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A half-century later, Fr. Robert Gannon, SJ, the president
of Fordham Prep and University from the late 1930s
through the end of Stellwag’s high school years, not only
kept the school aware of its roots throughout the years of
his own presidency, but would go on to pen his own
history marking the school’s 125th anniversary in 1966:
Up to the Present: The Story of Fordham.
After the 1969 separation from the University and the
subsequent move from Hughes Hall, many of the Prep’s
connections to its long and storied past were broken, or
at least stretched to their limits — and perhaps
understandably so. With the newly-independent school
always just about a mortgage payment away from closing
its doors forever throughout the 1970s, all eyes were
constantly trained on the future, watching and waiting for
what would happen next. There simply was not enough
energy to be mindful of the past as well. And so for a little
while, the 130 years that had come before were put into
mothballs and stowed away in Intermediate Storage for
[thanks to Gus] safe keeping. For a time, it seemed that
survival might just come at the price of our legacy. There
would be a school, but exactly what school would it be?
Thanks be to God, as Fordham’s sesquicentennial
approached in 1991, Fr. Edward Maloney, SJ, president
from 1980 through 1996, saw an opportunity to renew the
school’s ties to its roots, and to reinject a sense of tradition
and heritage into the school’s culture. With a nod from the
President’s Office, Stellwag and longtime member of the
History Department, Frank Holbrook, Class of 1945,
undertook the task of researching and writing When
September Comes, the first official history of Fordham Prep,
beginning with its origins as the Second Division of St. John’s
Colle