The wife of longtime La Salle Honors Program director John S. Grady, Sr., reflects on his mission to help students “succeed beyond the level they thought they could.”

An unfamiliar voice called out from across Philadelphia’s Walnut Street. Helen Grady looked up from her walk to Old St. Joseph’s Church. She saw a young couple pushing a stroller carrying their child. The man sprinted through a busy intersection shouting, “Mrs. Grady!”

The man, while catching his breath, expressed how he knew the woman he referred to multiple times as “Mrs. Grady.” A La Salle University alumnus, he studied in the University Honors Program when Grady’s husband—the late John S. “Jack” Grady, Sr.—served as its director. He shared how much he missed the man he and other students affectionately referred to as “Mr. Grady.”

“Just then, his wife catches up,” Helen Grady said, recalling their interaction, “and she says, ‘I can attest, because my husband says it all the time.’ That sent me off on the rest of my walk with a smile.”

Quite often, Helen Grady will encounter graduates of La Salle’s Honors Program—students who knew her husband and benefited from his influence on their academic accomplishments and professional successes. Maybe not all of them shared dinner with the Grady family, though many did. Fewer have been known to dart between moving vehicles on congested Center City streets to say hello. However, every interaction evokes a similar emotional response from Helen Grady.

“What that tells me,” she said, “is the value these students received from the Honors Program is so great, so significant. It created a personal and intellectual environment for these students to pursue their goals.”

Mrs. Grady, better than most, would know. Her husband, who died of lung cancer in 2008, led the program for nearly four decades. Their five children graduated from La Salle’s Honors Program. (Four of them met their spouses on campus.) Five of the couple’s grandchildren have graduated from La Salle or are currently studying there, with three participating in the Honors Program.

La Salle and its Honors Program “change lives,” Helen Grady said. “I’ve been selling it for years because I know it’s true.”

Last spring, Helen Grady made a $25,000 contribution to the La Salle Honors Program Scholarship Initiative—a three-year fundraising campaign aimed at generating philanthropic support to benefit current and future students in the program. It took less than seven months for the initiative to cross the $1 million threshold. As of October, only 14 months in, the La Salle Honors Program Scholarship Initiative is nearly halfway to its $3 million goal, having raised $1.2 million.

The La Salle Honors Program has produced foreign ambassadors, teachers, lawyers, doctors, and civic leaders. It’s led students to become Fulbright Scholars, trailblazers and world travelers—thanks, largely, to the work of the program’s 39-year director.

Grady arrived at La Salle in 1960, not yet 23 years of age, accepting an appointment as an economics instructor. Soon after, he and Helen married in 1962 and they welcomed five children in the seven years that followed: Kelley A. Grady, ’85; Kristine Grady Derewicz, ’87; John S. Grady, Jr., ’89; Brian J. Grady, ’90; and Helene T. Grady, ’93.

A passion for classroom instruction led to Grady’s 1972 receipt of La Salle University’s Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award. He took over directorship of the Honors Program a few years prior, in 1969, and led it until his 2008 passing. Along the way, roughly 2,000 students graduated from the program under Grady’s direction.

Grady so loved the program, his wife said, that he prioritized the student experience and fostered connections with every student. Those pursuits led him on drives to Pittsburgh and New York City, among his favorite East Coast destinations, to recruit students. They prompted him to make personal phone calls to each student who earned a scholarship to La Salle’s Honors Program. He even created what Helen Grady called “the Philadelphia Picnic,” bringing together each year’s new Honors Program cohort for an on-campus lunch of city staples like Hires root beer, Breyers ice cream, Tastykake, and Dietz and Watson cold cuts, among others.

“He loved it. He loved what he did,” she said. “He liked seeing students succeed beyond the level they thought they could.”

And as for those one-on-one phone calls with prospective students…

“He adored those. The conversations enlivened his whole being,” she said. “I can still picture his face. It was absolute joy when he made those calls to welcome students to La Salle.”

And Grady’s students adored him. In 2003, his former students established the John S. Grady Honors Endowment to provide in perpetuity supporting enrichment activities for Honors Program students, like summer study abroad, travel student, and research expenses, for example.

“The Honors Program is extremely close to my heart,” Helen Grady said. “Bringing people together under an intellectual framework drove Jack. It drove him all the time. I don’t think he was ever not working, and that’s because he cared so deeply about La Salle’s students.”

—Christopher A. Vito