Photo courtesy of the Falvey collection.

The crisp is in the air and the crunch(!) is on the football field, which can only mean one thing: it’s Family Weekend! To get you in the Villanova spirit, we “Fotofriday” flashback to 1978 when Parents’ Weekend (as it was known then) caught this clash of gridders. Welcome to all of our Wildcat families! And go, Cats!

Casual. Comfortable and socially distanced. Stands out in a crowd.

No, we’re not talking about Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has been appearing in memes across the country the last few days. We’re telling you what to expect in the spring semester at Falvey Memorial Library.

Falvey has added more socially distanced space to make studying during the cold months a snap. Bring your Wildcard, mask, and books…we’re excited to have you back!

Graduate assistant, Jenna Newman, is pictured raiding the refrigerator at her parent’s in her Villanova mask.

Hope you all had a great time celebrating with friends, family, and food yesterday! Now, raid your parent’s refrigerator for all the good left-overs and settle in for some finals study time. If you’re still near campus, the library is still open for Wildcard Access from 6 a.m.-12 a.m., and you can find great digital resources Falvey’s librarians have put together here.

What’s your go-to Thanksgiving recipe and what tastes the best as left-overs? Let us know below!

Falvey Memorial Library student employee Kelly McMahon celebrates Family Weekend with her grandmother Carol White. Download the free Family Weekend App for the full schedule of events. A warm welcome to parents and families visiting campus this weekend!

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Memorial Library.

Martin Ganda ’07 received a warm welcome during his return visit to campus on Thursday, Sept. 19. The Villanova alumni, and author of the 2019 One Book Villanova selection, I Will Always Write Back, joined students, staff, faculty, and community members for a book signing in Falvey’s Speakers’ Corner. As part of the St. Thomas of Villanova Celebration, Ganda delivered the keynote address to an eager audience in the Villanova Room.

Thank you to those who participated in the festivities. We urge you to keep the conversation going by participating in the Campus Pen Pal Program. Stop by Student Life in Dougherty Hall or Falvey Memorial Library and fill out a postcard with some fun questions about yourself. Leave your completed postcard and take a postcard from a fellow Villanovan. It’s an old school way to make a new friend on campus!

We look forward to seeing you at upcoming programs that will continue our conversation around themes raised in this year’s One Book.

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Memorial Library. 

We love a good book! To celebrate National Read A Book Day, pick up a copy of this year’s One Book Villanova selection, I Will Always Write Back. See which books Villanovans have frequented in our Holy Grounds display on the first floor…and be sure to grab a free Falvey sticker.

Kallie Stahl, MA ’17 is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Memorial Library. 

It is easy to lose yourself in the ambition of your life’s novel, forgetting the first, tentative sentences that start the adventure. Hundreds of students write that first sentence every day in Falvey Memorial Library, so come join us and we’ll read and write together. Good luck with your Fall 2019 semester!

The Grateful Dead. Jimi Hendrix. The Who. Santana. Fifty years ago, on Aug. 15–18, 1969, Woodstock Music and Art Fair happened.

As the book Festival notes (pictured, showing Grace Slick and Jerry Garcia), “Perhaps it wasn’t as big as the accomplishments of Apollo 11. And perhaps it was something larger.”

Historians estimate 400,000 people attended this iconic three-day event, filled with peace, love, happiness, and a dollop of mud. (A bit short of the Crosby, Stills, and Nash estimate of a million!)

While we don’t know for sure whether any Villanovans attended Woodstock, and the festival itself did not merit a mention in The Villanovan, Villanova’s student newspaper, we know an awful lot about life on campus during this time of upheaval, social change, and unrest.

Students at Villanova certainly did not heed the counter culture mandate to “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Were they “feelin’ groovy?” Possibly. But these students, like many of the young people during this time period, had to cope with traumatic and divisive events. Like Villanovans in the decades after, they questioned, they reasoned, and they graduated with dreams of shaping the world.

Learn more about how far out Villanova was in the ’60s in the library’s digital exhibit: https://exhibits.library.villanova.edu/nova-stories.

Shawn Proctor, MFA, is Communications and Marketing Program Manager at Falvey Memorial Library. He has been attending the Philadelphia Folk Festival, the closest modern iteration of Woodstock, since 1999.

On this day 45 years ago, Gerald Ford was sworn in as the 38th President of the U.S., after the Richard Nixon resigned.

In November 1976, The Villanovan covered President Ford’s visit to Villanova University and delivered remarks to students including, “In the last two years, the United States of America has made an incredible comeback, and we are not through it yet….I have done my best to put this nation back on even keel, to chart a steady course for our country’s future.”

Read his complete remarks on the Ford Library Museum website.

Shawn Proctor, MFA, is communications and marketing program manager at Falvey Memorial Library.