IN THIS ISSUE - McQuaid Jesuit High School

1972
The Year That
Almost Wasn't
By Bob Bradley
Forty years ago, in September of 1971, McQuaid
Jesuit’s 15th graduating class began its
senior year. Had history gone differently, those
164 young men might have been the last to call
themselves McQuaid alumni. As Bill O’Malley, S.J.,
narrates in his history of McQuaid’s first 25 years,
"Phoenix" (hereafter paraphrased), our school came
right to the brink of being phased out, beginning in
1968 when the Class of 1972 were freshmen.
There were 18 Jesuits at McQuaid in ’68, down from
a high of 33 in the late ’50s. With Jesuit numbers
dwindling as new vocations plummeted through the
’60s, the New York Province administrators had
undertaken an extensive series of meetings among all
Jesuit communities in 1967-68 to determine whether
they could continue to staff nine high schools
adequately.
It had been the most fundamental principle of St.
Ignatius in governing the Society that, where the needs
were many and the Jesuits were few, the Society should
go where the greater glory of God and the good of
souls (the magis) promised to result. The question for
the McQuaid Jesuit community, therefore, was: given
the needs of the Church in New York and New Jersey
and the various other apostolates of the province, could
McQuaid Jesuit High School legitimately continue to
make a call on the diminishing resources of the
province – or would it be a great service, however
painful, to close McQuaid and reassign the McQuaid
Jesuits to other apostolates, where their service could
make a broader or deeper or more long-lasting
contribution to the Kingdom of God?
Their reluctant decision, in July of ’68, was to phase
out two schools, McQuaid and Brooklyn Prep, and
close both of them in 1972. (Brooklyn Prep, founded
in 1908, actually did close in ’72.) Provincial Fr. Robert
Mitchell met with McQuaid rector, Fr. Albert Bartlett,
and principal, Fr. Joseph Gersitz, in late August and
conveyed the bad news to them. Soon after, the
vice-provincial for secondary schools, Fr. Joseph
Browne, met with Fr. Bartlett - and the lay advisors he
had enlisted in 1966 - to explain the reasons for the
decision. One large factor was a mounting debt in the
range of $700,000.
To their eternal glory, Fr. Bartlett and his lay
advisors refused to accept that decision without a fight.
4 History of McQ
The New York Province had plans to close McQuaid Jesuit after
the class of 1972 graduated. A group of men came together and
helped save the school, ensuring the future of McQuaid.
They set to work to construct a plan that would stave
off McQuaid’s closing. On a Friday in mid-September,
Fr. Bartlett summoned McQuaid’s faculty and staff to a
meeting to inform them that a press release, set to
appear in the New York Times the following
Monday, would officially announce the closing of the
two schools. He reassured them that he and 10 of the
lay advisors would fly to New York the next morning
to make their case for a stay of execution. He was
hopeful that they would prevail. That delegation, all of
them McQuaid parents with business or legal
know-how, was led by Tom Presutti and consisted
of Joe Mancini, Mark Tuohey, Gerry Kennedy, Tony
Cashette, Herb Vanden Brul, George Schiller, Vince
Stanley, William “Wee” Wilmot, and Judge John
Conway. After an all-day meeting, their persuasive
efforts were successful. Fr. Mitchell agreed to give
McQuaid until December 1 (a deadline later extended
by seven months) to evolve a plan whereby the school
could continue to exist under the responsibility of a
Board of Trustees and with reduced Jesuit
participation. The Times story on Brooklyn Prep’s
phasing-out appeared two days later. McQuaid’s name
had been deleted.
Thus began negotiations between the New York
Province, Fr. Bartlett, and the lay advisors that
continued until late in 1969. That December, a contract