Martin Hehir

Martin A. Hehir C.S.Sp. (/ˈhɛər/; November 10, 1855 – June 9, 1935) was a Roman Catholic priest and the fourth president of Pittsburgh Catholic College (later called Duquesne University). Hehir served as president of the university from 1899 until 1930. In Hehir's thirty-one years of presidency, the small college grew to become a university and the seventh largest Catholic school in the United States. After his retirement, Hehir served as Superior of the Holy Ghost Missionary College near Philadelphia, and then as the Superior of the Spiritan Fathers at Ferndale Seminary in Norwalk, Connecticut, until his death.

Martin Hehir was born near Kildysart, County Clare, Ireland, in 1855. He graduated from Blackrock College in 1887, having obtained a traditional classical education. After teaching there for three years, Hehir went on to receive theological training at the Theological College in Chevilly outside of Paris and was ordained as a priest in the Congregation of the Holy Ghost in 1883. He came to Pittsburgh in 1884 as a professor of languages at the Pittsburgh Catholic College. By 1892, he was vice-president of the college.

Fifteen years after he had arrived in Pittsburgh, Father Hehir became president of the Pittsburgh Catholic College, succeeding Father John Murphy on August 20, 1899. His first move was to reorganize the college, creating a clearly defined College Division (akin to the four-year college track common in the United States today), as distinct from the Preparatory School, as well as taking steps to reconcile ethnic tensions between the Irish administration of the college and the German Catholic community in Pittsburgh. He also reconciled the college debt by 1900.

Several Catholic institutions at the time were making moves toward university status, so in 1910, Hehir's administration decided to submit an application to a special College and University Council from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Nine months of hearings and evaluations ensued; on March 30, 1911, the petition for a change of charter was granted, and the college was reincorporated as a university. At the time, it was the only Catholic university between Washington, D.C., and South Bend, Indiana.

Father Hehir's vision of expansion for the new university was the impetus for the foundation of a law school in September 1911, and in 1913, the Business School was founded as the School of Accounts, Finance, and Commerce. A personal dream of Hehir's—the foundation of a School of Speech Arts and Drama—was also accomplished in 1913. Various other departments and schools were founded at Duquesne before World War I, including a School of Social Services, the School of Graduate Studies, and Departments of Sanitary Science and Public Health, Vocal and Instrumental Music, Fine Arts, Pre-Medical, Spanish Language, and Latin American Commerce.

After World War I, Duquesne University was in a position to expand its physical facilities. Father Hehir undertook a vigorous fundraising campaign, and a gymnasium and academic building were constructed. With the additional space provided by these new constructions, the university founded a School of Pharmacy, which was officially opened in September 1925. In 1926, the School of Music was also founded, offering "melody writing, Gregorian Chant, and other forms of musical composition". Completing this spree of expansion was the foundation of the School of Education in 1927.

Throughout these years of expansion, Father Hehir maintained a tradition of student assemblies, which imparted a sense of intimacy and elevated Hehir to the status of a father figure. In fact, most students knew him solely by a term of endearment, "Daddy Hehir". These assemblies frequently addressed student behavior.

Father Hehir's thirty-one year presidency has been the longest by far of any Duquesne president. His administration saw a sixfold increase in enrollment from 1911 to 1921, and witnessed Duquesne emerge to become the seventh-largest Catholic school in the country; this meteoric rise can be attributed largely to Hehir's pragmatism and commitment to serving the Catholic community in Pittsburgh during a time when immigrants struggled to assimilate into larger society. Moreover, at the beginning of his presidency, Hehir took stock of the needs of the immigrant community in Pittsburgh and transformed the Pittsburgh Catholic College from a basically liberal arts school into an institution with a focus on more practical disciplines in legal and commercial fields.