Dartmouth Awards Honorary Degrees to Ten
The tribute of Dartmouth College fordistinguished service in American life waspaid to ten honorary degree recipients atthe Commencement exercises in the Bema,June 12. Seven of the ten men honoredwere Dartmouth graduates. Following arethe citations which accompanied the degrees, which included Doctor of Laws,Doctor of Humane Letters, Doctor ofLetters, Doctor of Science, Doctor of Divinity, and Master of Arts.
HALSEY CHARLES EDGERTON '06 Treasurer of Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire
SINCE 1906 when you graduated from Dartmouth you, in the most literal sense, have worked for this College and for the past thirty-three years you have served as its thirteenth Treasurer, in a succession which, along with the Presidency, began with Eleazar Wheelock. No human institution is for long stronger than its financial management and integrity. During the period of its greatest material growth you have managed the material affairs of this College with a fidelity which is beyond the knowledge, let alone the descriptive powers, of any of us. I speak for my predecessor, your former long-time co-worker in Dartmouth's service, for the Trustees whom you have served, for myself and, in truth, for all Dartmouth in saying that Dartmouth's highest honor, her degree of Doctor of Laws, was never awarded to any son of the College with a greater measure of gratitude.
JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN '21 Former Secretary of the Navy Washington, D. C.
EVEN in Hanover you hardly qualify as an old salt and it must be noted that your career by way of Dartmouth and Harvard Law School in becoming the ruler of our Navy was a most advanced version of the course charted for aspirants to nautical fame by a certain Mr. Gilbert and another Mr. Sullivan. For the last fateful ten years you have shared or carried top responsibilities in the Treasury and Navy Departments of our Government. As the first Secretary of the Navy under a Department of National Defense, it was your lot to begin the prime but delicate business of contributing to unity in the nation's armed services without destroying the morale of a justly proud service lacking which any unity would be sham and weakness. You have borne the pomp and burdens of high office with a matter-of-factness and straightforwardness good to see in the officialdom of democracy and characteristic of a New Hampshireman. If it be true that the quality of the eminent man may be known by those things for which he chooses to make time because he personally values them, it is indeed fitting that in paying tribute to your earned eminence in public service your College should also record the fact that you have never been too busy to be interested in her work and her welfare. Mr. Secretary, it is a privilege for Dartmouth to welcome you back to private life as Doctor of Laws.
ARTHUR HENDRICK VANDENBERGUnited States Senator from Michigan Washington, D. C.
FATHER of a Dartmouth graduate, native of Michigan, writer, editor and student of American history, for over twenty years now and in four elections you have been chosen by the people of Michigan to serve in the United States Senate. Within that deliberative forum where American statesmen have been measured for size throughout our history, you have become the preeminent legislative spokesman of America on the great international issues of our time. You achieved this position not from partisan preferment nor from the turn of the political wheel, but rather because you have shown the uncommon capacity and the courage both to hold convictions and to change them. You have known both the heavy responsibility of decision which those in power cannot escape and the higher responsibility of right-mindedness which for those out of power is the hall-mark of statesmanship. On both sides of the Senate aisle and at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue you are accorded the respect of a patriot. And to you perhaps more than any other man should go the thanks of all peoples throughout the free world for the fact that in this post-war period our representative government has been able for the first time in history to bring the matchless power of this Republic to bear on the building of peace. In grateful token whereof Dartmouth, with a genuine sense of privilege, bestows on you her honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.
CHARLES EDWARD WILSON President, General Electric Company New York, New York
WE rightly make much of fiftieth anniversaries, and when at the age of sixty-two a man has spent fifty years in the employ of one company, it seems fair to conclude that that man was both a fast starter and is one who stays the course. Manifestly also that man was introduced to the realities and responsibilities of life with the benefit of something less in formal learning than four years of higher education. It is not so manifest that that man was destined to become head of one of the world's largest and most advanced industries and at the same time to render a measure and kind of public service accurately termed distinguished. During the critical war years as Executive Vice Chairman of the War Production Board, you shouldered the job of giving literally fabulous reality to the word "arsenal" in the President's bold promise would be the "arsenal of democracy." And since the victory you, through your leadership of the President's Committee on Civil Rights, have borne a goodly share of the even heavier load of advancing the quality and the reality of that democracy for all Americans. These were neither easy choices nor light duties. It is with a sense of common purpose and gratitude for your fidelity to this purpose that Dartmouth honors your exemplary citizenship with her Doctorate of Laws.
FRANK LEAROYD BOYDEN Headmaster of Deerfield Academy Deerfield, Massachusetts
BORN in Massachusetts and educated at Amherst College, your lifetime has been encompassed by the borders of your native commonwealth, but the schoolboys of a nation have worn a thousand hopeful pathways to your door, and on leaving they have taken your influence literally to all lands. When Deerfield Academy last month celebrated its 150 th anniversary, its honorable beginnings were overshadowed by the magnificent achievement of the Boyden half-century. In 1902, you went from college to an antiquated academy in a drowsy town where you became the principal and faculty of a student body of fourteen. There you launched and built one of the uniquely great careers of American schoolmen. There grew up around you the handsome structure of the Deerfield of today as if, some say, by magic; but you have not quite been able to conceal, in your self-effacing person, the indefatigable energy, the administrative skill, and the insight into boys old and young, which have created an illustrious school in one man's busy lifetime. Here today we particularly honor Deerfield's distinguished present as we welcome its creator into the Dartmouth Fellowship with our degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.
EDWARD CHASE KIRKLAND ' 16 Frank Munsey Professor of History,Bowdoin College Brunswick, Maine
A Dartmouth Bachelor of Arts, Class of 1916, a Harvard Doctor of Philosophy, a writer of history who has served four New England colleges as teacher and, previously, this country as a private in World War I, being awarded the French Croix de Guerre, you are good company in any company. As a member of the community of scholars, you are acknowledged a leader not alone for the quality of your teaching and scholarship, but also for your willingness in such roles as that of President of the American Association of University Professors to put the shoulder of your vigor, your clear-headedness and your capacity for responsible utterance behind both the proposition that teachers do not live by bread alone and the corollary of that proposition that neither do they live—at least very long—without a little bread. For all of these qualities and not least for the good literature with which you clothed the story of American economic history, Dartmouth deems you a most worthy recipient of her Doctorate of Letters.
KENNETH PIKE EMORY '20 Assistant Curator and Ethnologist, BishopMuseum, HonoluluAssociate Professor of Anthropology,University of Hawaii Honolulu, Hawaii
GRADUATE of Dartmouth College in 1920, holder of advanced degrees from Harvard and Yale Universities, since childhood you have been a friendly observer, student and partaker of native life in Hawaii and throughout all Polynesia. One of the world's foremost authorities on the peoples and cultures of the southern archipelagos, when war came to the Pacific you voluntarily and largely on your own, without thought of recognition or reward," taught thousands of American fliers and our jungle fighters the practical lore of survival which often was to stand between them and death in those strange parts. Today, as you return to the North Country you learned to love as a Dartmouth student, your College is honored to welcome back a son who, dedicating the pursuit of his science to the betterment of humankind, has well merited her honorary Doctorate of Science.
EVERETT MOORE BAKER '24 Dean of Students, Massachusetts Instituteof Technology Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts
IN the genealogical affairs of this College a man's class affiliation is not a subject for frivolous disposition, and whether you are officially of the Class of 1925, as the Catalogue says, or of 1924 as is avowed by some, we shall leave undecided on this occasion. A graduate of Dartmouth and of the Harvard Theological School, ordained a Unitarian minister, for twenty years with outstanding fidelity and ability you served your church and three communities as both preacher and realistic practitioner of the Christian faith. Today, as Dean of Students at one of the world's leading institutions of higher learning, your presence and your performance illume the truth that even in the realm of the most advanced practicalities ever fashioned by man there is a need for the leadership of men who are "doers of the word." For the exemplary part you have played in responding to this need of men generally Dartmouth, with pride, confers on you her Doctorate of Divinity.
SHERMAN ADAMS '20Governor of New Hampshire Concord, New Hampshire
GRADUATE of Dartmouth in the Class of 1920, among New Hampshiremen you have claims to fame which, at least in this non-election year, it may be proper and prudent to say, mark you for unique distinction even as the honored first citizen of our state. Trained as a lumberman in the north woods and schooled as a legislator in both Concord and Washington, you have had what might well be called a classical preparation for American statecraft. And, if that were not enough, you by your own admission were born in Vermont. Rarely, if ever, has this College known more pleasure or justifiable pride in honoring a Dartmouth man by conferring on him this Master of Arts degree customarily awarded the Governor of New Hampshire.
WARREN CLEAVELAND KENDALL '99 Former Chairman, Car Service Division,Association of American Railroads Washington, D. C.
WHEN the name of a railroad station is changed from Pompanoosuc to Kendall to honor a man who was born in that station, it is safe to assume that that man is both a Vermonter and a railroader born and bred. And, to borrow a phrase from Hovey, if you are not such, "there was never one you saw who was." Your life-work in American railroading is a study in public service through private effort. In the crisis of war you perhaps more than any other individual fashioned the triumph of American rail transport without which there could have been no victory. In awarding you her degree of Master of Arts on the fiftieth anniversary of your graduation, Dartmouth's tribute can be best stated in her hope that there may be some among those leaving Hanover Plain today who will serve their time as faithfully as you have served yours.
HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENTS at Dartmouth's 180 th Commencement, June 12, were (I. to r., seated) Charles E. Wilson, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, President Dickey, who conferred degrees, John L. Sullivan '2l and Governor Sherman Adams '20. (Standing) Warren C. Kendall '99, Everett M. Baker '24, Edward C. Kirkland 'l6, Halsey C. Edgerton '06, Frank L. Boyden, and Kenneth P. Emory '20.
HEADMASTER HONORED: Frank L. Boyden (right), headmaster of Deerfield Academy, who received the L.H.D. degree, poses with President Dickey.
