“Instead of, ‘Oh, I see from your chart that you have congestive heart failure, so tell me how your breathing is,’ I started by rolling my chair away from the computer, putting my hands in my lap, not writing, not typing, and said: ‘I will be your doctor, so I need to know a lot about you. Tell me what you think I should know about your situation,’” Charon recalls.

“One woman replied, ‘You mean you want me to talk?’ That tells you something about her prior experience with doctors.”

Charon, a 1970 Fordham graduate, is the founder of narrative medicine, which calls for listening to patients’ personal stories and responding in ways that enhance their care. A Harvard-trained physician and a literary scholar, she is a professor of medicine and the founding chair of medical humanities and ethics at Columbia University.

When patients are invited to share their stories, they often provide a lot of information and context. “One woman said, ‘Well, I didn’t tell you about the fire in our house in Panama,’ which turned out to be really pivotal for this patient. Or, ‘I didn’t tell you that my daughter is in prison,’ or ‘I didn’t tell you that I was in prison, but here, I brought you a book of poems that I wrote while I was in prison,’” Charon says.

Nonverbal cues are also important, she adds. “As I’m gathering everything I might come to know about this person, I’m listening to her words. I’m looking at her face. I’m noticing her gestures. I’m noticing the smell of her body. I’m reacting to any kind of emotional cues that may or may not be said, all that stuff.”

Charon quickly realized that having the doctor and patient work together to better understand the patient’s condition added value to the typical topline diagnosis. “Some physicians, especially those in the surgical specialties, will say to me, ‘Rita, I leave that for the social workers. I need to find out if the patient can bear weight on the new hip.’ Well, do that, but let’s also address the problem that the patient came to us for help with. And sometimes it’s a social problem. Sometimes they can’t afford the medicine, so they don’t take it. Sometimes it’s, ‘I didn’t want to tell you how much alcohol I drink.’

“With this approach,” she says, “we have a better shot from the start in addressing the problems that the patient herself considers problems, and not restricting that to things that have diagnostic codes.”

‘A Person Who Questions How Things Are Done’

While medicine ran in her family—Charon’s father was a family doctor, and one of her grandfathers was a physician as well—she didn’t plan to follow the same path. She describes her college-age self as a young Catholic kid from Providence, Rhode Island. “My parents let me come to New York only if I’d study with the Jesuits,” she recalls. She began her undergraduate studies at Thomas More College, Fordham’s liberal arts college for women at the time, but switched to the University’s experimental Bensalem College and was part of its inaugural class in 1967. (The college closed in 1974.)

At Bensalem, she says, “we took very seriously questions like, how do you learn, and what is learning? It helped me to become a person who questions how things are done, especially in terms of how we learn and how we grow.”

Charon went on to medical school at Harvard, but returned to New York City for her residency at Montefiore Hospital and became interested in the ideas of the bioethicists, historians, and other scholars working in what came to be known as the medical humanities.

During her residency, the work of Henry James captivated Charon so much that what began as a side interest turned into a doctorate at Columbia University. “I became a literary scholar and an internist at the same time,” Charon says. “My study of literature made me a different kind of doctor, and I realized also that what I knew about medicine contributed to the study of literature.”

‘Letting People’s Voices Be Heard’

In the 20 years since Charon coined the term, narrative medicine has been adopted more and more widely; Columbia, Temple University, Ohio State, and other institutions have begun narrative medicine programs. Charon’s research has won funding from both the National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and she is the author of the book Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (Oxford University Press, 2006). Her workshops attract people from across disciplines.

“I’ve found that when I’m able to enact these narrative techniques with patients and families, I feel a stronger bond with them,” says Dr. Daniel Eison, an oncology hospitalist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who studied narrative medicine with Charon. “Narrative medicine is even more important for patients from a racial, religious, or socioeconomic minority. They’re very disempowered in these settings, and narrative medicine seeks to acknowledge the power differentials and level the field a little bit by letting people’s voices be heard.”

As part of the fight against the novel coronavirus, Charon has been making more narrative medicine resources available to caregivers and working to help clinicians and medical students reduce their social isolation using online tools.

“We’ve had a robust international response to these training sessions,” Charon says. “The creative work they are able to do and the responses they receive from their writing is soul-building, and led one emergency department physician to tell us, ‘I was able to breathe for the first time all week at your session.’”

—Chris Quirk is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn.

A total of more than $72 million was raised in this five-year Jubilee cycle in time for the University’s Dondransbicentennial year, and alumni spanned multiple generations of Rams—including the Class of 1942, represented by 97-year-old Lionel Weinstein, PHA ’42.

The event also celebrated the close of the 175th year—in which several events have honored Fordham’s efforts to “break the circle of poverty” for 19th-century Irish immigrants, said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

In a welcoming speech in Duane Library’s Tognino Hall, Father McShane said Fordham continues to be a “factory of hope” for the nation and the world. He spoke with pride of a diverse array of alumni that has included several pro athletes, broadcasters, writers, scientists, Fulbright scholars, and five Medal of Honor recipients, all of whom were “called on by God to be great.”
“Lou Gehrig wasn’t the luckiest man in the world; I am,” he said of his 14-year tenure as University president.

He quoted his father, a first-generation college graduate, as having said that when he graduated from Fordham “his whole family graduated” with him.

“It’s our duty to make sure that others have the same opportunity that he had, that you had, and I had,” said Father McShane.

At events across campus, alumni recalled hardscrabble journeys echoing those of their 19th-century peers.

A Step Up

At a CSTEP reunion, Renee Hernandez, M.D., FCRH ’94, celebrated with his wife Madeline Hernandez, FCRH ’94. The two met and married on campus, and continue to bring their children back. Born and raised in the borough, Dr. Hernandez said that as a student he thought of Fordham as a “paradise in the Bronx.” Today, he invites high school and college students to intern at this private practice.

“A lot of it is about exposure, so for the high school students it’s an eye opener that anything is possible,” he said, “and for college then its opening their eyes to other things that are possible, like going to med school, getting a Ph.D., or going into law.”

Jason Atano, FCRH ’01, LAW ’04, said it was clear that Fordham has invested in the program, creating a growing community that comes back to campus each year.

“We come from communities that don’t have a high level of human capital, and this type of program provides us with access to mentorship. Now we’re able to pass along the lessons that we learn while navigating the professional world,” said Atano. “I always try to come back. You know who the students are because you were them 10 years ago.”

The two were recognized by CSTEP for professional achievement and for continued contributions to the program. Also honored were: Ada Aponte, M.D., FRCH ’99; Rev. Ransford S. Clarke, FCRH ’99; Edwardo J. Rodriguez, Ph.D., FCRH ’99; and Joy B. Tolliver, FCRH ’04.

The Sanctum Sanctorum

As Pierre Lehmuller, UGE ’57, GSE ’59, joined other alumni at Loyola Hall for “Mix and Mingle with the Jesuits,” he recalled a time when lay people were rarely granted admittance to the former Jesuit residence.

“When I had to meet a Jesuit on campus, we had to meet out on the (Loyola) porch—even if it was cold,” he said.

He said that he was finally granted admittance after he joined what was once known as the Alumni Federation.

“It is an impressive building, so being admitted into the building was a fulfillment of a dream, like I’d been admitted into the Sanctum Sanctorum. I expected St. Peter to be lurking about, saying, ‘Come in young man.’”

From Broadway to the Bronx

Mary Guardiani, UGE ’62, GSE ’92, reveled in memories at the reception for students who attended Fordham at 302 Broadway. Guardiani recalled taking a class on research methods once at Rose Hill, in which she was one of only two women; it contrasted starkly with the co-ed atmosphere of her base campus in downtown Manhattan.

“It was a very interesting experience because I learned the Jesuits weren’t interested in anything but developing your abilities,” she said. “[But] the [male]students had more problems with women in the class.

“The Jesuits’ . . . message was picked up quickly, that you had to focus on this very difficult course and that was it.”

She recalled that 302 Broadway had a large contingent of commuters from her home borough of Staten Island. “You had a community of people on the ferry boat, where you’d meet and talk for a few minutes, and then study,” she said.

Marymount Memories

At the Marymount Awards Ceremony, alumnae celebrated the announcement that the Marymount Legacy Fund broke the $1 million mark. The fund supports scholarships for young women attending Fordham.

Alumnae from the women’s college, which closed 10 years ago, gathered in Butler Commons to share a few tearful moments and memories from the Tarrytown campus.

Mary Randolph Carter, MC ‘67, an executive at Ralph Lauren, received the Alumna of Achievement award and gave a moving speech in which she quoted appreciations of the college from fellow alumni. But it was her story that most moved the crowd.

Carter shared an anecdote of having to miss the Marymount graduation for an honor at Mademoiselle Magazine, but that her mother had shown up at Marymount to “clap loudly” when her name was read anyway. The Marymount alumni surprised a tearful Carter by presenting her with her her diploma. She said she planned to share the diploma with her 95-year-old mother.

“’Mom,’ I’ll say, ‘I think I finally made it to my Marymount graduation!’”

A GSAS Centennial

At the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) reunion, Dean Eva Badowska, Ph.D., encouraged alumni to explore the 100-year-old history of the school. She said GSAS prides itself on having been “open to a diverse group of students and faculty” over the years, including those fleeing from Nazi persecution, such as Nobel-prize-winning physicist Victor Hess.

Sharon Dietz-Dubois and Ellen Clark, both 1986 graduates, recalled the efforts of Gerald Quinn, the late dean, to make their education at Fordham possible. Clark said Dean Quinn let her postpone, rather than forfeit, her scholarship for a year for personal reasons. Dietz-Dubois said a conversation with Dean Quinn, in which she told him she’d run out of tuition money, changed her trajectory for good.

“I came to Fordham on a wing and a prayer,” said Dietz-Dubois. “He told me ‘I’m giving you a graduate assistantship. You are going to work in my office.’ I felt like I was saved. Because of that conversation, I was able to continue my Fordham education.”

Tumultuous Times

Members of the Class of 1972 viewed a documentary about tumultuous times on campus, including a student takeover of the President’s office led by the Students for a Democratic Society. The film featured 16mm black-and white-footage of student protests, demonstrations, and arguments about the war. Contemporary interviews balanced the narrative with the perspective and wisdom that comes with age.

This was not the peace and love portrayal often associated with movies and documentaries about campus life from the period, but rather “the gritty struggles against capitalism and the Vietnam War waged by blue-collar kids in commuter schools,” said the film’s producers.

Together with Michael Bryce, FCRH ’72, and Mary Colonna, TMC’72, Robert J. Reilly, FCRH ’72, LAW ‘75, assistant dean of the Feerick Center for Social Justice, moderated a discussion that revealed how their participation in the confrontations altered the course of the alumni’s lives.

Participants recalled the very real life and death consequences that the war brought to campus. More than one alumnus recalled the screams emanating from dorm rooms when draft numbers were called. And yet not all students were against the war or having ROTC on campus, alumni said.

Gabelli Students on Investing

At the Gabelli School, a team of students talked about its strategy and choice of asset allocations used to invest a $1 million portion of the University’s endowment, through a two-semester course titled Student Managed Investment Fund. The team produced a 5.44 percent return for the semester, outperforming their benchmark.

Clarissa Cartledge, rising senior, said that part of the students’ success rested on the choice of a pharmaceutical company, Acorn, that had a merger and rose 52 percent.

“That was a really nice investment,” she said.

The course was also invaluable for its real-world aspect, said Cartledge.

“Because it’s real money you feel it is a real job, even though it’s a four-credit class. Everyone is motivated to improve the fund’s performance. We watch the news, we follow the companies and challenge each other to make correct decisions.

“We’re grateful for the opportunity to invest the endowment, and to have the confidence of Fordham behind us as well as the learning experience they are giving us.”

Bensalem’s Back

In the Walsh Library, a small contingent of alumni from Fordham’s Bensalem, an experimental college which opened in 1967 at a residence on East 191st street, gathered to reminisce. Rita Charon, M.D., a 1970 graduate, said it was a time when “the world was exploding” with the Vietnam war and a thriving counterculture.
“I was a Catholic girl from Providence, Rhode Island, and my parents let me come to New York only if I studied with the Jesuits,” she said.

Bensalem’s theme was how best to learn outside of a rigid classroom structure and an enforced ideology, and to cultivate an open mind, she said.

“Those of us who were there from the beginning . . . we’ve never given it up. We’ve been against the grain,” said Dr. Charon, founder and director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. “That’s why we were attracted to it.”

Janet Sassi contributed to this article.

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