Fordham University mourns the death of Anne M. Mannion, Ph.D., associate professor emerita of history, whose five decades at Fordham dovetailed with the school’s transformation from a New York City institution into a nationally recognized University.
A wake was held on Thursday, July 25, at St. James Funeral Home, in St. James, N.Y. A Mass of Christian Burial was held at Saints Philip & James Catholic Church, in St. James, N.Y., and interment followed at St. Charles Cemetery, Farmingdale, N.Y.
In a statement on July 28, the Convey family said, “We would like to thank all of Anne’s colleagues at Fordham University who either attended the wake, funeral mass and burial, or who expressed their condolences on Anne’s passing on July 16, 2013. We have taken great comfort from all of this.”
“For generations of students, Anne Mannion was the heart of Fordham College at Lincoln Center,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University. “She was a teacher’s teacher, and a warm and generous colleague. I know the entire Fordham community joins with me in prayer for her family and loved ones.”
Mannion, who died on July 16, graduated in 1958 from Fordham’s School of Education, which was then located at 302 Broadway in lower Manhattan. The School of Education was the only college at Fordham that admitted women; at the time the Rose Hill campus was still all male..
She began teaching at Fordham in 1959 while still a graduate student at Columbia University specializing in Medieval monasticism and institutional history. She would go on to become the director of the honors program at Lincoln Center, and was appointed director of Fordham’s Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) when it opened in 2008.
Robert R. Grimes, S.J., dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center recalled Mannion’s many contributions to the college. “It is no surprise that Anne was the first recipient of an Arts and Sciences faculty-wide teaching award,” he said, “but she was also a source of joy and vitality to the entire college community: students, faculty and staff.”
When she retired in 2012, Mannion was feted with several other longtime faculty members at the annual Fordham College Lincoln Center reunion. In a freewheeling panel discussion that was often punctuated by jokes and anecdotes from Mannion, she recalled what it was like to move into the Lincoln Center Campus’s Lowenstein Center when opened in 1969, and was surrounded by a vast stretches of concrete.
“I can remember walking into the building for the first time with a few of my colleagues from 302 Broadway, and saying well, if we don’t make it as a school, we’ll make it as a bank,” she said at the time. “It’s softened up a lot over the years since then.”
The role of unofficial historian was one that Mannion relished, along with teaching. “I loved Fordham as a student and still do,” she said in an interview in 2002. “I don’t think I’ve gone to work a day in my life. I still consider it going to school.”
Mannion is survived by brothers James Convery (Amy) and Michael Convery (Lynn) and five nieces and nephews. Her husband, Lawrence, passed away previously.
The family requests that gifts in Anne’s memory be made to the Fordham College at Lincoln Center Fund, Fordham University, Office of Development and University Relations, 888 Seventh Avenue, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10019.
