"Welcome Fr. Lawton" Video

mm. Mhm. Yeah, Father bob. Welcome to the city of Angels. I know your leadership will develop the leaders that our city needs to bring us through the 21st century have a long, happy successful tenure as president of Loyola

Marymount. It's our favorite university bienvenidos vera. Father Latin. Welcome from everyone here at Olvera Street. Father Lawton. Father Lawton. Welcome to Los Angeles, Father Lott on behalf of the jewish community, we'd like to welcome you to Los Angeles on your new important position as the president

of Loyola marymount shalom. Hi father Bob, this is vin Scully the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers but also class of Fordham 49, welcoming you indeed to Loyola Marymount and Los Angeles. Hi Father Lawton, this is bob Newhart. I just wanted to join the

others and welcome you to Loyola Marymount University. I'm Jesuit trained ST Ignatius in Chicago high school and my old university and I've always kind of credited the Jesuits with the a somewhat distorted view I have of life. Welcome to LMU University relations says, welcome to LMU.

Father Lawton, the department of Theological Studies says. Welcome to LMU father from the chemistry and biochemistry department. Business and finance is happy to welcome Father Lawton to Loyola marymount University, the School of Education says. Welcome to LMU Father Lawton, the freshman business management class welcomes the

new freshman president to LMU. Father Lawton on behalf of the alumni association of loyal and marymount University. Welcome we look forward to a long and successful tenure with you here at our alma mater school on behalf of the faculty senate. I would like to welcome you

to loyal and marymount University. Hello father bob and welcome to Loyola Marymount University on behalf of the communication arts department. Welcome to LMU. Father bob. Welcome to Ellen you Father Bart. Welcome to LMU. Father bob. Welcome to LMU. Father Lottie. Welcome to you too. I love

you. Operations and maintenance says welcome to LMU Father lot welcomes you father bob graphics, welcomes father lot. Hi you guys, this is jay Leno, I want to welcome the new president. Father bob. Now I understand actually he's kind of a laid back kind of guy. I

know he likes to be called bob. I know he likes fine wine. He's got like a tan that should be on Baywatch, shouldn't he? Instead of father bob. Welcome folks, are you excited? Yeah, fire mhm mm I'm

delighted to introduce Father robert Lawton of the Society of jesus to you. Wonderful priest, great academic as promising a president as you could find and I'm happy to say a very good friend of mine. I first met Bob Lawton here at Fordham in 1971. He was

working on his undergraduate degree here and I'd come to study philosophy. He certainly impressed me as a very serious and studious young man in those days. He was working very hard on languages because he foresaw career for himself studying scripture and so was learning greek and

Latin and hebrew and Aramaic and all kinds of very difficult languages and having to spend a lot of time on it among the many speeches that bob gave as Dean, there's one that stands out in my mind. He was talking about the arts and the importance

of the arts in education and in our lives and he quoted from the german poet Goethe Allah's goes a building which means everything great elevates us, informs us instructs us and I always associate those great words with bob bob and I share a favorite text and

ironies is that versus Harris's Ironies says that Gloria nmd, Homo v Evans the glory of God is humanity fully alive. And I think that is really a Petrus tick paraphrase of jesus's command that we should love God and our neighbor. I think it means a great

deal to bob because as a cultivated and very, very well read man, a man educated in Middle Eastern studies, he knows that all religion has its roots in human experience which is where we meet God. Yeah, bob has two talents that are, to me are uncanny.

one is he has a great ability to find the correct person for a given task and when the task is all said and done and the work is all said and done, you find out he chose just the perfect person. But on top of that he

allows people's talents to just do all they can possibly do. He's extremely noninterventionist and I think these two qualities locked together in a way that are very productive. My recollections and when he was in high school was that you know he always came home with hundreds

on tests, hundreds on his report cards. And then I think when he took the S. ATS he got 1600 on those And when he took the G. Mats he got 800 on those. So he went from Fordham and then into Harvard and did a combined Masters

and PhD and things that I tried to read his thesis and I got about through to the second page and just it lost me academics for Babylon are really important in my experience. He really challenged me to do my absolute best because I think he sees

it not just as a way of becoming more successful in one's life by having a higher grade point average. He sees education as a way of growing people and that's what he's really interested in in spite of extreme intelligence. He's very unpretentious, very approachable and put

you at ease. He's extremely approachable. I think a lot of people at least at Georgetown when they first got to know who he was. I thought well you know Assistant Dean and then Dean of the college get his PhD from Harvard and I thought well I

can't talk to this guy. Absolutely not true. I mean he's exceptionally approachable. We my friends and I and other students at school. I would often go out to have meals with them, go share a beer. I watch the red sox lose the world series with him

at a bar. I mean he's really, he's a great guy. Students respect him and love him, faculty respect him and he's very comfortable in the leadership position, very few people would appreciate the fact that he chose as dean of the college to live on a freshman

dorm. Can you imagine a worse fate than living on a freshman dorm at any college or university? But he chose that even though he was inundated day after day with the problems of the college by virtue of being dean, he did that. So he could stay

in touch with the students so he could quietly identify that student that might need a little extra encouragement, A little friendship in the rigors of the first year and many times we would pick him up at the dorm and I would say bob your days are

so stressful and demanding, why don't you get live in the judgment community or live in a place a little more isolated from this ruckus and he'd say, no, this is, this is an important mission in my life. If there's anyone who takes friendship as a gift

and as a commitment, he does what I value about bob's friendship is his ability to not only listen and learn from conversations from from friends, but also to offer candid, very honest opinions out of love and care and that is a special special bob is one

of the great wine connoisseurs, you can always count on him to choose the finest bottle of anything and know exactly what region of whatever country it's from, and probably also what year it is, he knows what to look for. He can enjoy a wine and the

way it's meant to be enjoyed that is with food appropriate in the appropriate million in the appropriate atmosphere, bob as you know, is a big runner and I think that he takes the occasions of the long runs that he does. I think pretty much every other

day to, you know, to to be in touch with God and to and to hear what God has to say. His jogging is something that I can cannot relate to in any way, shape or form. I think he's absolutely crazy for that, but I guess he

needs his cardiovascular conditioning. I think it's a terrible waste of a heartbeat, bob's ultimate bliss. Bliss is dining and bob jogging is a way of negating some of those experiences. So the morning times are really addressed to what happened the previous evening, jogging is absolutely his

way of paying for his fine meals out. Yes, I, I was fully expected as students come to him with requests for dinner, he'll be spending more time out on the track. Yes bob also is a big movie buff in addition to his interest in jogging in

wines and uh he's able to speak very knowledgeably about the cinema. We've had some very interesting discussions. So I think it's going to be great fun for him to be out in the center of movie land America. He indeed loves wine and California too. So the

fit I think is remarkable. I think that between the wine and the sun, California is about the best place for him to be. I think if I had to summarize bob's philosophy of life, it would be, in the words of Henry, David Thoreau go confidently in

the direction of your dreams and live the life you've imagined to the loyal and marymount family. I say to you, you have succeeded brilliantly in getting a very Extraordinary leader as you go into the 21st century. And I can also say that from the Washington perspective,

we're very sad to see bob go, but we know that the great things in store for him and for you in Los Angeles Loyola marymount is blessed to have gained. Uh, he will lead the school in ways that you haven't seen before in ways it's difficult

to explain and and even difficult to imagine. But he will lead by example, I think is tremendously fortunate to have bob Lawton as president in my estimation, he's one of the most competent, one of the best trained, one of the most experienced Jesuits around to run

a major institution And I think LMU has just gotten a fantastic president, I would say, to the 2500 people who are going to view this video behold the man and he is. Yeah. Mhm.