By Alex Honeysett
It’s 1983 and Michael Fosina is standing in a mattress store on Main Street in Newark, Del., educating himself on the health benefits of waterbeds. This is no hobby. Fosina has a meeting with the director of housing at the University of Delaware and needs to defend the 5-foot by 7-foot hand-built frame and the waterbed that lay atop it, lying not so comfortably in his 8-foot by 10-foot Pencader dorm room. The latest addition to his bedroom had been found days earlier by his R.A.
“It started as a joke, just ha ha, having a little fun with this thing” Fosina says. “Then I figured, if I need to explain myself, I should know what I’m talking about.”
After rumors of the boy with the waterbed circulated UD’s campus, Fosina was approached by his swim coach, Edgar Johnson, who insisted Fosina visit the doctor.
“The doctor thought it was completely ridiculous,” Fosina says. “And, well, they let me keep it.” A grin passes over Fosina’s face as he stifles a laugh. “There’s a picture of me in the yearbook laying on it,” he says. “It says something like, ‘Michael on the waterbed: very relaxing and illegal.’ ” He shakes his head and continues to laugh. “And no, I do not have a bad back,” he says.
A fact his swim coach was happy to hear. Fosina swam for the majority of his youth, and found a home in UD’s swim team and coach Johnson. “He was a very quiet leader, quiet in the sense that he wasn’t ‘Ra Ra Ra’ but quiet in the sense that he’d say okay, let’s get this done,” Johnson says. “He was a good man to have around because he had solid values. He knew what was important. He knew his education was important, and swimming, and religion, and social life, and family. He’s just a good, solid citizen.”
In addition to swimming, Fosina came to UD to pursue animal science.
“It was a fascinating major for me,” he says. “Milking cows, raising chickens. I was doing stuff I would’ve never come close to in my daily life. Literally, I took a dairy production class and three times a semester we had to get up at four a.m. and milk 85 cows. I’d come back smelling like manure and my roommate would scream ‘DON’T … COME IN … THIS ROOM,” he says.
Fosina’s life post-college took turns he had not expected, but eventually led him to a family and career he feels destined to have obtained. Three years after graduating, Fosina visited a homecoming game and met his wife, Linda, at the Stone Balloon.
“She was standing in the back and I just went up and started talking to her,” he says. Wife and husband smile at one another. “And that was it,” says Linda.
After a year of working in a spaying and neutering clinic, Fosina decided it wasn’t something he wanted to do the rest of his life and enrolled in Columbia’s graduate school where he became interested in hospital management. Three years later he graduated with a degree in public health, and is currently the vice-president and executive director of the Allen Pavilion of New York Presbyterian Hospital. Fosina in a message to the community that Presbyterian Hospital “the only New York area hospital named to the Honor Roll in U.S. News & World’s ‘Best Hospitals 2003’ Issue.
“The same things I used to find fascinating, I now find challenging,” he says with a grin. “You’re in a not-for-profit corporation in a for-profit world.”
Though frustrating and often time-consuming, Fosina’s dedication to the community brings him a great sense of satisfaction. This devotion did not begin or end with his involvement in the hospital. Instead, it began with conversations around the dinner table with his family growing up in New Rochelle, NY.
Fosina’s father, Joe Fosina, was a city councilman for 12 years. He founded the New Rochelle Youth Football program 30 years ago. Fosina began coaching youth football and later youth baseball, inspired by his father’s dedication.
As Michael expanded his family, their involvement in the community grew and intertwined. Linda is on the PTA Council Board and Co-President of their neighborhood association, Premium Point Park. Both Linda and Michael are involved in the monthly newsletter educating their community on local issues and events. “It’s good for the community, but we do it for selfish reasons too,” says Linda. “It’s fun, and it’s fun to feel connected to where you live.” Adds Michael, “It’s important. My grandfather did it for 40 years, my father for 30.”
Perhaps most importantly, Fosina maintains the same sense of values that impressed Coach Johnson two decades earlier. “You know, he was the same then as he is now, says Johnson. “I respect him for that.”
Though more than twenty years and 180 miles separate Fosina from his college experience, he remains an active member of the UD community.
“I give donations, go down to the games, stay in touch with the guys,” he says. Two years ago, 15 of Fosina’s friends flew to Los Vegas from all over the country for a guy’s weekend in Los Vegas. He smiles and shakes his head, lost in thought.
“Those were the best years, really, the best four years,” he says. “I loved it down there. I really loved it.”
