Commencement Confetti
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C-confetti edited 6/14/06 4:09 PM Page 49 American studies we would define it Commencement at Yale, read “The today, and yet it was Confetti Poem of a Thou- more of a democ- sand Stories” at racy than at the An omnium-gatherum of notes and the annual meeting time of America’s statistics, vital and otherwise of the Alpha Iota founding….” chapter of Phi Beta Lucien Carter ’06, of Dunster Kappa on Tuesday, House and Chicago, with singer PRIZED TEACHERS LOTS OF M.B.A.S June 6. Her poem Tony Bennett, his godfather The Phi Beta Kappa On Commencement day, Thursday, spoke, in part, of STU ROSNER teaching prizes went June 8, Harvard conferred 6,706 degrees her father, “the first black everything” to Higgins professor of mathematics and 248 certificates. The College at Harvard, the first marshal of his Joseph D. Harris (“he makes numbers granted 1,641 of these, 66 of them class, who “took the bus to Roxbury to magic”), Freed professor of economics summa cum laude. The Business School get his hair cut,” Cli≠ord L. Alexander and Harvard College Professor Caro- discharged 904 graduates; the Divinity Jr. ’55, who became the first African- line M. Hoxby (who “leaves her stu- School, 160. Elizabeth V. McNeil, American Secretary of the Army. “He dents well prepared to compete in the A.L.B. ’06, of Everett, Massachusetts, tells me,” read poet Alexander, “speak- free market of ideas”), and Watts pro- who is retired after more than a quar- ing up/may not make you feel good,/ fessor of music and professor of Afri- ter-century working at the Harvard may not right a wrong,/may not get can and African University Health Services, was the you what you want,/but you never American studies oldest graduate, earning a bachelor’s know who is listening/and someone is Kay K. Shelemay degree from the Extension School at 82. always listening.” (her students lead The PBK orator was Sean Wilentz, “richer and more FATHER POETIZED the Dayton-Stockon professor of his- harmonious lives”). Phi Beta Kappa poet Elizabeth Alexan- tory at Princeton, who characterized der, associate professor of African American democracy as an ongoing ar- HARVARDIANI gument, not easily ex- At Harvard today, ported. When Alexis de a glory similar to Tocqueville visited Amer- that of ancient ica in the 1830s, he found a Rome lives and democracy that included thrives, Joy Seth slavery and excluded vot- Hurd IV ’06, of ing rights for the poor, Currier House and Orator Joy Seth Hurd IV “hardly a democracy as Fairview Park, JIM HARRISON Ohio, assured the audience in his Latin Fiftieth reunioners, all mem- salutatory, one of three traditional stu- bers of the 150-pound, light- dent “parts” in the Commencement ex- weight crew in their salad days, had another go at the ercises. Harvardians di≠er from the Ro- Charles River on June 5. The mans in one way. Whereas the ancients cox was a ringer: Charles became lazy, slothful, and indolent, “we Butt IV, son of today’s light- have worked, we are working, and we weight crew coach. Facing him are the class of 1956’s will always work for others.” For this Eric Oddleifson, M.B.A. ’63, reason, said Hurd, “Numquam degener- of Cohasset, Massachusetts, abimus, numquam cademus” (We will at stroke; Robert P. Volpe, of never decline. We will never fall). Bloomfield, Connecticut; Reginald E. Greene, of Boston; John L. Lizars, THE TIE THAT BINDS M.B.A. ’60, of East Hampton, To age well, said George Vaillant ’55, New York; Gerhard R. Schade Jr., of Glastonbury, M.D. ’59, in a fiftieth-reunion sympo- Connecticut; Peter H. Viles, sium on that topic, don’t smoke, watch of Worcester, Massachusetts; your drinking, and nurture your mar- John “Jack” H. Henshaw Jr., riage, for it will sustain you—you men of Brunswick, Maine; and Nicholas Daniloff, NF ’74, of especially. The professor of psychiatry STEPEHN LATHROP Boston. quoted approvingly a married woman Harvard Magazine 49 C-confetti edited 6/14/06 4:09 PM Page 50 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL COMMENCEMENT 2 0 0 6 of a certain age who was asked whether she had ever considered divorcing her husband. “Divorce, never,” she replied. “Mur- der, frequently.” TED WILLIAMS RETURNS This was the first com- bined Harvard-Radcli≠e fiftieth reunion. Moreover, the ’56ers staged the first FOX TELEVISION o∞cial reunion event for JIM HARRISON any class to be held at Fen- The class of ’06 invited Seth MacFarlane, creator and executive producer of the animated television show way Park. John Kaneb ’56, Family Guy, to address them on Class Day, which he did, in four voices: his own and those of Peter, the father of the Rhode Island clan; Stewie, the baby who means to take over the world; and Glenn Quagmire, the of Chelsea, Massachusetts, raunchy neighbor, who added to off-color remarks a genial, “Giggety, giggety, and good luck to all.” is one of the partners who own the Red Sox, and he secured the united in one conviction: the belief that and his family lived in the countryside EMC Club, a luxury seating and eating in future decades, if the world lasted outside Chicago, where his wife, Wen- area, for half the usual fee. The class that long, when our turn came to run dy, was raising their one- and their dined on hot dogs and potato salad and the country, we wouldn’t make the three-year-old with no help from him; heard speeches by baseball analyst same mistakes.…I cried that night…out he’d come home and lock himself in the Peter Gammons of ESPN, brother of of the realization that my faith had been bathroom to read Sports Illustrated to un- Rev. Edward B. “Ned” Gammons Jr. misplaced.…We were the problem.” wind. Wendy warned him: spend time ’56, of Warren, Rhode Island, and from with the children or one day you will retired Harvard athletic director HOME TRUTHS come home to find them here and me William J. Cleary Jr. ’56, of Auburn- Class day speaker at the Business gone. So he began taking the 4:42 train dale, Maine. Present were two class- School, June 7, was Henry M. Paulson home, bathing the children, and reading mates with the same names as Sox Hall Jr., chair and CEO of Goldman Sachs to them. He recited a bit of Goodnight of Famers: Edward P. “Ted” Williams Group Inc. and Treasury Secretary-des- Moon from memory to prove it. He ’56, M.B.A. ’58, of Tecamachaico, Mex- ignate. He told the class that they were would read quickly, in a monotone. ico, and Joseph M. Cronin ’56, M.A.T. entering the most extraordinary global “Slow down and read it with expres- ’57, of Milton, Massachusetts, who wore economy ever, with India and China sion,” instructed Wendy, but when he a baseball-uniform shirt with the other booming, Japan and Brazil growing, did, the children cried and said, “No, Joe Cronin’s number 4 on the back. Germany recovering, and the United read it like a daddy, not like a mommy.” States much stronger than hoped. He “HELLO DARKNESS…” o≠ered advice, including that graduates “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your Linda Greenhouse ’68 went to a Simon should “work very hard to maintain a one wild and precious life?” For the Business and Garfunkel concert soon after the professional-personal balance.” He con- School’s Portrait Project 2006, students answered that question, taken from a poem war in Iraq began, and in the middle of fided that he had started at Goldman in by Mary Oliver, in 200 words or fewer, and the concert she had a crying jag. When 1974, and was working intensely. He photographs of about 30 respondents, with she accepted the 2006 their answers, hung in the Spangler Center during Radcli≠e Institute Medal Commencement week. at the institute’s lunch- The photographs were by eon on June 9, the New Anthony Deifell, M.B.A. York Times’s Supreme ’02, of San Francisco, who launched the annual Court correspondent ex- project five years ago. plained: “Thinking back Some earlier answers, to my college days in with current updates, were also on view, includ- those troubled and tu- ing one from Philip Black, multuous late 1960s, there M.B.A. ’02, who was first were many things that a financial planner for divided my generation.… Goldman Sachs and is now a firefighter in San Diego. [Yet] we were absolutely STU ROSNER 50 July - August 2006.