Inducted in 2007
Prep Teacher & Athletic Director (1947-1988)
Father of a Prep Graduate

Induction Video

Edmund McHugh was a Bronx boy through and through, born in 1920 to Francis McHugh and Helen Kalb McHugh. The McHughs raised their son on Perry Avenue near the Williamsbridge Reservoir. In Ed’s early years, the Oval had yet to be drained and was still being used as a local swimming hole.

Young Eddie began his schooling at St. Brendan’s Grammar School, entering the Prep in 1935. A writer for Rampart, a debater, and manager for the basketball squad during his Hughes Hall days, McHugh graduated Fordham Prep in 1939 as a second generation Prepster — his father, Francis, a lawyer, had graduated the Prep in 1908. Decades later, Ed’s son, Mark would become a third generation alumnus as a member of the Class of 1976.

After the Prep, McHugh went on to the University, graduating Fordham College in 1943 and earning his master’s degree in 1951. The boy from Perry Avenue lived out his adult life in the borough he loved, teaching at the Prep and living just a few houses down the block from his boyhood home. He had even courted his wife, Gloria Butler, just a stone’s throw from the Campus gate at The Bordewick, Fordham Road’s most famous restaurant and nightspot of the 1930s and 1940s.

McHugh joined the faculty in 1947, received his forty-year double Bene Merenti Medal in 1986, and retired in 1988. During his long tenure at both Hughes and Shea Halls, Ed served the Prep in a range of capacities. He started as an English teacher, but his English classes often digressed into discussions of history and politics — especially during election years. When academic departments were formally created at the Prep in the early 1960s, no one was surprised when Ed became a member of the Social Studies Department, where he would remain for the remainder of his teaching career. A former student once wrote of McHugh, “He was funny and serious at the same time. A great mind. He used humor to engage the students when we otherwise would never have dreamed of raising our hands.”

Working with his friend, classmate and fellow Hall of Honor inductee, Robert “Bob” Abplanalp, a major Prep benefactor of that period, Ed was a behind-the-scenes player in resolving the school’s financial crisis during the 1970s. Were it not for the efforts and generosity of men like McHugh and Abplanalp, the Prep would have closed its doors forever, becoming just another footnote in Bronx history.

In the course of his career at the Prep, Ed McHugh wore many other hats as well, serving as director of athletics, dean of the faculty, dean of student activities, assistant director of admissions, moderator of the Fordham Prep Fathers’ Club, and executive secretary of the Alumni Association. On account of his extraordinary work with the Association, McHugh was recognized in 1982 as “Alumnus of the Year,” and presented with the Hans Abplanalp Award, named for the father of Ed's friend and classmate..

In recalling McHugh, a former student and colleague once wrote: “I respected him, admired him, and loved him; he was a good man” — words that echo the sentiment of many.

Edmund J. McHugh passed away on July 6, 2002.

Ed had been the historian for the Class of 1939, and also, apparently, its unofficial class poet. Several of his verses appear in that yearbook, including one called Retrospect.

Vista’d lanes of memories gay —
Etched in verdant shades of May —
Parting scenes of laurels won —
Another phase of life begun.