Inducted in 2007
Prep Teacher (1928-1978)

Induction Video

In the latter part of his extraordinary 50-year tenure on the faculty at Fordham Prep, Harry McDonough would say that the Prep was like his own Shangri-La. “When I walk down the street to the Prep, I’m an 80-year-old man, but when I walk through the Campus gate, I’m suddenly 30 years old again.” Harry L. McDonough came to Fordham Prep in September 1928. Originally hired to teach Latin, English and math, Harry would earn his legacy through excellence in teaching geometry, through the stories and anecdotes with which he regaled his students, and as an example of the pure and sacred joy to be gotten from a life lived well.

Harry was born on December 13, 1902 to undertakers Michael “Mickey Mac” McDonough and Margaret McGuane McDonough, one of the first licensed female embalmers in the country. He grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, attended Lowell High School, and graduated magna cum laude from the College of the Holy Cross in 1924, where he received his AB in philosophy and distinguished himself as a member of the Holy Cross Glee Club. After a few years working at his family’s business, McDonough began to discern that teaching might be his life’s calling and began to make inquiries about available positions. In 1928, William Dolan, SJ contacted Harry McDonough and offered him a position at the Prep. The rest, as they say, is history.

Arriving in the Bronx, McDonough took up residence near the campus at Mrs. Strenski’s Boarding House on East 194th Street. In those days, there was an influx of young, unmarried laymen on the faculty, and at one time or another, Mrs. Strenski’s was home to good number of them. Harry spent much of the ‘30s at “The Castle” as the place was affectionately known, sharing apartments with two or three of the other young laymen from the faculty. Always, however, he summered up in Lowell at his family home.

It was a dynamic time at Rose Hill. McDonough was part of a core of school legends who began their Prep tenures between 1920 and the early '40s — a list of names that includes fellow Hall of Honor members Rudolph Hanish, Albert Kirchner, James Melican, Arthur Shea, SJ and Paul Carielli, longtime caretaker of Hughes Hall. These extraordinary men came together at just the right time in the Prep’s history. Together, they would take an institution that had been born in the 19th century as a college’s lower division and reforge it into a high school unto itself, with all that high school implies. The impact that McDonough and the others would have on the Prep down through the decades has earned them a chapter of their own in the official history of Fordham Prep, When September Comes. The chapter is aptly titled “A Golden Age of Prep Teachers.”

By 1941, the same year he received his master’s in education from the university, McDonough put his boarding house and bachelor pad days behind him. He married Florence Peck of Newburgh, New York. They would live on Decatur Avenue, just blocks from Rose Hill’s Third Avenue Gate.

For generations of Prepsters, the image of McDonough walking through the halls carrying his giant wooden compass and thick yardstick was an enduring image of their Fordham Prep years. One of these rulers is housed in the Prep archives. It is inscribed “Mr. McDonough, thanks for a great year, Class 2E, 1967.”

A former student, who eventually became a professor of astronomy with research interests that included the geometry of general relativity, wrote that Harry’s Euclidean geometry class “strongly shaped my own intellectual and professional development from 1959 even to today. Most memorable was his use of the phrase ‘Has to be!’ as a translation of QED — quod erat demonstrandum — at the conclusion of a geometric proof. It was a wonderful introduction to the hypothetico-deductive method of science. Physicists are now searching for a set of hypotheses from which we can deduce both the quantum mechanics of the very small and the general relativity of the very large. Whenever we physicists complete that demonstration, I will hear Mr. McDonough’s ‘Has to Be!’ ringing down through the ages.”

According to another former student, Harry taught geometry for so long that he had committed every page of the textbook to memory. “He could tell you where to find a particular diagram without ever looking at the book. He could draw a perfect circle freehand. When a student added unnecessary steps to a proof, his standard reply was, ‘That’s like going from Florida to New York by way of Seattle.’ It’s the mark of a great teacher when you remember things said nearly 40 years ago.”

Despite Harry’s predilection for witty remarks, his students knew that his geometry classes were all business. But he still managed to surprise them occasionally. A Prep graduate from the 1950s once recalled that when Harry administered their final exam, he went to the faculty room for an hour. When he returned and collected the exam papers, one of the students asked why he had left the room. Other teachers usually stayed to monitor the exams. Harry said, “See my blue suit? It does not have a badge. I expect you all to be grown up, act with integrity and realize that you have nothing to gain by cheating.”   

But of all the Harry McDonough stories, the ones about the family funeral home back in Massachusetts usually piqued the most interest and — ironically — would lighten the mood of the class. Occasionally, he would mention how he would pitch in at the mortuary over the summer. “You know, just to keep my skills honed,” he would say. He had an impish smile, which made it difficult to know whether he was kidding — or not.

During the 1970s, Harry and Florence would vacation in Sag Harbor, New York, long before that town had become a trendy destination.

In the words of a former student whose parents also had a home there: “It was hard to miss Harry. There he was on day, walking down Main Street one day sporting a beard and a captain’s hat. He’d heard that Sag Harbor was an old whaling town, and he wanted to fit it. Eventually people there came to think of him as one of the true East Enders — those whose families had been in the area since the 1600s and made their living pulling fish from the sea. Little did they know that Harry was a teacher from the Bronx.”

Another former student recalled walking along the street in Sag Harbor one summer day, when McDonough drove up behind the wheel of a yellow Cadillac. Rolling down the window, he called to the vacationing Prepster, “Young man, aren’t you glad you passed geometry last year? If you hadn’t, you’d be in summer school right now. Keep up the good work!”

In the words of a former student:  “He taught me, and I suspect many others, invaluable lessons about perseverance as I struggled with the intricacies of his material…It was not until much later that I realized the true value of his lessons.”  And valuable lessons they were, about geometry, yes, but also about loving life and all that it has to offer — oddly appropriate wisdom from the undertakers' son. 

To honor Harry’s enduring legacy and that of Fr. Arthur Shea, SJ, the Prep established the Shea-McDonough Legacy Society for alumni, parents and friends who have made provisions in their estate plans for Fordham Preparatory School.

Harry Louis McDonough passed away on January 11, 1982.

In a tribute dated that morning, colleague and fellow Hall of Honor inductee Edmund McHugh, Class of 1939, wrote this recollection of Harry’s daily entrance to the Fordham campus:

Somewhat distant, 
a jaunty figure makes his appearance through one of the many entrances. 
A slight delay, for what was a pleasant chat with the gatekeeper 
who now doubles up with laughter. 
Probably the old story about the fisherman. 
The one about not believing he could walk on water — or become a fisher of men. 
And still along the path he came. 
An odd walk—part shuffle, part dance 
and overall a gliding approach as if to silent music. 
Now, nearer still, one hears a quiet but distant voice, 
half-singing, sometimes whistling a varied mixture of the secular and profane, 
a blend of parodies and rhapsodies. 
One sees the twinkle and notes the smile. 
Another thing, you see the cane, 
no, not a cane, a yardstick keeping time, 
a baton for the dance-step walk, an old soft-shoe shuffle.