Boston College - Sub Turri Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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TOWEK BiriLDING

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I tstorij of tl|0 CoU g i HE HISTORY of any noble triumph is at once a memorial of achieve- ment, and then a tale of failure. It is a record of the past in which ennoblements of a high order have been conceived, sometimes heroi- cally realized, but more frequently tragically frustrated. It is a huge panorama across which slowly move great men and greater deeds, and from which we derive new hope for future endeavor. Therefore history cannot con- tent itself with a summation of dates, wars, and rehabilitations; with Caesar and Constantine and the fall of their empire; it must also chronicle those activities from which spring the beauty, the joy, and the truth of life. These will be found only where consummate ideals are fostered and encouraged; these will live, grow, and produce still greater ones because they are perennial — more perennial than the everlasting hills — for they are a reflection of the Supreme Ideal. Thus the history of Boston College is not a mere register of dates; it is the story of an ideal. This ideal was not new, for its originator had died eight- een hundred years before, and though it had been tarnished by both friend and foe, it had lost none of its original brilliance. It was the ideal of truth. Here in Boston the phenomenal development of Boston College is syn- onymous Avith the persistently spreading influence of the Society of Jesus in its determination to oft ' er ample opportunity to all for Catholic Education. As early as 1847 the Reverend John McElroy, S. J., in accordance with the wishes of the Right Reverend John B. Fitzpatrick, the then bishop of Boston, assumed the rectorship of St. Mary ' s in the North End. Struck with the realization of the local need for Jesuit training, Father McElroy apparently derived the seed of the ambitious undertaking, of establishing a collegiate institution, from his own life which was a constant application of personal effort against pressing odds. He had entered the Society as a laybrother but by singular aptitude rose to the high office of the priesthood. For the next few years the existence of Boston College rose, fell, and rose again intermittently as one obstacle after another opposed its way. The Hancock schoolhouse was purchased but financial inadequacy as well as the scarcity of Jesuit professors doomed this attempt; the city of Boston sold the Otis School to Father McElroy yet here again, as previously, the lack of sufficient faculty inevitably resulted in delay; then followed the purchase of [10]

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a section of real estate on Leverett Street which provoked such opposition from the civic minded neighbors when the purpose of the land was publicized, that the estate was turned back to the city. However in 1857 the Honorable Alexander H.Rice, Mayor of Boston, exerted his influential assistance for the Jesuit Fathers when in August of the same year the present site of Boston College High School was acqviired for the erection of a church and school, a concrete expression of unflinching constancy. With the completion of the buildings some three years later the Church was formally opened while the structiu-e intended for a college was vised to overcome any further frustration of progress by a lack of professors. The school opened as a house of studies for young Jesuits, later to become mem- bers of the collegiate faculty. At this time the surge of religious intolerance aroused the ire of many Boston residents when public scandals in school curricula were sustained by the legal interpretations of civil jurists. After Father Bernadin Wigit, S.J., had sought financial assistance and cooperation from the pulpit, Michael Norton with his adamant Irish perseverance resorted to those methods successfully employed by his native country against similar opposition by England when he grouped together seventeen students for private tutorship. The outbreak of the Civil War delayed for a time the final events in the founding of Boston College which were chro nicled at its cessation. In April of 1863, the State Legislature granted a charter to the college empowering her to confer all degrees, excepting those of the medical profession alone, a restriction later removed. Thus in the following year the Boston College of today ofiicially opened with an enrollment of twenty-two students. Meanwhile, advancing age, augmented by tireless activity forced Father McElroy to retire in favor of Reverend John Bapst, S. J., the new rector and Reverend Robert Fulton, S.J., the first dean of the College. The first graduating class in 1877 was composed of twelve students hold- ing Bachelor of Arts and one bearing the distinction of a Master of the Arts. Graduation with the sanction of a degree had been prevented due to the lack of philosophy professors which caused such an adjustment of the curricula that for a time only classes in rhetoric and the classics were held. Father Bapst was President until 1869 when he was succeeded by the Rev. W. Brady, S.J., who remained at the college only a year, leaving to assume a more important ofiice in the government of the Society of Jesus. [12]