Alumni Story – Errol Winter

Hedge fund manager Lundy Wright’s initial contact with his Inner-City Scholarship Fund sponsored student, Errol Winter, eventually evolved into an inspirational life journey for both of them. Lundy sponsored Errol beginning with grade school in 1997 and continued through graduation from St. Raymond’s High School in the Bronx in 2002 up to Errol’s entry into Fordham University on a full scholarship the same year. Throughout that time, they saw each other four times a year to enjoy pizza and trade stories of triumphs and pitfalls.

Then Lundy lost contact with Errol for ten years until the Fordham graduate, acting on a long dormant impulse, e-mailed Lundy at his job in 2012 explaining how he had come across his name on a customer list at the bank he was working for. Miraculously, a single key stroke and an instant message closed the gap of ten long years. Lundy was, of course, overjoyed at this turn of events and honored that Errol had remembered him as a major figure in his life and contributor to his education. Lundy then discovered how far Errol had traveled on his own, burnishing his own image by graduating early from Fordham, then continuing on as a graduate student in Finance online to complete an MBA from Northeastern University. Errol told him then that he could not have reached such heights without Lundy’s faith and encouragement, especially when financial and family pressures weighed heavily on him.

For both of them, Lundy says, “the experience revealed the power of a Catholic education to break the cycle of poverty with a very compelling message of hope combined with a lasting faith in Christian values and a strong commitment to academic and work discipline.”

The team of Lundy and St. Raymond’s High School’s caring environment helped Errol escape the struggles of inner-city poverty and simultaneously offered new hope and freedom to a succeeding generation of like-minded students. Lundy reflected that Errol “had picked up the ball and ran with it,” needing only that initial push to sprint for the goal line.

The two now see each other regularly and are a living example of how one generous hand can help another to surmount the world’s material obstacles. Lundy hopes to do the same for his newly sponsored student, a junior at St. Raymond’s High School.