A Long Road to Rhodes
submitted by James B. Murray, Jr., Former Rector of the University of Virginia, '68
On November 16th, 2024, University of Virginia Fourth Year student Samuel Thomas Crowe was awarded a coveted Rhodes Scholarship, widely regarded as the most prestigious merit-based undergraduate award in all academia. Sam is studying Astrophysics and History and will use the scholarship to pursue a doctorate degree in Astrophysics. The award was richly deserved. Sam’s intelligence, curiosity, perseverance, and character obviously stood out amongst the thousands of academically gifted applicants. The award also marked a historic milestone for the University - it’s 57th Rhodes Scholar, cementing UVA’s lead as the top Rhodes producing public university in America.
Unbeknownst to the Rhodes Committee nor to his classmates and professors, Sam’s award also marked a historic triumph for his maternal ancestors, assisted, two generations earlier, by another family with deep UVA roots. In fact, the story of how Sam Crowe came to know the University of Virginia is laden with forgotten University connections.
Sam’s story might begin in Hyde Park, London in the mid 1950s. Eustace P.C. Fernando, a young engineering student at the University of London (London School of Economics), stood on a wooden soap box, loudly proclaiming to passersby about the beauty and power of his Catholic faith. Eustace was a stockily built, athletic young immigrant from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with a dark chocolate complexion, short straight black hair, and a confident engaging smile. He spoke passionately of Jesus’ love for the poor.
Nearby in Hyde Park another older, white-haired Australian immigrant, dressed in a business suit, stood on a similar soap box speaking in eloquent, sophisticated prose about his Catholic faith. Francis (“Frank”) J. Sheed was a renowned writer, publisher, speaker, successful businessman, and renowned lay Catholic theologian who - for years - preached in the park like a penurious missionary. Inevitably the two brave extroverts met and become friends. Frank learned that Eustace and his beautiful young wife Eulalie were determined to move to the U.S., where Eustace was eager to use his training as an engineer to address global poverty. Frank offered to help.
Frank Sheed called on his connections with prominent Catholic clergy and lay leaders in New York. He was particularly friendly with a one large Catholic family, the Thomas E. Murrays. The Murrays had eleven children, including a son, Jim, who had recently moved to a farm somewhere in Virginia. Though a generation older, Frank had taken a special liking to Jim and his wife Bunny. Frank wrote and asked if Jim and Bunny would act as the Fernandos’ sponsor for U.S. immigration and provide the couple with a home.
Several years earlier, in 1952, Jim and Bunny Murray had abandoned a life in New York business and society for a cattle farm in Earlysville, Virginia (10 miles north of Charlottesville); a better environment to raise what was to grow to a family of eight sons. Money was tight, the cattle business at Panorama Farms had been struggling through four straight summers of drought followed by falling prices, and they already had many mouths to feed. Nevertheless, Jim and Bunny immediately agreed to help.
Eustace and Eulalie left behind in Ceylon a wave of populist, ethnic tension. At the time of their departure, the Tamils were in power, and Eustace was Sinhalese, a separate sect. Back home they had much working against them. The Buddhist majority disdained Eustace’s Catholic faith and, fatefully, he had married a lighter skinned woman from Southern India who herself was a “Burgher” – an outcast of mixed race and heritage. In addition to Eustace’s and Eulalie’s racial and ethnic challenges, tensions simmered between their two native nations.
Ceylon was (then) a British “dominion”. Eustace and Eulalie’s Ceylonese passports had gotten them safely to London; but they couldn’t return to Ceylon. Employment was scarce, and the UK was not where they hoped to live. Eustace’s enduring dream had been to make it to the U.S. and to work in anti-poverty programs for the United Nations. They couldn’t turn back.
Eustace and his wife Eulalie arrived at Panorama Farms in 1960, seeming at first to the Murray boys like aliens from another planet - dark skinned and wearing strange native clothing from the Indian sub-continent. Eulalie was usually wrapped in a silk sari and Eustace often wore a Sinhalese skirt, called a lungi, (despite his owning westernized clothing and business suits, he preferred the native wear of his homeland). Both the Fernando’s had heavy, faintly British accents, and a taste for mouth-scorching spicy foods. The young Murray boys were mesmerized by their unfamiliar guests. They were equally enchanted by the natural charm of the newcomers.
The couple moved into a dilapidated, clapboard tenant house, a hundred yards away, and walked over to share meals. The families soon grew close. Eustace helped with the farm chores; feeding cattle, making hay and driving machinery, while talking enthusiastically about all things mechanical with Jim, who had an engineering degree from Yale. Eulalie joined Bunny at the kitchen stove preparing meals for the crowd and teaching us all the wonders of Indian curry dishes.
Ignoring thinly disguised animosity from some, Jim and Bunny proudly escorted their darker complexioned friends to church and public events in then strictly segregated Virginia. Jim and Bunny abhorred the racial segregation they’d found in their newly adopted state. They fearlessly challenged the archaic local conventions on race and proudly accompanied their new friends past the “No Colored” signs. On Sunday mornings, after church, the two families would go together for breakfast at the recently opened (still segregated) Newcomb Hall cafeteria at UVA. Amongst the two families, cultural distinctions were soon forgotten - even applauded.
After arriving by quirk of fate at a farm in rural Virginia, Eustace immediately began looking for work. The U.N. wasn’t hiring, and The University of Virginia had no place for a young, inexperienced engineer. They lived with the Murrays at Panorama Farms for the better part of a year before Eustace found an engineering job with Rohr Corporation. This was the break Eustace needed to launch a stellar career in engineering and third world development work. Soon after, the first of five Fernado children, Peter, was born.
Eustace moved on from Rohr to an engineering consulting firm in New York City where he assisted with engineering plans for the Verrazano and George Washington bridges. At the same time, he began studying for a master’s degree in industrial engineering at Columbia University. His studies inspired him to contact faculty at MIT. The family moved to Cambridge where Eustace co-authored an engineering textbook while at the Sloan School of Management. From Massachusetts they all moved to Pasadena California, where Eustance provided computer consulting for the U.S. Jet Propulsion Lab; and there their third child, Anne, was born.
Not long after Anne’s birth, Eustace finally landed his long-sought job with the United Nations. The U.N. promptly sent him home to Sri Lanka where his U.N. credentials and engineering talent were now appreciated. After five years abroad, the U.N. brought Eustace to headquarters in New York. The family found a nice home in New Rochelle, NY where their four children attended public schools. The couple remained there until 2010, when Eulalie passed away.
For some 60 years the Fernando and Murray families intermittently stayed in touch. Bunny and Eulalie exchanged occasional letters filled with news of children and careers. Bunny wrote that Jim had been teaching as an adjunct professor at the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia. Later came news that three sons; Jim, Latham and Tam; had gone on to get UVA degrees from the College, the Medical School and Darden, respectively.
When Eulalie’s eldest son Peter developed emotional problems, she called her old friend and asked if the teenager might come stay at Panorama Farms, hoping the rural experience would help. Despite his serious challenges, Peter was welcomed by Bunny, Jim, and the younger Murray sons who remained at home. The offer was a huge, if temporary, relief for Eulalie.
There followed several Fernando family visits to the farm, where the Fernando’s children eventually met the family that their parents spoke of so fondly.
In 1982, came news that daughter Anne had come from New York to enroll at UVA. She was to study computer science at the Engineering School. Thanks to her parents, Anne had grown up with an affinity for Charlottesville and the first American university that her parents had known.
At one point during her UVA career, Anne found herself without housing for several weeks. She called Bunny and, in what was becoming a pattern, was welcomed to her parents’ former home at Panorama Farms. Anne recalls Bunny’s “unwavering care” and how well she managed the brood of men around her. Anne would later call on these memories as a parent. She recalls that interlude at Panorama Farms as one of the “shining moments in my life”. She speaks fondly of “the attention and hospitality of the Murrays that must have been like what my parents received so many years” earlier. She fondly remembers taking meals with “Mr. and Mrs. Murray”; each morning waking to beautiful vistas of the farm; and then driving the long gravel drive to reach a paved public road and on to Grounds. Anne found “these moments formative and magical as were all my childhood visits to Panorama Farms”. They had “an enduring impact” she recalls.
In 1986, after graduating from UVA with a degree in Computer Science, Anne married and moved to Atlanta where she got her master’s in mathematics from Georgia Tech. Eventually, she and her husband returned to Virginia. Her first son, Zach was born in Hampton Rhodes. Two more sons followed.
Anne and her growing family visited Jim and Bunny a few times in the 1990’s; but later lost touch as Anne moved to Wheaton IL, then Chesapeake; raised three sons; earned a doctorate degree in Mathematics; and went on to teach and chair the mathematics department at Norfolk State University.
The turn of a new century saw Eustace and Eulalie and their Virginia friends nearing retirement. Their children were all out of college and scattered, out in the world building careers and families. The two couples stayed in touch by phone and Eustace spoke fondly of Jim and Bunny, regularly telling his children about what he described to Anne as “an exceptional, principled, wonderful family who gave us everything”. After a long and fruitful life, in 2006, Eustace, the idealist engineer, passed away in his sleep.
Eulalie traveled from New York to visit Anne and her grandchildren in Tidewater. Her dear friends, Jim and Bunny Murray were too close to ignore. She would call. Bunny Murray would faithfully drive from Earlysville to Tidewater and fetch Eulalie, chauffeuring her back to Panorama Farms. For Bunny it was a 6 hour round trip, but well worth the drive.
In 2007 Eulalie made a final big trip visiting family and friends. Happily, for all three of them, she stopped and spent a few days with Bunny and Jim on Panorama Farms. During this visit, Anne and her three sons (including four-year old Sam), joined Eulalie at the Farm. To Bunny’s great sorrow, her friend Eulalie passed away in 2010.
In 2012 Anne learned that Bunny had died. She drove from Chesapeake to Panorama Farms to represent the Fernando family at the memorial service.
As their parents passed on, the second generation of Fernando’s and Murray’s lost touch with each other. Several of the older Murray sons never saw Eustace and Eulalie after the early 1960’s. Several younger Murray brothers briefly met Peter when he lived at the farm in the late 70’s. Most missed Anne’s visits.
Anne’s three sons grew up in Chesapeake, Virginia where they attended public schools. All three followed their mother to the University of Virginia - Zach, Colin (SEAS ’22) and Sam (SEAS ’25).
In 2021 Anne paid a surprise visit to Panorama Farms with her youngest son Sam, who had just enrolled at UVA - following in the footsteps of his two older brothers. Only Steve and one Murray in-law were there to greet them. She and Steve wistfully talked about Bunny, in her last days, and how she was always charitably worrying about others, empathetic and never complaining to the last. Anne drove off, delivered Sam to his first-year dorm at UVA, and then returned to Chesapeake.
Unbeknownst to the Murrays, two years after Sam had enrolled at UVA, Anne was recruited to UVA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, where her son was already studying. In the Fall, 2023, she took a position as AGF faculty in the Applied Mathematics Center at the Engineering School. She was soon promoted to Director of the Center.
Upon her arrival at UVA, Anne was surprised to learn that the Murray’s eldest son, Jim Jr. had recently completed his term as Rector of the Board of Visitors. She worried that it might be “inappropriate to reach out”, not fully appreciating how thrilled all the Murray’s would be to learn of her return. She later learned that Jim’s daughter, Meghan Murray (herself a UVA grad) was a professor at UVA’s Darden School, the former COO of the Miller Center, and former Interim Director of UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center.
On November 19, 2024, Anne sent two blind, unanticipated emails. One arrived at the home page website for one of the Murray family businesses at Panorama Farms. The Murray’s were surprised to discover a message from a professor and Director of the Center for Applied Mathematics at UVA’s Engineering School – none other than Anne Fernando, PhD. She asked to connect with one of the Murray boys. She thought we might like to know that her son Sam had just been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.
Anne wrote to her family’s old friends: “I hope the Murray brothers will see this award as part of their Murray history”. She continued, “Eustace and Eulalie would have wanted their dear friends, Jim and Bunny, to share in her joy” and she wished to “thank the family for their love of so many years ago… and the generosity to openly welcome ‘strangers and foreigners’ into their home with no reservations; to share their food, shelter, family and faith, to give them so much with no expectations in return.”
Eustace, Eulalie, Jim, and Bunny are undoubtedly smiling for Sam.
. ‘68, Former Rector, University of Virginia
What a heartwarming and inspiring story of connection and care and courage and achievement. And big congrats to UVA's latest Rhodes scholar!