Brother Gerard “Gerry” Molyneaux, FSC, Ph.D., M.A. ’59, ’58, used his talents to educate, inspire, and connect generations of Explorers.

When Brother Gerard “Gerry” Molyneaux, FSC, Ph.D., M.A. ’59, ’58, received an offer to return to La Salle in 1973, much had changed on campus.

In the two decades since he was an undergrad, Br. Gerry taught at high schools and colleges in six states. He had discovered a passion for communications, merging his love of film and his undergraduate English studies. His contribution to campus life, though, would be new: As a student brother who completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees in two and a half years, interaction with other students was largely absent from his first La Salle experience.

“We were not allowed to mix in with the regular students,” he said of his first campus stint from 1955-58. “We could be polite, but don’t engage them.”

In the half-century since, Br. Gerry has become a pillar of that community, fulfilling the Lasallian educational mission and connecting countless students to careers, even after retiring. In a distinctly secular and practical discipline, he found an expression of his mission to serve.

Br. Gerry was called to the brotherhood early. The youngest of nine children raised in the Philadelphia suburbs, he was educated at West Philadelphia Catholic School for Boys and followed brothers Richard, ’51, and Joseph, ’54, to La Salle, where an interest in service he had as a teen flourished.

“I think the biggest impact the Brothers had on me was that they respected me and my peers,” he said. “They actually listened to us, they cared about us, and they seemed to get along so well with each other.”

Positions in Maryland and Pennsylvania led to a master’s degree at the University of Notre Dame, then a teaching assistantship at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) while working on a Ph.D. Two threads converged in Madison: A long-standing love of film, and a university that split communications from its English department.

The former dates to his youth, when movies marked important life moments. He recalls crying outside a theater with just a dime in his pocket, unable to meet a new penny surcharge for a 1940s “Tarzan” film. The night before joining the De La Salle Brothers in 1953, he and three brothers went to see “Shane.”

Br. Gerry’s love of Charlie Chaplin turned into a dissertation, completed in 1976. It would lead to three more books and biographies of actors Jimmy Stewart, Gregory Peck, and John Sayles.

In the classroom, he helped found the Communication Department in 1985, chairing the program until 2004, when he transitioned to director of external and international relations. His film study was a curricular cornerstone, but he tracked various eras of mass media, from print journalism to film and TV studies to public relations, from print and broadcast to the age of the internet.

Along the way, he forged connections across the industry that remain pivotal to students.

“The students share with me how much Br. Gerry has helped them, and a lot of that is because of his connections with alumni and his amazing institutional memory,” Alisa Macksey, vice president of mission, diversity, and inclusion, said. “He’s able to connect students to internships and mentors because of his personal network and connections. It’s priceless.”

Br. Gerry’s lodestar has always been students’ needs. As industries changed, he adapted courses and engaged experts that tracked students’ interests and skills to boost their career prospects.

“It was sort of the students that built the program,” he said. “I taught the film course for a couple years, and they said, What else can you do?”

The answer is plenty.

—Matthew De George