Good chemistry

Re “Powerdriver,” by Lydialyle Gibson (Fall 2017): Stafford Sheehan joined our lab as a freshman. His passion for renewable energy research was obvious from those early days. What is truly remarkable about Staff’s achievements, at Boston College and beyond, is the organic integration of fundamental science and applied research. He sets an example for how students can pursue their passions in areas of huge societal importance, such as sustainability. I look forward to his next steps as an entrepreneur and an innovator.

Dunwei Wang
Boston College

The writer is an associate professor of chemistry.

Land O’ Lakes

I was surprised that William Bole’s article on the 1967 Land O’ Lakes meeting (“Mission Statement,” Fall 2017) did not make reference to Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Pope John Paul II’s 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic universities. In it, the pope set out how Catholic colleges are to safeguard the Church’s identity, including the norm that Catholics teaching in theological disciplines receive a mandatum from the local ordinary (bishop), a reapplication of Canon 812 of the revised canon law promulgated in 1983. It requires teachers under the mandatum to make clear when they are departing from true Catholic doctrine.

Anthony Mangini ’68
Waltham, Massachusetts

The decisions made by the gang of 26 at the Land O’ Lakes gathering had harmful consequences that the participants might not have envisioned. By emancipating themselves from the authority of the Catholic Church to pursue total academic freedom, their institutions started on a path of capitulation to the decaying morals of our time. Simultaneously, by deciding to accept federal funds, they sacrificed their independence and made themselves vulnerable to government extortion (via Title IX legislation, for example).

By emphasizing pluralism, multiculturalism, and social justice, Catholic universities no longer have the courage and focus to defend Catholic doctrine and spirituality and are instead falling into the trap of moral relativism. In this discouraging state of affairs, the loss of federal funding and accreditation might be the best thing to happen to our “Catholic” institutions. It might force them to start from the ground up and gain essential independence from a corrupt system.

Luis Carvallo, MBA’99
Vienna, Virginia

Class notes

Re “At the Table,” by Zachary Jason (Summer 2017): I took Mark O’Connor’s course in the political and intellectual history of modern Europe the fall term of my freshman year. I managed to fail the first exam because I concentrated on one question and had no time to scribble a response to the others. Professor O’Connor saved me from disaster by kindly bidding me to buckle down on subsequent exams and to “grow up” as a thinker and not just a “rehasher.” Thanks in no small part to him, I switched my major from biology to history.
O’Connor taught history as a continuum of events that still challenges today’s historians. And he demanded students grapple with the issues. As a family genealogist whose ancestors were among the founders of Hartford, Connecticut, I continue to grapple with some tough historical facts, such as the New England slave trade in which my ancestors participated.

Thomas Alton ’80
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I had the distinct blessing of having Mark O’Connor not only for the sophomore seminar, but also as my senior thesis advisor. Mark’s impact upon me and other alumni of “The College of O’Connor,” as we like to call it, is indelible. There’s not a book I read, an historical event I ponder, a painting I admire, or a movie I watch that I do not see more richly for having sat at Mark’s seminar table.

With Mark, we were not doing scholarship for scholarship’s sake, but, instead, with an eye towards what those great texts meant for our lives. Mark taught us, in the words of Fr. Zosima from The Brothers Karamazov, that “much on earth is concealed from us, but in place of it we have been granted a secret, mysterious sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds.”

Christian Clark ’09
New York, New York

Mark O’Connor took a chance on me in the fall of 2000 when I transferred to Boston College in my sophomore year and he accepted me into the Honors Program. He said to me that he saw himself in me. That comment speaks to what makes Mark O’Connor such a wonderful human being and phenomenal teacher—his humility. That humility is why he represents so perfectly the Jesuit, Catholic identity of Boston College.

John Mulcahy ’03, JD’07
Annandale, Virginia

The wonderful article on Professor Mark O’Connor’s course opened a floodgate of recollections from my own experience in the then-new Honors Program before Professor O’Connor began teaching at Boston College, especially from my first-year English course in 1959–60, which was taught by Leo Hines, with his gripping, raspy voice and remarkable histrionic repertoire.

By Thanksgiving we had romped through the Greek Bucolic poets, the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, the Purgatorio, and Paradise Lost, while Leo declaimed on themes such as metempsychosis and, yes, The Golden Bough was on his menu. We then blitzed 10 plays of Shakespeare, and concluded the year with an immersion in earlier 17th-century prose and poetry, especially the metaphysicals, then much in vogue. For me, that course ignited the life of the mind.

I was a biology major. (It was the post-Sputnik era, in which American students were pressed to pursue the sciences and engineering and C.P. Snow was alerting us—in his 1959 The Two Cultures— to the growing divide between practitioners of the sciences and of the humanities.) Thanks to Leo I took as many English and history courses as my major would allow, and reveled in them. He was the only professor I encountered who was open to an occasional coffee in the Lyons cafeteria, and we remained in touch for years after Boston College.

I still have the reading lists and notes from Leo Hines’s course and our Honors Program book-a-week summer reading lists; I dip into them regularly. The enduring imprint of my Boston College education was threefold: to be a life-long learning junkie, to have a career in service-oriented cooperatives and international development assistance, and to oscillate between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa (including teaching at the post-graduate level) so that each could inform the other.

John Jordan ’63
Toronto, Canada

Travels with Fr. Monan

Re “Remembering Fr. Monan—Life, Legacy, and Spirit,” by Ben Birnbaum, James M. O’Toole, and Joseph M. O’Keefe, SJ (Spring 2017): During the $125 million Campaign for Boston College of the early 1990s, I occasionally traveled with J. Donald Monan, SJ, to visit donors. On my first trip—to Atlanta—I was caught off guard when he offered to return the rental car. At the end of another trip, during which we had secured a few five- and six-figure gifts, Father laughed and said, “I remember the days when a $1,000 gift would make us gasp.”

Fr. Monan always hosted a Christmas lunch for the University support staff, and at the end of the gathering he would sing “White Christmas” in his lovely tenor.

Jane Carroll
Damariscotta, Maine

The writer was director of major gifts from 1993–96.

Seating plan

Re “Walk Off,” by Joseph Gravellese ’10 (Summer 2017): Reading about Shea Field’s last game reminded me how students loved to sit on the wooded hillside behind third base to watch games all through the 1960s. My older brother, Ralph Surette ’62, tipped me off about this when my turn came to attend.

Stephen G. Surette ’69, M.Ed.’71
Arlington, Massachusetts

Fans occupy the wooded hill adjacent to now-decommissioned Shea Field for a 1961 game. Image: Sub Turri, 1962. Click image to enlarge.

BCM welcomes letters from readers. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and must be signed to be published. Our fax number is (617) 552–2441; our email address is bcm@bc.edu.