Inducted in 2013
Prep Teacher, Coach, Assistant Headmaster & Dean (1967-2020)
Member, Prep Board of Trustees (1994-2000)

Induction Video

John “Jack” Foley has been a loyal successor to the storied history of teaching Latin and Greek at Rose Hill. He has been a world class tour-guide for thousands of young men sailing with Ascanius and Anchises away from a burning Troy, and back home again over Homer’s wine-dark sea

— from the Fordham University President’s Award
granted by Rev. Joseph McShane, SJ
May 2011

John Joseph Foley was born in New York City to John Foley and Katherine Freehill Foley. The elder John worked for the post office, and Katherine was a chambermaid and cook. Jack grew up with an older sister, Margaret, in an apartment on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan where his mother and father held additional jobs as superintendents of the building. The family would later move to the Bronx, where in 1959, Jack graduated from St. John Chrysostom School and entered Fordham Prep.

During his Hughes Hall years, Jack played some tennis, debated during his junior year, wrote a bit for Rampart, and of course, memorized his declensions and conjugations. But what would become a legendary stint at Rose Hill did not start off as epically as one would imagine. “I was scared,” Jack has recalled. “I was the only one from my grammar school who came to the Prep, and I knew no one. It was touch and go for the first month.”

Slowly but surely, young Foley would settle into life at the Prep. The Faculty had an extraordinary impact on him — and not surprisingly so: a list of Jack’s teachers reads like a who’s who of the Prep Hall of Honor. And he has always reveled in speaking about those men whom he would come to admire so greatly .

In Jack’s estimation, Fr. Shea was an “overwhelming presence” with a distinctive manner of speech. And then, of course, there was Charles W. DaParma, Jr., his Latin teacher during his sophomore and junior years. “He was very witty and a great writer. He gave us exquisite notes. Mr. DaParma wanted us to learn.”

Foley’s take on Harry McDonough: “He was a card.”

“Nothing was more enjoyable than being in class with Frank Holbrook,” Jack’s recollections continue. “We were rolling in the aisles, and life was more fun during senior year because of him.”

And there was Mr. Ed McHugh: “a genuine, caring man who made sure that no one got lost on the fringes."   And Fr. Fahey "You can't forget Fahey!" Foley admonishes. "Must'nt forget Father!"  Without question, McHugh and Fahey were two men whom Foley would always admire for their efforts on behalf of those boys who were not necessarily the most popular, the most successful, or the most fully engaged.

But there was something even bigger and greater about the Prep than this litany of legends. By Jack’s reckoning, “It was a sense of the Jesuit holiness, the way they went about things. It was very spiritual, though not necessarily overtly so. It gave me something to hold on to.”

Foley continued his studies at Fordham University, from which he graduated in 1967. He was a classics major.

What is it like to go from being a student who was taught by giants to being their colleague? It was a big adjustment for Jack Foley when in September 1967, just out of college, he found himself sitting in the Faculty Lounge with those very same men. Looking back, he has recalled how the experience left him awestruck and often tongue-tied, but also how welcomed they all made him feel as a rookie teacher.

For more than five decades, “Captain Jack” Foley would serve as a beloved member of the faculty, teaching Latin and Greek, the backbone of the Jesuit academic tradition. The Hughes Hall neophyte of yesteryear – formerly with pipe in hand – rightfully earned his place in the pantheon of Prep teachers. He also served as assistant headmaster from 1982 to 1985, held the office of the dean of students from 1975 to 1978, coached baseball and football, moderated a spectrum of clubs, and served as the Faculty's representative on the Board of Trustees.  

Many things have changed since Jack was a student at the Prep — the building, for one. Jack Foley can boast of having been a member of both the Hughes Hall and Shea Hall faculties. But as Foley has pointed out, as far as one Prep innovation is concerned, the Emmaus Retreat Program, it would be difficult to overestimate its impact on the students. With very good reason, Foley has often lauded Rev. Charles Sullivan, SJ, a fellow member of the Hall of Honor, for all his efforts with the retreat program. In typically modest fashion, Jack would never mention the part he himself has played in the success of the Emmauses, nor how he has toiled to make sure that all students on his retreats — especially the ones on the fringes — have been able to come home having shared a important and meaningful experience. 

Shades of McHugh and Fahey, indeed.

On September 19, 1987, Jack married Frances “Fran” Loretta Kime Hughes at the University Church. They had known each other since high school. Fran Foley worked in the insurance business, eventually settling in to the position of senior adjuster with the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company. They made their home on Long Island in Shirley, New York. Jack lost his high school sweetheart, his partner, and best friend when she passed on June 9, 2009.

With a Maroon Key, a double Bene Merenti medal, and the University’s President’s Award to his name, Jack Foley has been widely credited with maintaining the credibility and prestige of the Prep’s Classical Languages Department in the new millenium — an era when secondary school Latin and Greek programs have been in decline, and in some places, been lost altogether. Classics at Fordham Prep under Foley’s guidance has been held up as a model for Jesuit high schools throughout the country: an extraordinary Maroon legacy.

In the words of Matthew Kukowski, Class of 2014, one of Jack's 21st-century students:

Mr. Foley puts himself on the line for his students. He knows them. He really knows them. He knows their strengths, and how they excel, but also, where they stumble and where they hesitate — in class and in life. And he cares for them, and he looks out for them, and he never lets any one slip by. He treats every student for what he is: a son of God. Mr. Foley loves Fordham Prep and he loves Greek and he loves Latin, but more than that, he truly loves his students. He is a great man and an extraordinary soul — in every way, a classic.

At the end of the 2019-2020 school year, Mr. Foley announced that he would not be returning to the classroom for the fall semester.  Counting his high school and college days, his retirement would mark the end of an incredible unbroken streak of 61 Rose Hill Septembers — a historic record not soon to be shattered at either Fordham Prep or University

To close, a bit of Latin to honor the magister magistrorum:

Quod enim munus rei publicae adferre maius meliusve possumus, quam si docemus atque erudimus iuventutem?
(What greater or better gift can we bring to society than if we teach and instruct the youth?)
— Cicero