Cushing Hall will be torn down this summer, 2019, to be replaced by the University's new听Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.
On a cloudy June morning in 1958, students in the graduating class of the Boston College School of Nursing shuttled from their crowded quarters on the second floor of 126 Newbury Street, known those days as the 鈥淏oston College Intown,鈥� to the University鈥檚 new Alumni Stadium.
In 13 years, the School of Nursing already had become one of the largest nursing programs in the country, with an enrollment of 900. It was about to launch a master鈥檚 program. Nevertheless, the school was hardly integrated physically or socially into the University. In fact, Boston College nurses were joining the rest of their graduating class on the Chestnut Hill Campus for one day only, commencement.
But things were about to change. Boston College President Michael P. Walsh, S.J., had announced a week before commencement that the University planned to break ground on a nursing school building on the Chestnut Hill Campus in 1961.
But after giving the benediction that formally closed commencement, Boston Archbishop Richard Cushing remained on the dais鈥攁nd announced he would donate the cost of the new building. Construction could begin as soon as the following spring; the new nursing school would open for classes by 1960. After a standing ovation, Walsh took the podium and proclaimed the building would be named for the archbishop.
Cushing Hall was a signal advance not just for the School of Nursing but also for Boston College itself. As Walsh noted in a letter to Cushing shortly after his dramatic announcement, his was 鈥渢he greatest single benefaction in the history of Boston College.鈥�
The following morning, a听Boston Globe听headline declared, 鈥淕ift comes as surprise to graduates,鈥� over a page-one story.
Those who had observed Cushing鈥檚 episcopacy may not have been entirely surprised. Cushing began urging Boston College to establish a school of nursing in 1945. He made a case to University President William Keleher, S.J., who complained to the Jesuit Curia in Rome that coeducation would hurt Boston College鈥檚 鈥渆thos.鈥�
The school opened in February 1947 with a class of 35. For the next 13 years, nursing students pursued their bachelor of science degrees in overcrowded classrooms making do with small desk-chairs and blackboards at 126 Newbury. Nursing faculty stayed downtown while their counterparts in the College of Arts and Sciences commuted from Chestnut Hill to the Back Bay to teach English, history, philosophy, and theology.
Richard Cardinal Cushing
As Boston鈥檚 archbishop from 1944 through 1970, Cardinal Richard Cushing was involved in the planning, development, groundbreaking, and dedication of several Boston College buildings. But he typically didn鈥檛听climb behind the wheel of an excavator while dressed in his ceremonial vestments as he did in February 1959, when he presided at the groundbreaking for the nursing school building. The nursing school was special to Cushing, who personally raised and donated $1 million toward the cost of constructing the building that would be named in his honor.
Spry and plain-spoken, a South Boston native and the son of Irish immigrants, Cushing was known throughout his priesthood for advocating tolerance and civil rights and supporting missionary work. Named Archbishop of Boston in 1944, he became a monolith of a Catholic fundraiser and a model for a sprightly, informal, and inclusive priesthood.
Cushing became Boston鈥檚 cardinal in 1958. During his tenure, he founded a South American-based missionary, delivered the invocation at President John F. Kennedy鈥檚 inauguration in 1961, and said the slain president鈥檚 funeral Mass in 1963. He left the Vatican Council鈥檚 second session early, claiming his time would be better served fundraising for the poor. Over 20 years, he built orphanages, nursing homes, centers for the blind and deaf, 86 churches, dozens of parochial听schools, and hospitals.
But Cushing鈥檚 appeals were pragmatic and spiritual. The Boston Archdiocese was in dire need of nurses to staff its burgeoning network of Catholic hospitals. Nurses, he maintained, answered 鈥渁 call to work for God in service of a particular group of God鈥檚 creatures.鈥�
鈥淲e loved our little, very cramped quarters. We felt like pioneers,鈥� says Martha Cadigan Sullivan 鈥�60, M.S. 鈥�63, a member of the first senior class to graduate from the nursing school in Cushing Hall. There were no labs in the converted building on Newbury Street, requiring students to perform all clinical work in area hospitals, primarily Boston City Hospital in the South End.
The nurses did commute to Chestnut Hill on Tuesdays and Thursdays to take their lab classes in Devlin Hall. Such classes were offered to them exclusively, as there was no institutional intent to integrate the sciences or non-nursing electives at that time.
Elizabeth Grady 鈥�59, M.S. 鈥�64, recalls, 鈥渨e didn鈥檛 have any place, as a distinct community of women, to call home out there [in Chestnut Hill]鈥�.鈥�
鈥淔orced into a separate, small place, we built very deep connections,鈥� says Sullivan. 鈥淲e thought of ourselves as nursing students, not Boston College students.鈥�
Cushing dedicated his namesake hall before an audience of 5,000 on March 25, 1960. The following week, nursing students and faculty left 126 Newbury for good. 鈥淲e finally felt like we belonged at Boston College. We had a home,鈥� says Grady.
On Chestnut Hill, nursing students and faculty settled into spacious, comfortable quarters with ample room to expand. Many spent their limited free time in a first-floor student lounge, filled in those days with cigarette smoke. More often they gravitated to the bright and spacious nursing library on the top floor.
When Sullivan thinks back to the building, she says: 鈥淚 think of the people who filled it. That library was all because of Mary Pekarski,鈥� the nursing school鈥檚 genial, bespectacled founding librarian, who built one of the most expansive nursing collections in the country before she retired in 1978.
Students also gathered in the office of School of Nursing Chaplain Edward Gorman, S.J., who taught theology at the school for 25 years, recalls Grady. 鈥淚t was a mess鈥攈e let us hang our laundry and lunch there all the time鈥攂ut a wonderful mess for us all to camp out.鈥�
No one, however, left a larger imprint on the School of Nursing in its first decades than Rita P. Kelleher. In 1947, when the now-legendary dean arrived at the University鈥檚 main gate to interview for the school鈥檚 first faculty position, she was told that the president did not meet with potential kitchen employees. Within a year she was the nursing school鈥檚 dean.
鈥淪he provided the school, the students, and the faculty [with] a sense of continuity from the downtown setting to the main campus,鈥� says Laurel Eisenhauer 鈥�62, who earned her Ph.D. in 1977 from Boston College鈥檚 School of Education and was on the SON faculty from 1970 to 2005.
鈥淪he was a lady to the nth degree, incredibly sophisticated,鈥� says Grady. 鈥淪he took a lot of hard knocks from the Jesuits for being a woman leader, but she always rose above it.鈥�
Kelleher hosted regular student-faculty teas, where she spoke of the importance of comprehensive nursing care and treating patients as humans, recalls Grady. 鈥淲e were always most enamored with the faculty who were great clinicians. In spite of the fact that Dean Kelleher never did anything clinically, we thought she knew more about nursing than anybody.鈥�
As nurses went from wearing crisp white uniforms to scrubs in the 1970s, capping ceremonies lost their significance and disappeared. Starting in the 1980s, the faculty grew, the curriculum evolved, and classroom use changed as the school began adding master鈥檚 programs in fields from pediatric nursing to gerontology as well as the first doctoral program in nursing at a Jesuit university. The nursing library collection outgrew its space on the top floor and moved to O鈥橬eill Library in 1991. The Connell School now offers post-master鈥檚 certificate programs in fields from forensic nursing to palliative care as well.
Change is now afoot once again. The Connell School of Nursing has outgrown its beloved home of 55 years. Next summer, the school will leave the four-story granite complex on Middle Campus, where hundreds of faculty members educated and trained more than 10,000 nurses for more than a half century. By September 2015, CSON expects to have settled in听听on the second and third floors of Maloney Hall.
Announcing the move in a letter to students, faculty, staff, and alumni last fall, Dean Susan Gennaro wrote, 鈥淲e will carry the traditions of Cushing Hall with us to our future home in Maloney, where we will train the next generation of extraordinary nurses as they build their dreams and careers.鈥�
For alumni like Sullivan, 鈥渋t is hard to imagine the building being abandoned. But back then, we couldn鈥檛 have imagined what the building would come to mean.鈥� After all, she observes: 鈥淲e were on the cusp of a new age too.鈥�
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William F. Connell听
An astute businessman who made the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, William F. Connell often joked that he was just a 鈥渏unk man.鈥� (Connell Limited Partnership, the metal recycling and equipment manufacturer he founded, was one of the country鈥檚 largest privately owned companies.) A graduate of Boston College and Harvard Business School and vice chair of Boston College鈥檚 Board of Trustees, Connell was active in civic life. He quietly helped steer the merger of FleetBank and BankBoston and orchestrate the deal that kept the New England Patriots in Massachusetts.
The son of Irish immigrants鈥攈is father was a bus driver, his mother a seamstress鈥擟onnell studied accounting at Boston College, graduating magna cum laude in 1959. He was a daily communicant, who often said he lived by three rules: 鈥淏e good, do your best, and go to Mass.鈥� He also said, 鈥淚f you get lucky, you鈥檙e supposed to share.鈥�
University President William P. Leahy, S.J., presented him with Boston College鈥檚 highest award, the Ignatius Medal, in a bedside ceremony the day before he died. Connell was only the 10th recipient of the honor.
William F. Connell lost his battle with cancer on August 22, 2001, leaving his wife Margot and six children, all Boston College graduates, including CSON alumna Lisa McNamara 鈥�89. On September 12, 2003, the Connell family gathered at the University for the formal dedication of its school of nursing in his honor.
Margot C. Connell, William鈥檚 widow, carries on his dedication to Boston College by serving on the University鈥檚 Board of Trustees. She is a convening cochair of the Light the World campaign and received an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 2009.
鈥擹ak Jason, pin photograph by Gary Wayne Gilbert, archival images courtesy University Archives