Farewell, Father McFarland

Since attending graduate school, I’m beginning to realize just how unique my undergraduate experience was. Most of my friends here attended fairly large universities for their undergraduate degrees. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s just very different from my four years at Holy Cross. For instance, most of my friends didn’t know their college’s president. As the photo above might indicate, I did know mine. Throughout my four years at Holy Cross, Fr. McFarland was an exemplary leader – both as a college administrator and a man of faith. Fr. McFarland was a constant presence on campus – the door to his office was always open, and he was always walking around campus – I usually saw him in Hogan when I was clutching a huge mug of black coffee and frantically writing a paper. Most importantly, he always stopped to ask how every students’ day was going. Whenever I served Mass with him, he was always smiling and asked me about my courses. Right before I left for Blackpool last year, he wished me good luck and hoped I would bring home a trophy (kind of glad I did; I couldn’t imagine letting him down!). His “Last Lecture” speech was one of the most well attended events on our campus, and his speech was so personal, heartfelt, and raw. Such a personal connection with a college president is, as I’m discovering, quite rare. He was so intricately involved with all of our lives and cared so much about every Crusader – past, present, and future.

Thank you for everything, Fr. McFarland. Holy Cross will miss you!

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 10th, 2011 at 8:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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