Everyone is Center Stage at Graduation

By Ken Gewertz and Alvin Powell

On a sunny, breezy, slightly cool June 4, parents, siblings, friends, alumni, and other well-wishers gathered by the thousands to bear witness to hosts of auspicious new beginnings. As students of Harvard University were awarded their hard-won degrees and certificates, a large -- if temporary -- village sprung up in and around the Yard. In that village, many small dramas and comedies played themselves out -- on center stage as well as in the wings.

In a Word

One member of the Class of 1998 -- clad in his graduation gown -- took his family on the Red Line from Davis Square early on Commencement Day. When a nearby passenger asked the soon-to-be-graduate how he felt, he seemed flabbergasted and searched for words.

Luckily, another passenger observed the scene and came to the rescue: "He's elated, relieved, and jobless."

Umbilical Balloons

Those watching the morning ceremonies may have noticed a large yellow balloon floating above the field of black mortarboards worn by Harvard and Radcliffe undergraduates. The balloon, about 3 feet in diameter, was held by Eileen Horwath, a biology concentrator from San Diego.

The sharp-eyed among you may have also spotted a similar yellow balloon held by Eileen's parents, Michael and Kathleen Horwath, somewhere in the sea of parents and friends watching the proceedings. Eileen said they agreed to hold the balloons so they would be able to find each other in the crowd.

The system worked perfectly. Eileen found her parents with no trouble.

Cap and Lei?

Around 8 a.m., a man and a woman, each with long strings of dark green leaves draped over one arm, waited nervously in the vicinity of Thayer Hall. They were Glenn and Martha Beachy from Kahaluu, Hawaii, and they were waiting for their son Evan, a graduating senior, to come marching with his housemates into Tercentenary Theatre.

"These are leis made from maile leaves," Mrs. Beachy explained. "We brought some flower leis too, but they wilted. It's a long trip from Hawaii."

The Beachys planned to drape the leis around their son's neck. They hoped to bedeck his friends with the fragrant greenery as well. Would they be able to reach the graduates as they walked by? Would the students accept this congratulatory gesture in the spirit in which it was made? The Beachys weren't sure, but they were determined to try.

"You don't do anything in Hawaii without leis."

A chance encounter with the Beachys around 5 p.m. provided the answers to these questions.

"Yes, we gave him a lei and we gave some to his friends, too," Mrs. Beachy responded, fatigued but ebullient. "He wore his all through the diploma ceremony at Currier House, and as far as we know, he's still wearing it."

The Wells of Harvard College

John Wells, a government concentrator who lived in Kirkland House, graduated before a large audience of Harvard alumni -- and some were not even family members.

Wells' family traces its Harvard roots back to the Civil War Gen. William Frances Bartlett, according to John's father, Richard Wells '67. Bartlett's bust is in Memorial Hall.

In addition to his father, Harvard alumni in John Wells' extended family include his uncles, Robert Wells '60 and Dan Gleason '67; his late grandfathers, Henry Bartlett Wells '29 and Roger Gleason '32, and his great uncle, John Fetcher '33, who attended his 65th class reunion on Thursday.

And the Winner Is. . . .

As they graduated last Thursday, each Harvard class and school did its best to make as much noise as possible. Given their different sizes, it probably isn't fair to compare them.

Nonetheless, the undergraduates, whose celebrations and chants of "Ninety-eight! Ninety-eight!" went on for more than five minutes and included a spray from an uncorked champagne bottle, get the award for sheer volume.

Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine, who set off the celebration with his pronouncement that the class had at last graduated, finally ended the demonstration: "Class of 1998. Thank you and . . . be seated."

Talking Trees

Wherever you stood in Tercentenary Theatre, the sounds of Commencement seemed crystal clear. The speakers' words were distinct and audible and the notes of the Harvard-Radcliffe Band rang out sweet and true. We hardly gave a thought to this sonic perfection until we met Nason Aubin.

What first brought Aubin to our attention was his jacket, which bore the logo, "Real Stories of the Highway Patrol."

Yes, Aubin had worked as a soundman on the live-action television show that chronicles the adventures of real highway patrol officers. "It was pretty boring," he said. "We'd take about 40 hours of film just to get a 10-minute sequence. If the officer wrote out a speeding ticket, we'd film that."

Now Aubin works for ATR Treehouse Sound Co. of Johnston, R.I., which has wired the Yard for sound for the past three Commencements.

And quite a lot of wire it is, too. Aubin estimated that it took a team of 10 people working eight days to lay about a mile of cable and install speakers in 30 different locations. And to make the job even more challenging, the cable had to be hidden wherever possible, and no bare cable could be laid on the ground.

"The University is very picky," Aubin said.

Spotting Cicely

Celebrity-spotting is as much a part of Harvard Commencement as the Latin Oration or the singing of "Radcliffe, Now We Rise to Greet Thee." One well-known person who very nearly escaped notice this year was actress Cicely Tyson, star of such movies as Sounder, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and Fried Green Tomatoes.

Miss Tyson was spotted sitting unobtrusively beside Memorial Hall, wearing a coral pink suit, white gloves, pearls, and sunglasses. Obviously, she was trying not to be noticed, but she reacted with the utmost graciousness when her anonymity was intruded upon. She explained that she was in Cambridge for the graduation of her goddaughter, senior Felicia Gordon.

"You know, sitting here, I'm reminded of the last time I was at Harvard, 24 years ago," she said.

That was on April 18, 1974, when Harvard celebrated "Cicely Tyson Day." Acclaimed for her acting talent, as well as for her insistence on making films that did not portray black women in degrading or stereotypical roles, Tyson had been the guest of honor at a luncheon at the Faculty Club, received a commemorative silver bowl from then-President Derek Bok, and gave a talk at the Law School.

In Tents

There's the big white tent spreading its wings over the steps of the Memorial Church, and the insouciant striped tents sheltering the merrymaking of the reunion classes.

But in all the tapestry of tents that typify Harvard Commencement, it would be hard to find one that represented the category less tentatively than the tent that graced the front lawn of the Semitic Museum on Divinity Avenue.

About 13 feet high and 16 feet in diameter, the tent's inside walls are covered from top to bottom with hand-stitched applied decorations in shades of red, green, yellow, blue, and black. Along the top are stanzas of an Arabic love poem.

The tent was made in Egypt about 100 years ago for a Mr. Francis Green and his bride. The Greens used the tent when they visited Giza on their honeymoon, attended, no doubt, by a retinue of servants.

After they returned home to Dartmouth, Mass., the Greens set up the tent in their backyard so that their neighbors' children could play in it. In 1986, two of those children, Mrs. William C. Prescott and Mrs. Gordon B. Thayer, donated the tent, which was hardly the worse for wear, to the Semitic Museum.

"We've set it up for Commencement every year since 1995," said staff assistant Deena Davis. "It's become sort of a tradition."

Inside the colorful interior were a few chairs and a table covered with cookies, grapes, and fruit juice. As in days of old, the venerable tent continues to offer shelter, refreshment, and romance.

Cops on Ice

Toward the end of the day, Harvard Police Chief Francis "Bud" Riley looked pleased. He had heard a story from Sgt. James McCarthy that made him feel that Harvard's community policing program was working. Instituted last year, the program seeks to retrain police officers to enable them to build stronger ties with the communities they serve.

"Jim said that when the kids from Cabot House were marching into the Yard through Johnston Gate, a bunch of them ran over to hug the police officers or give them high fives. He said that was the first time that's ever happened."

According to Riley, McCarthy has been going the extra mile to establish rapport with the students, including playing on the Cabot House intramural ice hockey team.

Follow Your Dreams

Late in the afternoon a reception in the Carpenter Center for Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) was held for VES concentrators and their families. Guests sipped chardonnay and munched on bite-sized quiches as they viewed artwork graduating seniors displayed in the lobby.

Among the student artists represented was Valentine Cadieux, who produced a series of haunting landscape photos for her senior project. The photos were callotypes, contact prints from paper negatives. The project won the Hoopes Prize, and, in addition, Cadieux received a Sheldon Scholarship, with which she plans to document land use in Norway and Scotland.

Asked whether he ever had misgivings about his daughter choosing photography as a concentration, Peter Cadieux replied that it had never occurred to him.

"Her original intention was to major in folklore, so, if anything, this seems more practical. She's always been the kind of kid who followed her dreams."

"I have a good example in my father," Valentine interjected. "He was a computer engineer and he left to become a carpenter."

A Secret is a Secret

Harvard traditionally keeps its honorary degree recipients a closely guarded secret. This year was no different, to the chagrin of Commencement Speaker Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and former president of Ireland.

Robinson included in her speech lines from "From the Republic of Conscience," by Irish Poet Seamus Justin Heaney, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature and who, coincidentally, shared the podium with Robinson Thursday as another honorary degree recipient.

Robinson told the audience she didn't realize Heaney would be present and indicated she didn't relish doing a reading before the bard himself.

"Harvard kept its secret well," Robinson said. "So shut your ears, Seamus Heaney, and I'll do the best I can."

Stormy Weather

Robinson hearkened back to her own Harvard Commencement in 1968, when she graduated from Harvard Law School. She told the crowd her father's remembrance when she told him she was returning to Harvard for this year's commencement: the weather.

"It was damn wet," said her father, who Robinson described as a good, west-of-Ireland Man. "It poured all day."

Shoeshine Shuffle

The alumni procession, of course, wound past the John Harvard statue in the Old Yard. Members of the Class of 1948, back for their 50th reunion, hadn't forgotten their Harvard lore.

On approaching the statue, several members of the class reminded others to tip their hat to John Harvard as they passed.

"Thank you!" said one alumnus, sweeping his hat off before the statue.

"You have to polish his toe," said another.

And a question of etiquette from a Radcliffe College alumnae, "Do the ladies have to curtsy?"

Earlier, a gentleman in a suit and a gray Gatsby paused in front of the statue, briefly tapped its shoe with his fingers and began to walk away, when he realized he'd been observed.

He mumbled, slightly flustered, as he left, "First time I've done that."

I'll Always Remember that Tree

Like every year, the afternoon ceremonies allowed family members and graduates -- separated while degrees were conferred in the morning -- to sit together. For excited graduates, the reunion gave them a chance to get an early start on reminiscing about their college days.

As one new alumnae, still clad in her graduation gown, led her parents to their seats for the afternoon speeches, she pointed out where she was when she got her Harvard degree.

"I was right over there, near that tree!"

Alumni Records

Those attending the Harvard Alumni Association's annual meeting had to be impressed with the record-breaking work of this year's reunion classes. Records for gift-giving were set by the 5th reunion Class of 1993, the 10th reunion Class of 1988, the 25th reunion Class of 1973, and the 40th reunion Class of 1958.

The Class of 1923 held the first-ever 75th class reunion, attended by five class members, and also gave the first 75th reunion gift.

And for the 25th reunion class, an all-time attendance record of 700 returning members was set.

A Harvard Man for the Ages

The oldest returning Harvard alumnus last week was Jay Moscow, a 102-year-old graduate of the Class of 1920. Moscow led the alumni procession that started the Afternoon Exercises, holding his Class of 1920 sign.

"Harvard is very special to him," said his son, Ray Moscow. "He loves Harvard and grew up here."

Upon graduation, Jay went into business in Cambridge, working for decades in law and real estate.