Merrimack College - Merrimackan Yearbook (North Andover, MA)

Page 14 text:

This is the story of a school in its relations with a community — a record of corporate enterprise and achievement. Even more than this it is the chronicle of a faith and a vision, or rather of many faiths and many visions, inspired by the need for a regional insti- tution of higher learning to build a better community, a better America. The story begins, as so many modern reforms and projects begin, in the isolated deliberations of a dis- cussion group. In 1946 a special panel on educational affairs set up by a Haverhill labor-management com- mittee under the direction of J. Leo Cronin recom- mended construction in the Merrimack Valley of a college designed to serve the immediate needs of re- turning veterans, and to provide future generations with effective tools for intellectual, physical, and moral development. The Most Reverend Richard J. Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, enthusiastically patronized the project, securing the Augustinian Fathers to found and staff the proposed institution, and launching what was to culminate into a million dollar drive. Founding a new college is in itself a monumental task. Founding a new college in times of uncertainty and of inflationary spirals is a calculated risk. It re- quires courage, leadership, and determination. From the initial planning stage to the present day the one man most closely identified with the project has ex- hibited these qualities. To the persistent energy and unfaltering devotion of the Very Reverend Vincent A. McQuade, O.S.A., Ph.D., is due in large measure the success of so precarious an enterprise.

Page 16 text:

THE FIRST Faculty House. A SPRING-POSE of the gymnasium. September 29, 1947 witnessed an unpretentious be- ginning — one cinder-block building, thirteen faculty members, one hundred and sixty-five students. Aca- demic life began to an overture of sawing and ham- mering. When the year drew to a close, however, the basic academic and extracurricular patterns had been set, a chapel dedicated to Our Mother of Good Coun- sel, and funds for the construction of a gymnasium realized through a gigantic Penny Social at the Law- rence Memorial Stadium. The pioneer stage had been weathered. It was to be followed by a period of rapid expansion and development. AN AUTUMN-VIEW of Merrimack’s first building.