 "Photo: Photo Courtesy of Public Relations")
Loyola College President Rev. Harold Ridley, S.J. died suddenly at his home on Tuesday night, Jan. 18, after leading the college through a decade of progress and achievements that established Loyola as a pre-eminent Jesuit institution. He was 65.
His secretary found Ridley early Wednesday morning, but the cause of death has not been determined.
"We are deeply saddened by this sudden news, and our thoughts and prayers are with him, his family, and his many friends," said board of trustee chair John Cochran, an alumnus of the Class of 1973 and chief executive officer of MBNA America Bank.
Ridley was born on June 20, 1939, in Jersey City, N.J. and attended school at Fordham University, Woodstock College and the Union Theological Seminary before going on to receive his Ph.D. in English literature from New York University. He began teaching English and Latin at Regis High School in New York and then went on to teach humanities at the Maryland Institute College of Art from 1967-68.
A year later, Ridley was ordained as a priest in the Roman Catholic Church.
After his time there, Ridley moved on to Le Moyne College, a Jesuit institution in Syracuse, N.Y., where he served as the chair of the English department and a chief academic officer.
At Le Moyne, Ridley had developed a close-knit circle of friends including Genevieve Saya, who has served in various posts at LeMoyne including a vice president position.
Saya described "the great impact he had on so many people ... He will be greatly missed."
Ridley stayed at Le Moyne for over 20 years in these capacities.
Le Moyne College President Rev. Charles Beirne, S.J., spoke of Ridley's warmth and kindness as both a teacher and a human being. Before entering the Jesuits on the same day, Beirne attended high school and the seminary with Ridley.
"[Ridley] was a superb teacher -- very difficult, very demanding," Beirne remembered, adding that Ridley often would begin class with a quote from Shakespeare, which his pupils would then have to identify.
On the advice of a close friend, the Rev. Frank Nash, S.J., Ridley applied for the presidency at Loyola and was offered the job.
"It was a great loss to Le Moyne when he left but a great gain for Loyola," Nash said.
Harold "Hap" Ridley became the 23rd president of Loyola College on July 1, 1994, succeeding the Rev. Joseph A. Sellinger, S.J., who served as president for 28 years before he lost his battle with cancer on April 19, 1993. Sellinger presided over Loyola's numerous large-scale changes, including the transition from an all male small local school to a co-ed regional school.
During the 14-month period in between Sellinger's death and Ridley's appointment, Tom Scheye, an English professor and then-provost at Loyola, served as the interim president.
When Ridley arrived, he immediately made clear that he wasn't trying to the fill the shoes of Sellinger.
"I thought that my strength might be that number one I was following a president who had been here for 30 years, who was legendary, who had been outstandingly successful. And so as a 54-year-old guy with my set of experience, I wasn't going to collapse under the burden of following [Sellinger]," Ridley said in an interview with The Greyhound last April.
As president, he proclaimed that even though the college had made great strides in the past years, it needed to continue to move forward in order to gain the elite status that he envisioned for Loyola.
"All you need to do is spend a half an hour with him and you know what a great personality he is, what a great leader he is," said Vice President and Treasurer John Palmucci, who was the first person that Ridley hired after taking over as president.
During his tenure as president, he implemented his vision for the college, and the results can be seen physically with the addition of many new buildings and facilities such as a new Fitness and Aquatic Center opening on North Charles St. in 2000, a new academic building for the Sellinger School of Business and Management a year later and two new graduate centers at the Timonium and Columbia campuses in 1999 and 2003, respectively.
"But maybe more important than the physical buildings, the president touches everything so there's been improvement on every front," said Dr. David Haddad, vice president for academic affairs, who will serve as the interim president of the college.
"There's been improvement in the things we do in student development, improvement in the faculty, improvement in looking at and evaluating programs and curriculum. You almost name every asset of the college, and there's been improvement," Haddad said.
Another area that he worked hard on improving was the academic atmosphere at Loyola. Since Ridley arrived Loyola has seen the number and quality of undergraduate student applications increase from 4,500 to 7,600 as well as growth in the number of students enrolled at the two graduate programs.
In 1999, Loyola graduated its first Rhodes scholar, Jose Vargas, a biology major.
Ridley also implemented the Alpha program for freshmen, a sophomore initiative aimed at increasing the percentage of returning students and a Catholic Studies program in hopes of increasing the academic fiber of the institution.
"That's what Alpha was designed to help, to get students excited about the real hard intellectual work," Ridley said last April. "What we've been trying to do for the past 10 years is to really help this school reach its academic potential: better students, better faculty, increased reputation as a premiere university."
Ridley was considered by much of the faculty and administration to be academically oriented.
"Most of my career was teaching and I felt that probably the faculty would appreciate a president who understood the challenges of teaching and so forth," Ridley said in the April 2004 interview.
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