, and that you have been interested in Marist. I know that
you are a graduate, how would you like to come up and talk? I said all right, give me an hour
or two to shave and shower and I’ll come up and I would like to meet you. We talked,
probably that afternoon for maybe three or four hours. I immediately connected with this
man. He was an ideal person. You could see he was so genuine, down to earth. I had no
experience whatsoever in terms of what I was asking him to accept on faith; things that I
knew I could probably do. He said, well, we don’t have a lot of money around here; we need
somebody to do this because Mary Travis is retired from Central Hudson. She’s not a
bookkeeper, she’s not an accountant. We need somebody to do the job, so yes, if you are
interested, we’ll take you on. We would like to… the only trouble is we can only pay you
Anthony Campilii 9
eighty-five dollars a week. Well eighty-five dollars a week, even back then, was considered
poverty level. I knew that I had expenses of furnishing a house and getting married or what
have you. Or I should say, furnishing an apartment. I went home and talked to, at that time,
my fiancée and said well, what do you think? I kind of weighed the pros and cons of having
to cross the Newburgh Beacon Bridge, the tolls and the gas back and forth and I said, you
know, it might be worth while since I was able to beat out all these other guys for this first
job, chances are I can do it again. If I don’t like what I see at Marist, I can always quit and
get another job. So I called Rich Foy, Linus Foy, and I said if you still want me, I’d like to
take the job. I started on July sixteenth, 1962, which was about two months after I graduated
from the college. I often tell people that the reason why they offered me the job since I was
their first Business graduate; they didn’t know what to do with me and they were afraid to let
me loose. They didn’t want me to go out and embarrass them, so they put me on the payroll.
[Laughter]
GN:
Well actually, historically, Linus was probably one of the youngest college’s presidents
at the time and in parallel you were probably one of the youngest financial officers in a four-
year college at the time.
AC:
It was the truth. As a matter of fact, a mention was made of that. Probably a year after
I started, or two years, we had a Middle States evaluation. I believe, if we research some of
the comments; they alluded to the youth of the administration of the college, which they were
not terribly much in favor of. There was Tom Wade who was probably twenty-three or
twenty-four; there was Brother John Malachy who was the Registrar, who was in his early
twenties. They looked at Linus Foy, who at that time was the youngest College President in
Anthony Campilii 10
the United States. They looked at this snot nosed kid who was handling the finances and said
you guys don’t have your act together.
GN:
Tell me about the beginning of the development of the office. When did you first start
to begin to get a staff in the financial corner of the college?
AC:
Well, I would say for the first year or two, Mary Travis was then doing the
bookkeeping; she dumped everything and said now this is all yours. Which was great
because, that’s how I learn… theoretically I learned on the job. I knew the skills from
bumper to books; but never had to actually sit down and do it. Linus was a great teacher.
His office and my office were next to each other, and we had a door between us and that door
was always open. I heard what he did; he heard what I did; only if he had a private meeting
did he ever close that door. So he mentored me, he showed me what he wanted me to do, he
said, ok, now you figure this out and I certainly made my share of mistakes. At first, I had to
do the payroll, which I had never done before, learning all about income taxes and things of
that nature. Then I had to learn the billing for the fall semester. Then I had to learn
purchasing; I had to learn the rudiments of personnel and hiring. The fact that I was their
only businessperson, all of that fell on my shoulders. He said this is what you have to do
from here on in. It was a beautiful education, but it was an education on the job, because
there was nobody else to do it and that was my function. I often think about payday, and I
was the most popular person on campus at the end of the month when everybody got paid.
Everybody was concerned about my welfare; is he going to be in today, are we going to get
paid today? Things like that. At that time then, for probably for a year or two, Mary Travis
was working for me partially, doing some of the bookkeeping, and was Linus Foy’s
secretary, we both used her. Then we realized, as we started to take on a few more students,
Anthony Campilii 11
that Mary Travis, and again it was a part time job for her; that she really couldn’t handle all
of my work that was starting to expand, and all of Linus Foy’s work. So, I began to search
around, and there was a lady, who also was a friend of Mary Travis who was on the staff in
the evening division, as a secretary to Dr. John Schroeder, who was looking for a day job. If
you look at the Marist of that day, we didn’t have a lot of women on campus and there were
only like two secretaries. I said, I need somebody who can type, I need somebody who can
take dictation, I need somebody who is good with figures and this lady filled the bill. Her
name was Marion Strictland. She was the best thing that ever happened to me, my career,
and my office. She was my secretary for twenty-five years from that time forward. She and
Mary Travis began to share an office and then I still had my office and Richard Foy had his
office.
GN:
Related to this point that you’ve touched on; and that is, keep me abreast of the
regulations the legal the regulations regarding taxes, deductions and so on, was there an
opportunity to learn this from seminars? Did you get a chance to share your experiences with
other college people like yourself or did the MBA program itself take care of most of it?
AC:
No, I never started the MBA program until quite some time later. Linus sent me to a
number of workshops…. he sent me to a week-long seminar in Washington, D.C. to learn the
ropes. I went to insurance seminars; I went to accounting seminars; wherever I could pick up
and basically learn the trade of higher education. I also became a member of the National
Association of College and University Business Officers. I literally found out that when you
went to a convention, you didn't learn anything there, it was a good… let's socialize. Where
you really learned was the workshops, the round table discussions and so after a few junkets
at their national association, I realized that that was not the place for me. I wanted to go to
Anthony Campilii 12
the regional, sometimes even local seminars where you sat there and you literally came out
and felt, I have really learned something today, and then hopefully brought that all back as
part of my bag of tricks. What I was doing was not totally what I was trained for, I was
trained to be an accountant and all of a sudden Linus, the college had these needs. I didn't
know how to interview for a secretary, and I didn't know how… the questions that you were
supposed to ask and the questions that you weren't supposed to ask. You learned by going to
a seminar on personnel, inter-office communication, those kinds of things. I was very, very
fortunate that the College was that young and didn’t need the gross expertise of someone that
you would hire today. I learned on the job, Linus, I always have said this and I will go to my
grave saying this, he took a big chance, he took a gamble. I would like to think that that
gamble paid off, but he did take a gamble on a youngster with two years of an untested
program that Marist offered because there was nobody that graduated that was out there in
the community doing what I was doing. We learned together, he learned and of course he
wasn't a businessman either; so I learned, I shared my information, as he learned, he shared
his in information and the beauty of Linus Foy was, that if you made a mistake it was as
though he made the mistake. You got called for it, never in a demeaning way, he always
insisted that you learn from you mistakes; he never hung you out to dry, we can tolerate other
mistakes, but don't make the same mistake again.
GN:
Ok, I think it's only fair to say that he saw quality in the bud here and eventually that
the roles would bloom, and we are very happy with that. In a new direction, when did you
first get a suspicion that Marist was really going to grow and become what it is? Was it the
beginning of the building programs, or was it the beginning of new students coming in?
When did you see that?
Anthony Campilii 13
AC:
I think I began to see a light at the tunnel for me in terms of staying or leaving when
Champagnat first went online, which was in 1965. At that time, that was a building that was
going to house four hundred students, we didn't have four hundred students. With Leo and
Sheahan we didn’t have four hundred students to fill that, and part of the design was that
building was going to open but we weren't going to fill it the first year. We had to put
admissions things into place, so that in year two, we could stand probably one year of a loss,
ok, but we couldn't stand two years and so all of a sudden, the Admissions Office became a
much more valuable function. You could see the plan for the fact that this College was going
to grow. Then I think the next step for me was when we added women. Having an all-male
institution was great, I was a part of it for two years as a student, saw what it did. When I got
out, I became an administrator, but in the modern world, in all male or all female institution,
my gut told me that this was going to be a thing of the past. I think that it was to our benefit
that we began to take on women. It added a different character to the institution, it rounded
out, I mean some of the men were sloppy here. They had no social skills. They didn't know
how to treat women. They treated them as second-class citizens and that is not a way to
leave any type of educational function, going out as though women were toys on a shelf. I
think adding women added such a rounding for the collegiate experience. I never thought
they would dominate as they do today with maybe fifty-eight to forty two percent women to
men, but that's what we're mirroring, what society is out there.
GN:
Let me mention two individuals who would be from the academic standpoint but really
from the more business types of running an institution. One would be from the bookstore; do
you remember Tony Dangelo?
AC:
I do, I remember him with great fondness.
Anthony Campilii 14
GN:
Did you bring him on board?
AC:
He was one of my first hires. I can't honestly remember the date, but let's say it was in
the mid-sixties when the bookstore was in Donnelly Hall. I remember he came from Niagara
University as a former cop and all the things that had been going wrong with the bookstore,
as we interviewed, he had all the right answers. Plus, the fact that he was a former cop and
we were having lots of theft. In all deference to our students there was pilferage and that was
showing up on the bottom line in the bookstore, we weren't making a profit. He came
through as this former cop, putting all these new things, all these new procedures and he ran
the bookstore for years and years and years.
GN:
The second person who played a significant role, I think, in keeping the ship afloat
would be a fellow by the name of Andy Pavelko. Where did he come from? What was his
background?
AC:
Andy, again, I hired Andy because at that time, again, I was learning on the job.
All of a sudden, the Physical Plant came under my jurisdiction where we had to buy toilet
paper and rolls of this and I had to understand electricity and I realized that I couldn't do this.
Brother Niles Donnelly, who was then our kind of clerk of the works was trying to get out of
the day-to-day operations of the College and go more into the planning and construction, so
we knew we needed someone on board to handle maintenance, janitorial services, custodial
services, and all the physical plant needs. Andy, I can't remember where he came from, now I
remember, it was the Guardian Life Building, he always told me, he was from the Guardian
Life Building in New York City. That's what he ran, and he wanted to move to the country,
had the expertise had the personality and we hired him. He was great for the College at that
particular point in time.
Anthony Campilii 15
GN:
Other areas dealing with the maintenance of the College and the support, how were
decisions made and what kind of research went into choosing food services and security and
directions of the staff development in terms of grounds that we have today? Any one of
those, off the top, food services perhaps?
AC:
Well, food service. When we go back, we had an outfit initially called Brady Food
Service. Don't ask me why I remember this, but they were terrible. The students hated it,
and at that time, our tuition, our room and our board was very, very low. We were a great
bargain at the time, and we decided that we would go out to bid, and when we did we found
out that first of all what Brady Food Service was charging us were pittance and that's all we
were getting, was pittance on the table. There were other companies out there who were
literally the gentlemen of the industry. The first one that comes to mind was the Saga Food
Service. We said, listen, we've been down at the bottom; what we had better do in order to
build a quality and the reputation of this institution, since we were going to be a residential
campus, we have to do something with food service. We have the facilities for the residents
with brand new facilities, now we better do something about the dining service. We bid it
out and we decided that we were going to bring on Saga Food Service at a substantial
increase in cost, and we realized that that was the time we took a quantum leap in terms of
tuition, room and board in order to get the Saga Food Service here on campus, to raise the
level of dining service on campus. So, we did, we went out to bid. We went to some of their
facilities, we had interviews with some of there managers, with the students at other campus',
what they thought and of course you always looked at the trade papers, and they were, at that
time, the gentlemen of the industry. They had taken collegiate feeding and brought it to
another level.
Anthony Campilii 16
GN:
How did it work in terms of other areas of concern? Like, maintenance of the College
campus, was there an organization or a staff person you could put in charge of that? How did
that develop?
AC:
Well, for instance, when I hired Andy Pavelko, my dealings were always with Evelyn
Fisher and Niles Donnelly. Then when Andy Pavelko came on board, he reported to me. I
had other things to do from a financial perspective so I could not be on the grounds. I could
not be supervising the custodians; I could not be supervising the mechanics, so he became a
member of my team. At that time, I was called the Business Manager. So the Business
Manager began to develop not only a clerical staff, but a professional staff. Andy Pavelko
was a member of the professional staff; Tony Dangelo from the bookstore was a member of
the professional staff. I'm trying to think of what other function we then began to hire. We
looked at security and the first guy, I think his name was Ron Aderholdt who came on board,
and he was a member of my staff. Security became part of my responsibilities and then we
realized that I couldn’t continue for every job that became available, I could not continue the
hiring and the firing and what have you? We developed the beginnings of a Human
Resource department which at that time we called Personnel. Her name I think was Ann
Haggarty, and she was a student and then she became part-time personnel director. She
became part of my staff. We had staff meetings, and we discussed the needs and then my
needs went along with the academic needs, which went along with the student service needs,
which at that time we used to have what was called the Dean of Students. The Dean of
Students took care of the student welfare, the Academic Vice President took care of the
faculty, and I took care of all the stuff that nobody else wanted; that they knew how to do or
even wanted to do came on my plate.
Anthony Campilii 17
GN:
You can't mention the word Dean of Students without bringing up one of the
outstanding figures of Marist College. Who do you think this person is?
AC:
Right off the bat, it's Brother Paul Stokes of course. Again, he was a mentor. I think he
may have had a little trouble dealing with me at first, because all of a sudden, I was a
member of the staff, and I think a lot of the faculty who were here, kind of resented that this
twenty year old, and I was twenty when I started, this twenty year old all of a sudden had a
position here on campus; where two months ago, he was a student and you took orders from
the faculty. Now, I was at least an equal, and in some cases giving discussions with a new…
that I had probably more so than anybody else that I had the ear of the President. For eight,
ten, twelve hours a day, he and I talked about everything. I think the first year was probably
the hardest, including Brother Paul Stokes, until he understood who I was, and I did literally
have to earn the respect. I didn't have it at first. At first, I was Linus' boy, and until I was
able to prove the fact that I earned my salary and then some and could contribute to a
conversation and to the administration of the campus. That was a little bit difficult.
GN:
Other people served in that role; I'm thinking of Brother John O'Shea. Do you
remember him?
AC:
Oh, I remember him with fondness.
GN:
Contrast him to Brother Paul Stokes.
AC:
A contrast to Brother Paul Stokes, who was a disciplinarian from the word go, and I'm
from the old school, I believe in discipline. So, he and I were always on the right track.
Brother John O'Shea was much more lenient, he was kind of the father figure, the kind of
father figure that put his arm around you; where Brother Paul Stokes was the father figure
that banged a ruler on the table and say, "you will do this". The funniest story that I
Anthony Campilii 18
remember about John O'Shea was I had denied the students some lounge furniture in
Champagnat Hall. I was brow beaten through the campus newspaper. This guy shouldn't be
in this job, he doesn't know anything. Which personally, took me by surprise and I was
devastated for about two or three months. I realized that that comes with the territory; you
couldn't control what went on in the student newspaper. What they did, to get back at me,
they advertised my job in the Poughkeepsie Journal. The ad was no training; doesn't have to
know anything, will take anybody off the street. I mean it was… people started calling me for
my job. I didn't see it until… but then what they did, was, they sent me to my home, which
my wife was absolutely flabbergasted, how could I bring something like this into our home.
They sent me a subscription to
Playboy
magazine. Now you had to know, at that time,
Playboy
was the ultimate in what was considered pornography; even though it's not. My
wife gets this magazine in a brown paper wrapper, and she opens it up and she sees
Playboy
magazine. Of course, she had never seen it before, she opens it up, calls me up "how could
you do this, I'm so disappointed in you" and I said, "I don't know what you're talking about."
Well, what they did, what I found out, was, I called
Playboy
magazine and I wrote to them
and said I want you to stop and they said, "well, we’ll send you six free months" and I said,
"I don’t want you to do this!" What the student's did was send the bill to John O'Shea and I
said to him, "Brother John, you didn't send this magazine," and he said, "of course you know
I wouldn't send you a magazine". In order to get back at me, the students sent me a
subscription, as a gift from him. We had a number of laughs over that.
GN:
Tell me about another development; the building projects, specifically the move from
the Marian gym to the building of the McCann Center. Were you involved? When was that
decision made and how was it made, or who made it?
Anthony Campilii 19
AC:
Well, there was as part of our overall strategic plan, the fact that we had to develop a
campus that was well-rounded. We had hired, at that time, I think Tom Wade, was our
basketball coach, and Tom went into other things, he was then the Director of Admissions.
We realized that if Marist was going to make a move, in reaching not only academic levels,
in terms of reputation, we would probably have to go from a division III school to a Division
II or I. That is not a whole lot of difference between Division III and II, but there is a whole
lot of difference between Division III and Division I. As part of going to Division I, it meant
that we had to take a facility, which was Spartan, and I'm being gracious in saying that it's
Spartan, had no, I don't even think it was regulation size that may be from memory, I'm not
sure. We couldn't attract people to come to our basketball games because they had to stand,
there was no place for them to sit so they had to stand along the sidelines; so we came up
with this vision, I'm sure it was Linus Foy along with Jack Gartland. That perhaps what we
really needed to bring us to the next level was a facility and at that particular point in time,
we talked about a gymnasium, and then we talked about the possibility of a swimming pool
and the locker rooms, all of what went with it. Now the financing for that was very, very
difficult because we didn’t have the money. What the McCann Foundation did was to
guarantee that if we were to open this facility to the community that they would be willing to
upfront money for us to put up the shell of the building and to put in the gymnasium. Well,
that was the plan that was the plan all the way through until we were about ready to dig the
foundation. The more we thought about it, we said, when will we ever have enough money
to complete the building. The way the finances were going at that time, every year was a
struggle to make ends meet, and we said well maybe this is the time for us to go out for a
loan, a long term bond and finish the building and do it right. Do it once, do it right and get
Anthony Campilii 20
it finished. At that point in time, we said, all right, we're going to go for broke. We took the
money from the McCann Foundation, and we added another, I think it was a one point seven
million dollar loan from at that time, the Dutchess Bank. We finished the natatorium, which
was the swimming pool, the diving well, the rowing tank, the locker rooms and we said can
you have a basketball court without locker rooms? Where are these guys’s going to change,
at that time it was only men, where are these guy's going to change? Ok, you can't have them
go into a pit, so you need the locker rooms. Well, if you’re going to do the plumbing for the
locker rooms, you might as well take the next step, bring the masons in and put in a
swimming pool. So, one thing led to another and it was probably one of the best decisions
we ever made. Then, we had the best facility of all the schools we competed with, for
students, between New York and at that time it wasn't even Albany, it was Montreal. We
had the best facility.
GN:
Ok, we've talked a lot about the past, maybe we can switch into another decade and
Linus is replaced eventually by Dennis Murray. You've worked with both for more than
twenty years. Could you just comment on leadership and on the style of management that
Dennis brought after Linus was here?
AC:
They’re two completely different personalities. Linus was definitely an internal
President, knew what was going on, he had the ability to leave you on your own as long as he
knew that you knew what you were doing. It was, I think, an administration of compatibility,
not that we always saw eye-to-eye, but we had the right to disagree. Now, when Dennis
came along, Dennis's style is a little bit different. Dennis is an external President or was hired
to be an external President and so a lot of his focus is to fund raising and to the external
public and basically taking what, he called at that time, the finest unknown secret in higher
Anthony Campilii 21
education. Nobody knows who you are and it’s going to be my job to bring that out to the
public. I have had a great relationship with Dennis in this regard. I think he has recognized
in me… One of his expertises is not finance; Dennis' regime is… he also can be hands-on
person. I have been one of the fortunate ones, that while I don't directly report to him, I have
what is called the dotted line to the President. The Chief Financial Officer should always
have the ear of the Chief Executive Officer, and in that regard, I do report to him. Truthfully,
he has left me to my own merits. I think he and the Board of Trustees have given me, I think,
the kind of authority, that probably, I won't say I shouldn't have, but would be more directly
related to the President and so I have been very fortunate that Dennis Murray has let me run
my own ship, with guidance, with direction. I think that he is a little bit more volatile than
Richard Foy, but he has also… He is a great reader of people as was Linus Foy. Dennis has
been able to gather round him, over the course of his twenty years, I think, a group of
administrators, individually, we all have our faults, collectively, I say, we're one hell of a
team. I think that Linus Foy had that same we were a good team at that time. I know a
couple of times they have gone, both of them have said this, they've gone elsewhere, on
Middle States visits or what have you and they say you know, sometimes I come back and
I'm kind of belaboring you and moaning and groaning about that you don't do this and you
don't do that, but he says you know, I’d match my team with some of the teams of the best
universities in the United States and I still think that we can come out on top. That's always
nice to hear. It's not said very often, but it's always nice to hear once in awhile.
GN:
Like the Middle States Report which you will be doing again shortly, could you now,
from your position, just say two or three things that might be, say, the weakness of Marist,
that wouldn’t have to be strengthen or should be what are it’s strengths what are the best
Anthony Campilii 22
points that you might say about Marist in terms of where they are at the beginning of this
new century?
AC:
Well, one of our strengths is… I think we offer probably one of the finest quality
educations that you could possibly get, and we offer it at what I consider a reasonable, it's not
low, but it's not high, at a very, very reasonable cost factor. I think we have a depth and
breadth of programs. I think we have an absolute, and we're getting better, an absolutely
fantastic faculty. I think that we have a great administrative team who have their pulse to the
guts of higher education. I think we're at the cutting edge of technology and marrying
technology with all of those kinds of ethereal things; with religion, with education, with
philosophy, bringing technology and the liberal arts together. I don't think there are too
many people who are doing that kind of thing of what we are doing. There is a place for
both. Most importantly, something which comes through the tread over my forty years is the
fact that when people leave here, one of the things that Dennis Murray has said over and over
"you have been given a gift by your parents and by this institution for an education; when
you leave here, you have got to go out and give back." You see many, many of our graduates
who have done extremely well and who are involved, totally immersed in either their religion
or their community and they’re giving back to the community, and I think that stems from
what we offer here. We ask people to get involved while they are students, and I think that
carries through right on after they graduate and after they get into their own homes. They are
involved with their kids; they are involved with their church; they are involved with their
community and I think that we have given them that here; and I hope that we always have a
chance to do that.
Anthony Campilii 23
GN:
One point that we really should look at, perhaps would be diversity. Would you think
that's a choice?
AC:
Of course, we all believe in diversity. It depends on what we mean by diversity.
Diversity can mean many things to many people; is it a male female relationship? It's no
longer, diversity used to mean black and white. It's no longer black and white; it's now all
the new wave of immigrants that are coming to this country with different cultures. I think
we have a responsibility to infuse in our students, recognition of those cultures. It's no longer
a middle European culture now, it's a world culture. I think a lot of our students have
difficulty dealing with that and I think that's probably going to be one of our next biggest
goals. Diversity, absolutely.
GN:
Well, thank you very much Tony.
[END OF INTERVIEW]