Inducted in 2011
Prep Librarian & Teacher (1947-1974)

Induction Video

Just as fellow Hall of Honor member Rev. Francis A. Fahey, SJ would guide so many mid-20th century freshmen through their initial experiences at the Prep, so too would Rev. George A. McAleer, SJ help Prep boys through what one former student would dub “the hazardous passage of sophomore year.”  From September of 1947 to June of 1974, McAleer taught second-year students in the Classical Honors Section and served as the Prep's librarian.

George McAleer hailed from the misty Isle of Man in the Irish Sea — the only known Manxman to have served on the Prep faculty since 1841. He was born in February 8, 1910 in the city of Douglas, or Doolish, as it is known in Manx. For a time he attended St. Mungo's Academy in Glasgow before making the long voyage across the ocean with his mother, Mary Margaret Mullen McAleer, and his sisters, Mary, Frances and Gertrude ("Joy") to join their father, Francis, who had gone on to America ahead of them.

In New York, George would finish his schooling at Regis before entering the Society of Jesus in 1930 at the Novitiate of St. Isaac Jogues in Wernersville, Pennsylvania, where he would also spend the juniorate portion of his studies before going on to spend the regency portion of his Jesuit formation teaching at Gonzaga High School, and then to Woodstock College in Maryland to complete his theological studies.

Fr. George McAleer was ordained at St. Ignatius Church in New York on June 24, 1943 — the birthdate of our founder, Archbishop Hughes, and the 102nd anniversary of Fordham's founding.

After teaching at Canisius High School in the early 1940s and a brief stint at St. Bueno's in Wales,  Fr. McAleer would embark upon his long tenure at the Prep in 1947.

Those who knew Father during his years at Rose Hill describe him as a man who could be a character from a Graham Greene novel — British accent, slight limp, cane and a distinct air of secrecy.  Students with greatly overheated imaginations speculated that he had been with MI5 during the Second World War. Adding to his mystery was his odd aversion to being photographed — his pictures rarely appear in school yearbooks. He once claimed to have authored a number of articles for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but refused to tell the boys which ones they were lest they scrutinize the articles for errors instead of “minding their own business.”

Father taught English, Latin, Greek and theology during his many years at the Prep. His classes were enlivened by his droll witticisms: “Good grief, the boy’s a knave” or “Say, son, you’re starting to become a bit of an itch.” He addressed each student as Master followed by the boy’s last name, and often enough, he would wear a cape to class, entering the classroom with a flourish like a Shakespearean actor. He was patient enough, though his patience was not endless. He would often exclaim in dramatic desperation "Utere capite tuo!" — “Use your head!” And if a response from the class was slow, in a minatory mime, he would pull his cincture up and over and strum it like a lute. Finally, when he had reached his limits he would wail, “Oh, Mother! I could weep!” — hands held to the heavens.

But McAleer’s greatest legacy was bestowed in his capacity as Prep librarian. For most of Father’s tenure as librarian, the library he oversaw was a small, rectangular, cement-walled building to the north of Hughes Hall. Officially, it was the Shea Library, but it was more often simply called the Prep Library, or, in its early days, the New Library, as the Prep had had several small reading rooms and book collections in various places on campus since the 1800s. When McAleer moved in, however, the Library became more than his workplace, and more than just his office. It became his realm. And as master of this enchanted land, McAleer sent more than one student on journeys of exploration of adventure, encouraging the boys to pursue as much unassigned reading as possible.

Once in the 1950s, a student crossed the threshold of the library seeking a book that was part of an entertaining and popular series in those days, but of little literary worth. Instead of loaning him the book, Father led him to a shelf and handed him a copy of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. When the book was returned, in reverent tones, as if he were passing on some secret of the ages, Father explained that him that there were more volumes, thick tomes — The Lord of the Rings trilogy — chronicling the continuing adventures of the Hobbits. In that student’s words: “I read them all, entranced, and after that, whenever I went to the Prep library, I would just go to Fr. McAleer’s desk and ask what I should read next.”

Another pupil, to whom McAleer introduced not only Tolkien’s works, but T.H. White’s Once and Future King, once wrote that these would be two of the great reading experiences of his life, massive and rich in detail and imagination: “He helped me to graduate from short stories and novellas to the ‘real thing’. For this, I am very grateful.”

While many students would go to see Father in the library for reading recommendations, others had a different reason to visit — Wrecker. A constant presence in the library, Wrecker was Father’s dog, a boxer loved by many a Prepster in the 1950s. On the other hand, alumni from later years tell stories about Father’s library cats, particularly Burma, a sable-colored purebred Burmese. Burma lived in the Prep library for 15 years, wending her way through the legs of thousands of Prep students and sleeping on the library tables as they studied. In the words of a former student: “The old Prep Library had many problems — creaking floors, leaking roof but, thanks to Burma, no mice.” That same student would care for the library — and Burma — when Father went on vacation one summer, and found that his duties included chopping raw beef kidneys — the only item of food that she would eat.

The Prep Library may have been somewhat of a menagerie, but McAleer, always attired in a cassock, maintained a proprietary attitude in his realm, and silence was mandatory. When a group of students sitting at a study table began talking, he would get their attention with a hand signal and then hold up a cardboard sign that read "Get Out!"

In the words of a Prepster of yesteryear: “He loved the library, and he loved you if you knew how to find something in it.” And from the recollections of another: “Father was eccentric and could be irritable at times, but he managed to impart to us a sense of values without preaching, and to make Greek grammar somehow understandable.”

McAleer was a great supporter of the Prep Track Program, and was a regular at Van Cortland Park meets. The runners always knew when Father was in attendance by distinctively accented cheers of “Good Show!” and “Well done there, well done!” coming from the stands.

From a member of the Class of 1952: “I could prattle on about how he — and other the Jesuits — led me to science and literature, but that is what Jesuits do. They are teachers. Yes, Fr. George was that, but something more as well. He had a talent to see the man within the boy and the ability to lead him through the underbrush to a path he might never discover on his own.”

Father retired from the Prep in 1975.  In his retirement, he managed the private library of the Fordham Jesuit community.