Canisius College - Azuwur Yearbook (Buffalo, NY)

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logies all over the world.The best known ofhis longer critiques are studies of Cooper, Nlarquand, Sigrid Undset, the Volsungasaga, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis. One of the three letters which Lewis wrote to Dr. Brady has been printed in the 1967 collection, Letters of C.S. Lewis. Dr. Brady's record of creative achievement is as long and as formidable as that of his academic and critical careers. He has had four novels published: Viking Summer, This Land Fulfilled, Crown of Grass and Stage of Fools, a biography of St. Thomas lVlore, which went into multiple editions, including a paperback issue, and outsold any Dutton book on the 1953 publishing list. The titles of his books for children are Cat Royal, The Elephant Who Wanted To Pray, The Church Mouse of St. Nicholas and St. Thomas More of London Town. For older children there is Sword of Clontarf and The King's Thane. A Catholic Reader is a per- sonalized anthology and Wings Over Patmos is a book of poetry. Several of his short stories and poems have been anthologized, some for the blind. One short story which he wrote while still an undergraduate at the College, The Foot That Went Too Far, inspired the appear- ance ofthe fabled Griffin on our campus. iSee page 34.l Yet despite all the foregoing, Dr. Brady's eminence has es- caped the notice of many students. This is due to his precarious state of health which has often kept him away from the campus in recent years. Dr. Brady has been in declining health since the late 1950's and has only managed to carry on his college lecturing under strictly controlled conditions. Early this semester, his health took another turn and he was hospitalized. Precisely one week after his release from intensive care, Dr. Brady was back teaching, in his own living room, a final course before his retire- This tribute cannot begin to tell it all. Dr. Brady was named an Outstanding Citizen of the Year by The Buffalo Evening News in 1970. During his high school and college days, he was one of the premier tennis talents in the Buffalo area. He chaired the English Department at Canisius for nearly 25 years. He has taught in several other departments as well, including languages and his- iry. As he used to tell his classes, if literature was his business, history was his passion. That fact is manifest in his numerous works of historical fiction. No, we cannot tell it all here. Still, while all of this establishes Dr. Brady's eminence, we must express his specialness as well. Last fall, the AZUWUB received a letter from Dr. Brady's colleagues suggesting that we consider dedicating the 1976 year- book to him because: His imprint is lastingly upon the best elements in Canisius and in the Buffalo community. The letter mentioned Dr. Brady's career as a teacher, novelist, poet, scholar, and critic. The missive ended: All of this leaves out the most important fact about him which is that his is one of the richest human spirits of our place and time-he is truly great-hearted. We suggest that your choosing him would dignify us all. And we suggest, further, that our choosing him does dignify us all. -E.B. ment. CHARLES A. BRADY A. B. lt is not easy to be critical with a critic and even more difficult to give a thorough, literal treatment of a literary man. But this is our pre- dicament, for it is a well known and acknowl- edged fact that Charlie is a litterateur and critic of note, far beyond the confines of our own little circle. Though perhaps head and shoulders above any graduate of Canisius in the literary field, his dis- tinctions are not therein limited. As a student of the languages, he has been outstanding. French seems to be his favorite study. Debating, fraternal affiliations and dramatics have come under his extensive activities. Well might we enter on a discussion of how he approaches the personifica- tion of Newman's gentleman, if we didn't think we were intruding on a gentleman's mod- esty. We expect great things of Charlie. Coffin Clubg Sodality, 1, 2, 3, 45 Quarterly, l, 2, 3, 45 Editor-in-Chief, 45 Azuwur, 3, 4, Associate Editor, 41 Academia, l, 2, 3, 4g Intercollegiate Debating Team, 43 Dramatic Club, l, 2, 3g Class Medal, l, 2, 3g Tennis Team, 2, 3, 4. even as the symbo, Dr. Brady unleashed on The prophecy of great things in the 1933 AZUWUR proved to be right on target. Canisius during his undergraduate days-the Golden Griffin-appeared to tender his personal congratulations. 27

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Dedication: Dr. Charles A. Brady i Charles Brady was born in Buffalo's Black Bock section on April 15, 1912-at the approximate moment of the sinking of the Titanic. Later he was to say-only half jokingly-that this probably determined his bent toward epic subjects, both in his serious criticism and in his creative writing. In any case, his birth at that moment was anything but a disaster for Canisius College. Dr. Brady has spent his life at and with Canisius. He is a graduate of Canisius High School and of Canisius College. He joined the Canisius College English Department in 1935 and this semester caps 41 years for him on the faculty here. The city of Buffalo is dotted with his pupils. He has taught and touched thousands of students across two generations. He has, on occa- sion, taught sons and daughters of former students. And he has taught many who went on to be teachers themselves. On Election Day each year he has made it a rule of thumb to vote for the candidates whom he has taught. lVlost recently, however, he has often had to choose between two former students. Perhaps the greatest symbol of his deep involvement with Canisius is the centenary history, Canisius College.' The First Hundred Years. Written over a period of years, the book required massive research through piles of old records. Unlike many a school history, it is not a boring compilation of historical fact upon historical fact. lnstead, the book is written in an impression- istic style which captures the past and present spirit of Canisius College as well as that of the entire Niagara Frontier. Dr. Brady has always said that what the old Romans called pietas and genius loci - that is, a love for a locality and the sense of the spirit of place therein-is the formative impulse in his prose and poetry. For example, he often reflected on the fact that just beyond the fence of his childhood home on Humboldt Parkway was the site of the Six Nations Council Glade where, as late as 1812, the Iroquois took their decisions for peace or war. In 1967, Dr. Brady celebrated an allied association-that his first grandson had Seneca blood, and belonged to one of those Indian nations-by writing Keeper of the Western Gate: For D.J.D. That poem subsequently won the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award, the Poetry Society of America's most prestigious prize and, in his own estimation, the highest honor Dr. Brady ever received. And he has received many. There is a distinct Canisius flavor to a number of these. He was awarded the LaSalle Medal upon graduation from the College. ln 1970 he was the recipient of the Canisius Alumni Association's Peter Canisius lVledal. He has been named to the Canisius High School Hall of Fame. His second Bene lVlerenti medal, denoting an additional 20 years of distin- guished service to the College was bestowed upon Dr. Brady at the College's 109th Commencement ceremonies last year. Canisius, however, has not been alone in honoring its favorite son. Dr. Brady attended Harvard University for graduate study and earned his lVl.A. there. In 1954, LelVIoyne College awarded him an L.H.D. Earlier he had held the Candlemas Lectureship at Boston College, and had given Notre Dame's Summer Lecture in the Humanities. On different occasions he has also spoken at both the State University of New York at Buffalo and the State University of New York College at Buffalo. In 1963 Georgetown University made him the recipient of its President's lVledal. Since 1945, Dr. Brady has been a book reviewer for The Buffalo Evening News. His own caricatures have often accom- panied his Saturday reviews. In addition, he has been, at various times, on the review staffs of the New York Times, the old Herald Tribune, Thought, Renascence, America, The Lamp, The Sign, The Catholic World. Beyond his criticism for newspapers, Dr. Brady's literary essays are to be found in standard critical antho- Dr. Brady's wife, Eileen, was on hand to accept an award for her husband from Fr. Demske at last year's graduation. A second Bene Nlerenti medal denoting 40 years of distinguished service to the College was presented

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1 870-1976 An Abbreviated History of Canisius College by Charles A. Brady On September 5, 1870, Canisius College opened its doors for the first time in a small, tW0-Story brick structure, a former bookstore, situated at 434 Ellicott Street. Except for a preliminary paid announcement, the event went unnoticed in the Buffalo press which was busy listening to the clangor of such more distant happenings as Sedan's falling before the Prus- sian armies and the capture of Napoleon lll. Because of the city's large German and smaller, though still sizable, Alsatian population, there was intense interest in the progress of this first German Blitzkrieg against France. The generic interest was at its highest pitch, most probably, within the small faculty of the fledgling college. Bismarck's greatest triumph was at hand, and, oddly enough, the presence of these European founders of Canisius-German Dutch, and German-speaking Swiss Fathers-was in great part a reflex of the anti-clerical forces which had converged in the Bismarkian Kulturkampf and which were destined to gain even more momentum after the victory of 1870. As a matter of fact, a certain number of northern European Jesuits had been resident in Western New York as early as 1848, the occa- sion of their coming to the Buffalo area a schism within the Buffalo Catholic diocese re- sulting from a jurisdictional clash between the Buffalo ordinary, Bishop John Timon and the trustees of St. Louis' Church, the mother church of the Buffalo diocese. They had been sent there originally, at Timon's request, by the French Provincial of the New York-Canada Nlission, the Jesuit administrative entity serving as their host in the New World. At the Buffalo bishop's instigation, after he had placed St. Louis under formal interdict, they built St. Nlichael's, the Jesuit church on Washington Street between Tupper and Chippewa which, rebuilt very much according to the original plan after the disastrous fire of May 23, 1962, remains to this day one of the city's best loved landmarks. Once the schism had been healed, Timon, as energetic as he was politic, moved to a second objective he hoped to achieve through Jesuit instrumentality. He wanted Catholic higher education, on both seminary and lay levels, for Buffalo and its environs. Jesuit college educa- tion, which derived directly from the University of Paris even as did Oxford and Cambridge and, in America, Harvard and Yale, had an admirable reputation. So Timon brought his considerable powers of diplomatic suasion to bear on the French-born first superior of St. lVlichael's, Father Joseph Durthaller, who had once taught Gustave Dore' the celebrated illustrator of Cer- vantes, Dante and Swift. As a sensitive human- ist, Durthaller was well-disposed toward the project. ln fact, if circumstances had been just a little different, Durthaller might well have been the first president of a Buffalo-based Jesuit college founded under French auspices rather than German. Even as things turned out, he may be regarded as the spiritual founder of the