Edward Bristow, Ph.D., professor of history, dubbed her the mother of the honors program and a “throwback” in the best sense of the word. Grace Vernon, Ph.D., professor of biology, fondly recalled her love of baseball, her family and friends, and her fellow faculty.
Robert M. Grimes, S.J., dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, sang the Gregorian chant “In Paradisum,” to pay homage to her chosen field of medievalism.
And Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, called Anne Mannion, Ph.D., professor emerita of history, a liberating and affirming force in students’ lives.
“She was a woman of great faith in God, who gave her a vocation in the University that was her home, in her students who made her heart sing, and in her colleagues who were for her the family that really anchored her in New York,” he said at the Sept. 19 service.
Faculty, friends, and students packed the 12th-floor Lounge/Corrigan Center to celebrate the life of Mannion, a member of the faculty for 52 years and a 1958 alumna of the Undergraduate School of Education, who died in July.
“She now knows all the answers that were raised by Thomas Aquinas, and I would imagine she’s lecturing him on all the mistakes he made,” Father McShane said.
“But doing so with affection as well as with conviction. Anne was for us, citizen, colleague, and—let’s be honest—a patron saint.”
Photos by Bruce Gilbert and Bill Denison
