Phenomenal Generosity

Saint Peter’s University means the world to Thomas P. Mac Mahon ’68, the starting guard on the Peacock’s famed Run Baby Run team that beat Duke on the way to the NIT semi-finals in 1968. “I came to Saint Peter’s as a naïve kid who lacked confidence. I left here with goals and objectives and a belief in myself,” said Mac Mahon, who entered the healthcare industry after graduation and rose to become CEO and chairman of LabCorp.

Mac Mahon, who served as chair of the Board of Trustees from 2012 to 2017, is one of the University’s most generous benefactors. In 2021, the Saint Peter’s community celebrated the opening of the Run Baby Run Arena, a capital project that has boosted Athletics and campus life as part of the Signature Facilities priority of Peacocks Rise. The renovated facility inside the Victor R. Yanitelli, S.J. Recreational Life Center (RLC) was made possible by a $5 million gift from Mac Mahon.  At the first home game in the arena named in honor of Mac Mahon’s 1967-68 men’s basketball teammates, he predicted, “It will be phenomenal for the student-athletes, as well as students in general.”

He was right. Four months later, Saint Peter’s men’s basketball team became the first No. 15 seed to advance to the Elite Eight of the NCAA basketball tournament in what Sports Illustrated dubbed, “college basketball’s greatest Cinderella story ever.” Winning is contagious and Mac Mahon understands how capital projects like the Run Baby Run Arena can spark greater investment in the RLC, as well as other Signature Facilities, boost admissions and achieve greater distinction for Saint Peter’s University.

“What I accomplished in my life, it started with the education I got at Saint Peter’s,” Mac Mahon told The New York Times in 2022. “And I’ve never, ever forgotten it.”