Nicholas D. Sawicki ’21, Fordham Law student and special assistant to the president and editor in chief of America Media, wrote a book review of Dean Emeritus John D. Feerick’s (’61) memoir That Further Shore.
The history of America Media is so steeped in Irish-American DNA and culture that we have been (fairly) accused over the years of an inordinate bias toward sentimental tales of Irish-Americans and their origins “on the other side.”
With that in mind, I understand if anyone is a bit suspicious toward a review of a book about a Bronx-born Irish-American tracing his family history and telling his own story of rising to great success in the United States. I can assure the reader that John D. Feerick’s That Further Shore is no maudlin or sentimental tale. While Feerick has a talent for the craic, this memoir also engages important chapters in American urban, intellectual and legal history.
Feerick’s life epitomizes the American story. The son of Irish immigrants, he was raised in a two-bedroom apartment in the Bronx shared with his parents and four siblings, attended Catholic schools from St. Angela Merici through Fordham Law and worked his way through each stage. A lawyer at the firm of Skadden, Arps for 20 years, Feerick returned to Fordham Law School in 1982 for a term as dean, a position from which he retired in 2002. Never shy of fighting for a cause, he went on to found the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law School.