By Tom Missel Chief Communications Officer St. Bonaventure University
When I talked to parents at Spring Into Bona’s trying to convince them to enroll th eir kids at St. Bonaventure, I always led with: “In 1979, this was the only place I wanted to go to college.”
All I ever wanted to be since I was 5 was a sportswriter and I knew Bona’s had a great journalism school and a storied basketball program.
But I couldn’t swing it financially, ended up at SUNY Fredonia, had a great time, and still ended up being a sportswriter and editor at the Olean Times Herald for 15 years.
I never thought much about missing out on Bonaventure — until I started working here and seeing firsthand what a remarkable community this is. I can’t tell you how much I wish I could roll back the clock and have figured out a way to come here.
Alas, serendipity prevailed.
Like our former President Dennis DePerro, who had to settle for going to Canisius despite his desperate desire to come here, I ended up at Bonaventure anyway.
By 2001 it had become clear the internet was going to devour local newspapers and I knew I had to get out. Fortunately, a position opened in SBU’s Communications Office after I turned down a chance to be the managing editor at the Times Herald.
Fifteen years later, Dr. Emily Morris pulled me and two colleagues into an office to say she was leaving and that one of us needed to take over on an interim basis. We just looked at each other and laughed.
But the next day, retiring President Margaret Carney wanted to see me. I knew what she wanted to ask and I wasn’t going to back down: I wanted no part of this job, even as an interim. I wasn’t qualified. I was a journalist at heart who could write a press release in his sleep and was pretty good at graphic design.
Thirty minutes later I realized, “How in the world am I going to say no to a 75-year-old nun with cancer?”
So I accepted the role as interim VP for University Relations and figured I’d suck it up and let the new president find a permanent VP.
Twelve months later, Dr. DePerro tells me: “But I don’t want to replace you. I need a communications person more than a marketing person. You’re good at that. I want you to be the chief communications officer.”
Ten years later — exactly 25 in total — I’m still standing, just a week from retirement.
Impostor syndrome is real. I believe most people feel it at some point in their lives and I’ve often felt that I was faking it the last 10 years.
But the night before a retirement party with my colleague Bernie Valento, my incredible daughter told me to go downstairs for two minutes and then come back.
I walked back in, was told to sit down, and she turned on a 45-minute video she cobbled together on my retirement.
Twenty-two people were in it, half family and friends, half from Bonaventure. I was blown away, by the humorous jabs that I richly deserved and by the heartfelt sentiments that I had no idea people felt.
St. Bonaventure has a great academic reputation, but what defines this place more than anything is the people, the sense of community felt here, and how it eventually filters down to our students.
I won’t miss basketball scandals or social media crises or enrollment roller coasters. I will never forget the gut-wrenching day Dr. DePerro died of COVID. But those are blips on the radar.
Bonaventure really is the intersection of heart and mind, a place where more than 200 students boarded buses to help people devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
A place where students dish out home-cooked meals and compassion to the patrons at Olean’s Warming House soup kitchen.
A place where, for weeks, a friar named Francis counseled a student devastated by his father’s unexpected death — and then drove the young man to the memorial service because he didn’t have a car.
Those are the memories of Bonaventure that will sustain me, affirming that this world isn’t as screwed up as it often seems to be.