Inducted in 2022
Prep President & Teacher (2004-2013)
Educator & Administrator, Various Jesuit Institutions

As we read in the foundational documents of the Society of Jesus, St. Ignatius and his earliest companions had no intention of founding schools.  In fact, at in the very early years, teaching was expressly precluded as an apostolate of the order.  And yet, in 1548, the Jesuits opened their first school in Messina, Sicily.

The rest, as they say, is history.

But how was it that the Society’s first educational venture — reluctant as it was — would endure for hundreds of years and would grow to become the worldwide network of thousands of schools it is today?

In his book, Heroic Leadership, author, former investment bank executive, and management consultant Chris Lowney suggests that the key to the Jesuits’ success in the educational world has been their unique approach to governance: “an unconditional dedication to a single way of working and living, a life that includes the principles of leadership and self-awareness, ingenuity, love and heroism” — principles whose origins can be traced to the 16-century mystical Basque night himself, and principles that surely have informed the extraordinary accomplishments of Jesuit leaders of today — leaders such as Rev. Kenneth Boller: teacher, pastor, headmaster, and the beloved 34th president of Fordham Prep.

Kenneth Boller was born in New York, New York in 1946.  His father, Vincent Boller, Prep Class of 1936, was a banker, and his mother, Susan Regina Finnegan Boller, was a homemaker and part-time administrative assistant.  He was the oldest of four, and grew up in Woodside, Queens along with siblings James, Susan Regina, and Vincent, Jr.  Members of Blessed Virgin Mary Help of Christians Church, the Bollers were known as a devout and generous family who were very much involved with the religious life of their community and never turned their backs on a neighbor in need.

Young Kenny attended his local parish grammar school and then continued on at Archbishop Molloy High School, graduating in 1964.  It was during his high school years that Ken began to discern a calling to the priesthood.  While he had not attended a Jesuit high school himself, the Jesuits — and particularly the Fordham Jesuits — had been an influence in his life from a very early age.  Not only had his father graduated the Prep, but his uncle and godfather, Raymond Boller, was also a Prep and University alum from the Classes of 1934 and 1938 respectively.  Naturally, stories about Fr. Arthur Shea and the other Rose Hill legends had always been very much a part of Ken’s consciousness — so much so, that he chose to answer God’s call as a member of the Society of Jesus.

Entering the novitiate at St. Andrew-on-Hudson in 1964, Boller took his first vows in 1966 and then spent the philosophate portion of his formation at the seminary in Shrub Oak as he worked towards his undergraduate degree at Fordham.  As a young scholastic, Mr. Boller, SJ arrived at Xavier High School in 1969 to teach mathematics for two years before leaving the classroom to do further graduate work in classics and to complete his theological studies at Woodstock College in New York City

Fr. Kenneth Boller, SJ was ordained on June 14, 1975 at the Fordham University Church.

After ordination, Father returned to Xavier as the dean of co-curricular activities before being appointed principal of Canisius High School in 1979.  Following his stint in Buffalo, Boller returned to Xavier as headmaster and then president, positions he would hold through 1997.

His tenure on 16th Street behind him, Father headed uptown to become pastor of St. Aloysius Church in Harlem, New York.  While his prayerful disposition and avuncular demeanor — in other words, his propensity for cura personalis — were a perfect fit for the role of pastor, Ken made sure to keep himself involved in education at the parish elementary school.

In 2004, Father Provincial informed Boller that a secondary school administrative position would be opening up shortly — and at a place he would feel very much at home: none other than Dad’s and Uncle Ray’s alma mater, Fordham Prep.

For the next nine years, the Prep was blessed to experience Fr. Boller’s

“leadership and self-awareness, ingenuity, love and heroism”

first hand: a truly remarkable era in the history of Archbishop Hughes’ venerable institution.

To capture Father’s many Rose Hill accomplishments, a few words from the open farewell latter of Mr. Robert Gomprecht, longtime headmaster and principal of the Prep with whom Boller worked so closely for his entire time at the helm:

Father has improved and expanded the Prep from bottom to top, from improving the athletic space in the Prep’s lower level to setting his sights on improving the science facilities and classrooms on the third floor. And when he couldn’t do all he wanted on the third floor, he imagined and built a new frontier: a new fourth floor consisting of state-of-the-art laboratories and a greenhouse.

Fr. Boller also moves skillfully between the frontiers of past and future. I know he is a gifted math teacher, but anyone who has heard him talk about the history of the Jesuits, knows he is a frustrated history professor. He immersed himself from the start of his presidency in the history of the Prep and has helped us rediscover the rich traditions and personalities of the Prep’s past.

But Ken Boller is equally passionate about the future; he has made strategic planning an integral part of the way we now think and act. His sense of responsibility for the future has fueled his work to double the endowment during his tenure

And finally, Father Boller, as priest, homilist, and retreat director—has traveled with us into the deep recesses of our hearts, revealing there a God who is always with us, a God who can only love us. We have been so blessed that this administrator, our president, and this frontier priest has called Fordham Prep his home for nine great years

In gratitude for all he had done for the Prep, Fr. Boller was given his own Prep diploma, making him an honorary member of the Class of 2013.  In addition, the new fourth floor was dedicated as the Boller Family Science Center in honor of not only Ken himself, but also in honor of the two Prep alums who impacted his life’s work so greatly: his father, and his uncle.

After his Shea Hall years, Fr. Boller headed across the George Washington Bridge to become the 27th president of St. Peter’s Prep.  Finally, in 2019, he was tapped by the Province to serve as pastor of St. Francis Xavier down in Manhattan, back on 16th Street where he had begun his work in the Society decades before.

It is with great respect and deep appreciation for all he has for the Prep, and ad maiorem Dei gloriam, for the greater glory of God, that Fordham Prep receives Fr. Kenneth Boller, SJ, into the its Hall of Honor: leadership, self-awareness, ingenuity, love and heroism, indeed.

Ad multos annos, Pater.
Agimus tibi gratias.