Many graduates of Roosevelt High School, (RHS), in Yonkers have gone on to complete their vision of the American Dream. Astronauts, News Anchors, and NFL Players are just a few of the notable graduates of Roosevelt.
As a result of some of their famous graduates, RHS created a Wall of Fame in 2015, and honor a graduate every year. Recent inductees include:
Jeanine Rose (Anchor News 12) 2015
Ron Garan (NASA Astronaut) 2016
Joseph Holland (Lawyer, author, activist, philanthropist) 2017
Coach Tony DeMatteo (Coach, teacher, mentor) 2018
Jimmy Kennedy (NFL) 2019
2020 COVID no ceremony
On June 2, Ed Hajim will be honored. Hajim is the author of On The Road Less Traveled, An Unlikely Journey from the Orphanage to the Boardroom.
At the age of 3, Ed Hajim was kidnapped by his father, driven cross-country, and told his mother is dead. He presses his face against the car window, watches the miles pass and wonders where life will take him. Where you’d least expect.
In his memoir Hajim tells the improbable story of how he bounced from foster homes to orphanages, in a daily struggle to survive, to living the American dream as an accomplished Wall Street executive and model family man with great moral fiber and the means to give back to a world that seemed intent on rejecting him.
Hajim served as a senior executive at such firms as E.F. Hutton, Lehman Brothers, Furman Selz and other financial institutions, regularly transforming fledgling operations into profitable growth machines. His life accomplishments were rightfully acknowledged in 2015 with the Horatio Alger Award, given to Americans who exemplify the values of initiative, leadership, and commitment to excellence and who have succeeded despite personal adversity.
He grew up in orphanages and in foster homes including in Yonkers, with no mother and no father.
Ed and the other boys from his Yonkers orphanage attended Roosevelt High School. He thrived there although he couldn’t participate in many of the extracurricular activities the school offered because he had to work several jobs after school. One job was bagging groceries, and another was setting bowling alley pins (very dangerous, he said).
“My childhood disadvantages became advantages in later life. By living in 15 to 20 different locations, I learned how to adjust to different circumstances, became good at it, and almost looked forward to it; I was not afraid to change.”
“My lack of a present family forced me to seek out external mentors and better understand the need for partners/people who cared. By being alone, I developed self reliance and was not afraid to be self-directed.”
Ed learned to survive by keeping himself strong and focused. And step by step, he turned his life around, eventually living the American dream with the help of a NROTC college scholarship, graduating from the University of Rochester and then attended Harvard Business School.
Hajim is currently chairman of HighVista, a Boston-based money management company. He has been married 55-years, with three children and eight grandchildren. In 2008, Ed donated $30 million to the University of Rochester, the largest single donation in its history—to support scholarships and endow the Edmund A. Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Ed believes in the importance and opportunity of education – as it changed his life so much.
