Gannon University - Lance Yearbook (Erie, PA)

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On the way out, one walked over to Msgr. Nash and asked for a light for his cigarette. He got the light and turned to join his friends. End of crisis | f it makes any difference, these students were protesting a friend's being expelled for repeatedly dis- obeying the college rule against freshmen under 21 living outside the dormitories. This is what the account in the Gannon Knight says. Ask Msgr. Nash what it was all about and he'll tell you he can't even remember. Who can blame him? He faced so many of these confrontations, demonstrations, rallies, protests, marches, sit-ins, boycotts, and the like that they have all sort of lumped together into one big murky stew. Certain incidents stand out, to be sure. Like the time a few hundred students jammed into his office (or at least tried to— most of them wound up pouring out into the secretary's anteroom and the lobby outside) to demonstrate their soli- darity on a few current com- plaints—listen to this— Pass fail (the Gannon Knight account does not specify what they wanted done on this point), raising the Student Acti- vities Fee for fulltime students to $5, and the Student Union problem (whatever that was). And an uglier, more serious inci- dent occurred in 1971 when a resi- dent adviser was attacked by five students. He was so badly injured that doctors feared he would lose his eyesight or worse, his life, as a result. (Luckily, he did not lose either.) But because the R.A. was white and his attackers black, serious racial tensions erupted on campus and spewed forth a whole week of threats, accusations, rallies, and demands. And Msgr. Nash, as president, stood at the center of all this: Calm down the whites. Reassure the blacks. Listen to the demands. Withstand the pressures from the faculty, trus- tees, parents, alumni. Answer to the angry local news media. Restore order. It was a very bad time for Gannon; Msgr. Nash calls it the worst. Or course, these turbulent years, from about 1969 to 1972, are going to stand out. But there were good years, too. And they all started back in 1933 with the founding of Cathedral College. Perhaps a measure of the success of such a young college — Gannon is only 33 years old — can be found in the sheer guts and determination of its humble beginnings. Gannon's founder and first presi- dent is the late Msgr. Joseph Wehrle. Back in 1933 the depression was still on, and Msgr. Wehrle, a much-loved teacher at Cathedral Preparatory School, was getting very frustrated. Here he had all these bright boys- talented students, diligent students — and he couldn't get them into the college. They had no money. Well, this just wouldn't do. So he said, Well, I'll start a college. And he did. The new school for these boys was Cathedral College, a two-year Erie extension of St. Vincent's College in Latrobe, Pa. This isn't even the half of it, though. Dr. Wehrle managed this planning and negotiating — all of the business that goes into Founding a College— while the bishop was off on a trip in Europe. PROTEST! March 3, 1971. The mood of the crowd was polite and friendly as they filed into the office and overflowed into the Old Main lobby. — The Gannon Knight, March 6, 1971. Meeting the students along with Msgr. Nash was Richard Dunford (left), now Vice-President for Student Personnel Services. 16

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Welcome home, bishop. Oh, by the way, we started a college while you were away. Msgr. Nash didn't say whether the bishop hit the roof over this develop- ment, but it doesn't really matter now. Cathedral College continued very nicely until 1941, at which time it became the four-year Gannon School of Arts and Sciences (in conjunction with Villa Maria Col- lege), and then in 1944, Gannon College. M sgr. Nash was in that first class in 1933. He was once one of the boys for whom Cathedral College was founded and even now, in 1977, he maintains that the purpose of Gannon College has not changed. In that first class there must have been almost 50 of us, and boy, I can men- tion doctors . . . there are about 16 priests out of that class. They're really talented people who didn't have any money. And that's why — even right now, when I talk to the faculty about tui- tion— our tuition has to be what the ordinary family in Erie can pay, he said, referring to the recent Faculty Senate argument that Gannon tuition should be raised because the average family's income has increased. Even if our graduates now are coming from college-trained parents, that still is not the point. The point is, that any kid in Erie who wants to get a Christian, Catholic education should be able to come here. The more people that can't come here because of money, the more we're losing our purpose. The man should know. He has been president of Gannon College for 21 years, ever since 1956. Just how he became president is yet another incident in Gannon's rough- and-tumble history. The truth of it is, Msgr. Wehrle did not retire voluntarily. The teachers said that if they didn't get rid of the president they'd all quit, Msgr. Nash said. Msgr. Nash was Fr. Nash back then and was dean of the college. Im- mediately after his ordination in 1942, he was assigned to Gannon and began as a philosophy teacher. This quickly changed with the beginning of World War II. By February of 1943 all but 35 of Gannon's 250 students were drafted into the military service. So we had 35 students. We couldn't afford to have many teachers, so the ones of us that taught here taught everything, he said. Everything for Fr. Nash included philosophy, theology, psychology, ' I'm still convinced we give more priviledges in our dorms than we should give as a Catholic college. ' Shakespeare — an experience he looks back upon with horror — and German. When the enrollment went back up he was able to return to his specialty, psychology. In fact, he completed all of the credits for his doctorate in psychology and only needed a year of residence at Ford- ham University, but the diocese couldn't afford to let him go for that year. He stayed at Gannon. Of course, there were many thing? to be done here. One choice piece of information on his biography sheet is that he served as Director of Athletics. He laughs about the title. It was just a question of having a bunch of students interested in playing basket- ball. They needed somebody to work out the schedule and get the equip- ment and that's what I did. It was the only athletics we had here so you could say I was directing it, but not in the sense that Elwell is today. Be that as it may, how did he manage to schedule competition for a fledgling, unproven team? Well, he wrote in an old alumni magazine, the thing to do was to send a begging letter to every college within a hundred and fifty mile radius of Erie. It worked: Alliance, Allegheny, St. Bonaventure, Baldwin-Wallace, Canisius, Kent State, Ohio University, Niagara University, and St. Vincent all agreed to give Gannon a try. Some heavy schools there. And yes, Gan- non lost to Canisius, Baldwin-Wal- lace, and Ohio U. But the others were all victories for the team of 1944-45. Not a bad start. Then, too, Msgr. Nash was vice- president of the college, something he didn't even know about until he saw it in the catalog. He laughs about this title, too. They were meaning- less things— they didn't change your duties. It just looked better in the catalog to have a vice-president. His appointment as dean came sometime in the early fifties. Nine- teen fifty-six rolled along and he was dean, the priest with the most seniorty, and soon to be the second president of the college. It happened in April. As Msgr. Nash remembers it, I was out on a weekend — I was giving a retreat. And when I got back in town on a Sunday I had a call that the bishop wanted to see me — right away. So I went up and he said, 'Tomorrow morning when you go in the office, you take Dr. Wehrle's office and you're the president.' It was that quick — an overnight coup d'etat. It was that quick and it was nasty, he said. You know, when you came in on a situation like that, the arch- bishop— it almost killed him because Dr. Wehrle had given all those dedi- cated years of service. Then why force him to leave? As it turns out, Msgr. Wehrle proved to be an unpredictable administrator. A tremendous teacher, but as an ad- ministrator . . . Some of his actions as president, in retrospect, take on an almost impish quality. Take the case of the student who wanders in at nine o'clock on Tuesday night. Classes are to begin the next morning. This kid can't get any of the courses he needs, so to satisfy this one student Msgr. Wehrle changes the whole schedule, then hands it over to Msgr. Nash and the other administrators on Wednesday morning. This is true. What a stunt! It sounds great today — a funny anecdote, great dirt, whatever — but think if you were a teacher or administrator or student on that Wednesday morning. Pandemonium. And then we had to cover up, Msgr. Nash said, How did we cover up? Well, any of the kids that had conflicts — we'd put them in one room and solve the conflicts as quickly as possible so the students were all settled within a couple of days. Then problems with the faculty were building up. There were grumblings about salary, but What really riled up the teachers more than anything else— they'd be a professor 17