The 1958 Commencement
FIVE HUNDRED and ninety-five Dartmouth seniors, one of die largest graduating classes in the history of the College, received the Bachelor of Arts degree at the 189 th Commencement exercises on Sunday, June 8. But it was not easy for them to hold the center of the stage on their big day, for Dr. Theodor Heuss, first President of the Federal Republic of Germany, was present to receive an honorary degree and to experience a bit of American college life as part of his state visit to this country.
Commencement morning was not the rare June day it was supposed to be. A clouded sky, gusty winds and occasional spatters of rain gave some anxiety to the audience of 5,000 on the lawn of Baker Library, but the exercises were successfully carried through, and the consensus in retrospect was that the Class of 1958 had ended the undergraduate chapter of its Dartmouth career with a particularly fine graduation program.
A long array of American and German flags at the south end of the library lawn provided a special touch of color for the exercises. President Heuss was warmly applauded as President Dickey conferred Dartmouth's highest honor, the Doctorate of Laws, upon him. And when he spoke for about ten minutes in his native language, the audience gave him close attention, even though very few persons were able to understand what he said until the official interpreter made the translation. What came through to the audience was die kindly, scholarly personality of President Heuss, and there was a special fascination for many in his varied gestures and tones of voice as he spoke.
President Dickey cited the German leader as "our nation's honored guest and as one who personifies to his time the liberation we seek here through liberal learning." He also said to him, "Out of disaster deeper than defeat the German people have rebuilt more than a nation under the aegis of your example. Out of the ashes of your burned books men learn afresh their most ancient lesson that human decency, like the Phoenix, will forever rise from its own ashes."
In his remarks, printed in this issue, Dr. Heuss explained how some years ago he had learned about Eleazar Wheelock and the founding of Dartmouth College by reading the book of his friend, Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer, who with her husband, Carl Zuckmayer, the famous German playwright, had lived in Woodstock, Vt., and used the facilities of Baker Library. "Here it is," he said, "that I see for the first time, in tangible form, the pristine glory of early American education - the fact that besides colleges and academic institutions established by public agencies there will remain private initiative in full vigor."
Dr. Heuss praised Dartmouth's "magnificent library," promised to send copies of several of his books not in the Dartmouth collection, and concluded by saying that he would like to think that his Dartmouth honorary degree had been awarded not because of his political office but rather "as a gesture of friendly appreciation for many a book on political history, on philosophy, and on the arts which I have written in the course of the years."
President Heuss was one of nine distinguished men who received honorary degrees at the Commencement exercises. Also honored with the Doctorate of Laws were Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, President of the University of Notre Dame; Devereux C. Josephs, chairman of the board of the New York Life Insurance Company; Grayson L. Kirk, President of Columbia University; and Colin F. Stam, chief of staff on the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation of the U.S. Congress. The Doctorate of Humane Letters was conferred on Ray Winfield Smith '1B, retired business and government official and collector of ancient glass; the Doctorate of Letters on Carl Bridenbaugh '25, Margaret Bryne Professor of United States History at the University of California, and Richmond Lattimore '26, Professor of Greek at Bryn Mawr College; and the Doctorate of Science on Lloyd V. Berkner, President of Associated Universities, Inc., Brookhaven Laboratory. The citations read by President Dickey will be found in this issue.
The conferring of honorary degrees followed the delivery of the Commencement and Baccalaureate Address by Father Hesburgh. Speaking on "The Examined Life," he recalled Plato's declaration that the unexamined life is not worth living, and urged the newly graduated seniors to begin by examining themselves, their values and the kind of life they wanted to live. "You must be considered as uneducated if your life is not consciously rational and deliberately free," he said.
Father Hesburgh called values "the wellsprings of human motivation, the guide lines to excellence of human performance," and warned against acceptance of the values of material security, physical comfort and ease that have become almost a national mania. He urged that allegiance be given instead to those spiritual values - love of truth, passion for justice, love of beauty, intelligent use of human freedom, respect for the dignity of the individual person, compassion for the suffering, capacity for sacrifice, and reverence for things spiritual - that have nurtured the giants of history.
"There are elements of great danger in our times, but as Toynbee has said, it is the really great challenges that have called forth the equally great, civilization-founding responses. It would seem to me that our times are made to order for the young who traditionally have had the capacity for high adventure. Adventurous may not be the proper adjective for our times, but it seems to me that never, since the discovery of the new world, have there been so many opportunities for the young man who will not allow himself to be seduced by the easy way, the safe choice, the altogether secure haven."
As valedictory speaker for the graduating class, Jaegwon Kim '58 of Korea, who three years ago could speak English only haltingly, also dwelt on the importance of values in the lives o£ the men of '58. He mentioned some of the positive values acquired at Dartmouth, and said, "To these simple and eternal truths we dedicate ourselves anew.... We mean to proceed with courage and perseverance wherever we are."
President Dickey delivered the traditional valedictory to the seniors. In his brief address he offered two comments about what is ahead. "The first is that a man is never simply what he has been; he is also always what he will be. You and we cannot change now by one jot what you have been; but never, never doubt that with all that is predetermined, the quality of your determination will make a difference.... The second comment relates to the way an educated man takes the world. ... The moral, gentlemen, is that, although we must take the world as it comes, it sometimes is not what it seems at first glance. It is the way of an educated man to seek to know before he acts."
Class Day
Speeches of a more informal sort had got the Commencement Weekend off to its traditional start the afternoon before, when Class Day exercises took place in the Bema and at the stump of the Old Pine. The seniors, making their first appearance in cap and gown, marched from the Senior Fence to the Bema and there settled themselves on the grass in front of the old stone platform to hear what their class speakers had to say about Dartmouth and the years ahead.
Class President Jerome K. Green welcomed the audience, made up largely of the seniors' families, and was followed by Class Orator Ronald L. Snow; Class Poet Tom Hyman, who read "A Place in Line"; and Joseph B. Blake, who gave the Address to the College.
The seniors then moved on to the Old Pine, where Charles F. Pierce, in top hat and buckskins, gave the Sachem Oration. The donkey on which he made a balky entrance was introduced by Pierce as the only Democrat left in New Hampshire. Archie S. Whitehead delivered the Address to the Old Pine, praising tradition, and then the seniors smoked their pipes of peace before smashing them on the Old Pine stump, as thousands of Dartmouth men had done before them.
That evening the Dartmouth Band gave the first of two weekend concerts on the campus; President and Mrs. Dickey were at home to the seniors, their parents and guests, faculty and alumni; and the Commencement Dance was held in Dartmouth House.
Saturday morning's schedule included a Phi Beta Kappa meeting and, at 10:30, a commissioning ceremony in the Bema for Army, Navy and Air Force ROTC officer candidates. David S. Smith '39, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, was the principal speaker as 118 men received commissions as second lieutenants or ensigns. Also present was Brig. Gen. William W. Stickney '26, deputy director of the Marine Corps Reserve, who later spoke at the ceremony at which nine seniors in the Marine Platoon Leader Program were commissioned.
All hands gathered in Alumni Gymnasium at 12:30 for the Commencement Luncheon traditionally given by the College. In the speaking program which followed, talks were given by President Dickey; Sidney C. Hayward '26, Secretary of the College; Lauris G. Treadway '08, for the 50-Year Class; and Richard S. Stoddart '58, for the graduating class.
While the Commencement guests were enjoying a leisurely afternoon in Hanover and the surrounding countryside, College officials were getting ready for the arrival of President Heuss of West Germany, who was flying up from Philadelphia, after a round of official events in Washington. When the U. S. Air Force Constellation landed at the West Lebanon airport at 6, on hand to greet President Heuss were President Dickey, New Hampshire Governor Lane Dwinell '28, and Shepard Stone '29, a personal friend, who served with the U. S. High Commission in West Germany from 1949 to 1952.
President Heuss was accompanied by an official party which included his son, Ernst Ludwig Heuss; the State Secretary, Felix von Eckardt; Wilhelm Grewe, German Ambassador to the U.S.; Hans Bott, personal aide; Sigismund Baron von Braun, chief of protocol; Dr. Alfred Wuerz, personal physician; Richard Balken, first secretary of the Germans Embassy; Erich Readerscheidt, press secretary; Dr. Werner Ahrens, American desk officer of the Federal Press Office; Heinz Weber, official interpreter; Otto Rathje, protocol officer; and the President's valet.
A six-man party from the U.S. Department of State, headed by Clement Conger, deputy chief of protocol, also came to Dartmouth with President Heuss; as did Bruno Werner, cultural attache from the German Embassy, and Otto Meyer-Cuno, Acting German Consul in Boston. Also entertained by the College were a German press group of nine and an American press group of twelve.
Advance planning for the reception and entertainment of President Heuss and this large party involved long and detailed preparations on the part of a Dartmouth committee headed by Sidney C. Hayward, Secretary of the College.
President Heuss, who stayed at the Hanover Inn, and the official party were entertained Saturday evening at a reception and dinner in the Hovey Grill, with Prof. Frank G. Ryder of the German Department as faculty host. There President Heuss learned a lot more about Eleazar Wheelock, as portrayed in the Humphrey murals. Student members of Germania presented a German play, Goethe, at the dinner, after which President Heuss called at the President's House to meet the other honorary degree recipients, while others attended a Germania reception in Robinson Hall.
Early Sunday morning President Dickey escorted Dr. Heuss on a motor tour of the College, ending at Baker Library where the party inspected the educational center about which the German leader had read and heard so much from his friends. By then it was time to get ready for the Commencement exercises, and Dr. Heuss was taken to Alumni Gymnasium to don cap and gown, pose for press pictures, and join the academic procession. He was not scheduled to march all the way to Baker Library, but President Heuss chose to do this. He was escorted by Trustee Charles J. Zimmerman '23, who speaks German fluently.
As the Trustees and honorary degree recipients started down the center aisle at Baker the inevitable Hanover dog got in the way - this time a dachshund. President Kirk of Columbia is reported to have commented that this was carrying the perfection of detailed planning for Dr. Heuss too far.
After the graduation exercises, the special guests and Trustees were entertained at luncheon by President and Mrs. Dickey. Seniors, with the help of parents and kid brothers, rushed to clean up odds and ends, pack the car, and get started on the trip home. Once again Hanover took on that strange, ill-at-ease quiet that succeeds the bustle of Commencement morning.
The sky was still clouded over and the wind blew harder than ever, but still the rain held off. That was being held back for the alumni having Monday-to-Wednesday reunions.
Class Day exercises in the Bema on Friday afternoon opened the Commencement Weekend.
Principals at the ROTC commissioning ceremony were (1 to r) Col. Harold N. Moorman, mandant; Capt. Clarence E. Dickinson, Navy unit commandant; and Major Joseph A. Marine officer with the Navy unit.
A senior tradition at the Old Pine.
