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JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL Caleb Franklin, first marshal COMMENCEMENT 2 0 0 5 of the class of 2005

granted degrees to 1,590 Commencement of the wicked and sick, Confetti part of the 6,580 degrees and 224 certificates An omnium-gatherum of notes and conferred overall. “I’d statistics, vital and otherwise like to ask everyone to keep Harvard in their hearts,” said Franklin, NOBLE BEAST “because the Harvard Professional bomb-sni≠er Tara, a two- College Fund will keep year-old golden/lab/vizsla from Holland, you in their hands.” Do made organizers breathe easier by check- good in the world, en-

ing out Memorial Hall just before the joined Class Day speak- JIM HARRISON dinner there for honorands on June 8 er Tim Russert of NBC, and be quick of you, and still the bar is set pretty low. (scallop-and-shrimp salad, then horse- about it. “You have only 2,300 weeks be- You should have little di∞culty becom- radish-encrusted filet of beef with a fore you’ll be eligible for Social Security.” ing the most distinguished class of ’05 in mushroom port sauce, At the traditional church the history of .” accompanied by a Bach service next morning, the cello suite performed by Rev. Mark D.W. Eding- PHI BETA KAPPA FIRSTS Bong Ihn Koh ’08). She ton, associate minister in Former CIA director John M. Deutch, also sni≠ed Memorial the Memorial Church, Institute Professor at MIT, was the Phi Church and the dais be- told seniors the good Beta Kappa orator. In a powerful June 7 fore the dignitaries arrived news: “I’ve given a lot of speech, he became the first person at an Commencement morn. time and study to review- o∞cial Harvard podium to call for U.S. ing the list of graduates withdrawal from Iraq. He wants the

“A WICKED SICK CLASS” JIM HARRISON from the classes of 1705, troops out “as soon as possible.” (His That’s how first marshal On Commencement morning, 1805, and 1905….If you speech will appear in the September-Oc- Caleb I. Franklin ’05, of a Dixieland band performs study the names of the tober issue of this magazine.) Robert outside Memorial Church when and Los the seniors go marching in. graduates in those classes, Creeley ’47 was to be the Phi Beta Kappa Angeles, a≠ectionately you know what you find? poet, but he died in March. Porter Uni- characterized his classmates in his re- Not a single memorable name among versity Professor Helen Vendler read marks at Class Day, on June 8. Harvard them.…Three classes of ’05 already ahead four of his unpublished poems.

THE REWARDS OF PUBLIC SERVICE Public service was a recurring theme of the fiftieth reunion. A questionnaire cir- culated to class members last fall at- tempted to establish the importance of public service in their lives, which, in a nutshell, has been substantial (see the class report for details). During the re- union, classmates mounted a symposium in Sanders Theatre, “Varieties of Leader- ship in the Service of the Public.” A sec- ond symposium, a bit like a Quaker meeting in format, invited anyone to “share on an aspect of public service for three minutes.” Francis H. Duehay ’55, of Cambridge, had arranged for part of the class gift to go to the Phillips Brooks House Association, the public-service organization for undergraduates, and at a formal dinner on June 6, he announced

STU ROSNER that classmates had raised more than

Lisa Puskarcik, of Youngstown, Ohio, left, and Erika Hammond, of Brooklyn, sport spectacles given them by their Quincy House roommate Lindsay Jewell. Comm-confetti.final 6/16/05 2:59 PM Page 51

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$1.65 million for the PBHA Centennial proached, Abernathy advised the stu- Campaign, which he co-chairs and dents lining the route that it is customary which has a goal of $7.25 million. Duehay for students to applaud the president. served almost 30 years on the Cam- As that eminence approached, followed bridge City Council, several times as by various dignitaries and the faculty, mayor or acting mayor. He was often a Abernathy said, “Here comes the presi- town-gown bridge-builder. In thanks, dent, hatless and shaking hands with the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa chapter students—an interactive president.” (He elected him an honorary member. was not shaking hands: far too time-con- suming; unhip besides. He was giving OLDER, WISER 35TH REUNIONERS “props”—knocking fists with students At a thirty-fifth-reunion panel on “Lis- in proper recognition of their achievement.) tening to Midlife,” Mark Gerzon ’70, of When Professor John Stilgoe passed, Boulder, Colorado, said, Abernathy said, “Here “Having raised three sons comes a wounded schol- and now two grandsons, ar. He gave out too many it’s like having two ca- Cs.” (He did not. Stilgoe reers: one is full-time tripped over his dog and and the other is consult- broke his arm.) ing. I prefer the consult-

ing.” Introducing the PREPARED TO SERVE JIM HARRISON featured speaker at Sat- “On behalf of our Uni- Among the seven seniors commissioned on urday morning’s “Meet- versity, and speaking as June 8 were, from left, 2d Lt. Daniel Kanivas, of Quincy House and Scarsdale, New York; ing with President Sum- a citizen, I want to 2d Lt. William F. Conners, of and mers,” reunion co-chair thank you and I want to Wolcott, New York; 2d Lt. Elliott N. Neal, of Joshua Tolko≠ ’70, of thank your families for and Linn Creek, Missouri; En- Brookline, Massachu- your service,” President sign Stephanie H. Hendricks, of Eliot House and Haverford, Pennsylvania; Ensign David G. setts, drew rueful chuck- Summers told the seven Patterson, of Lowell House and New York les when he noted that members of the senior City; and 2d Lt. Sean D. Wilson, of Mather Summers (MIT ’75) was Dog-lover John Stilgoe class about to become House and Shelter Island Heights, New York. the first Harvard presi- JIM HARRISON military o∞cers at the dent younger than the class, “which al- ROTC commissioning ceremony on the true patriot,” he said as he a∞xed a lapel lows us the possibility to give advice.” “I steps of Memorial Church June 8. pin that reads “Patriotic Civilian Ser- shall try my very best to adopt the atti- “Please know that your University is vice.” A red-tailed hawk attended much tude of a humble youth toward his el- proud of you, that your University af- of the ceremony, perched on the church’s ders,” Summers replied. “It’s a role that firms the importance of the service to golden weathervane. may not come entirely easily.” our nation that you are to perform….” Lieutenant colonel Brian L. Baker, pro- AMHERST’S LOSS: Donald F. Brown ’30, CIPHERS fessor of military science and head of the Ph.D. ’55, started at Amherst in 1926, but Class organizers of the twenty-fifth re- ROTC program at MIT that Harvard flunked Greek his freshman year and got union requested no press coverage of students attend, told the gathering, “I bounced. He went to Boston University for a year and then transferred to Harvard, from their assemblies, to avoid inhibiting the can imagine a day when [Harvard] will which he was graduated cum laude in psy- free expression of ideas. The editors of allow us to post a captain and a sergeant chology. He spent five years giving vocational this magazine imagine that 1980’s sym- on campus once again, sometime in the guidance to Harvard undergraduates. Then posiums and other undertakings were future.” He presented an Army citation he became an archaeologist and later a pro- fessor of anthropology at BU. He made three harmless, but cannot be sure of this. and an award to Summers. “You are a expeditions to southern Italy to discover the ancient Greek city of Sybaris PLAY-BY-PLAY (where the living was sybaritic), and he writes in his fiftieth re- Professor Frederick H. Abernathy union class report that he “out- directs processional tra∞c into Ter- lined the buried city…by test bor- centenary Theatre from a platform at ing some years before a university the southwest corner of University museum announced its outlining and hence discovery of the same Hall, providing a genial play-by-play city in the same place.” He points

of the action. As the grand parade ap- JIM HARRISON to his yearbook photograph.

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