HONORARY DEGREE CITATIONS

Dancer, actress, politician, world traveler, and writer. Born into a middle-class Virginia family, you seemed destined for a conventional life. But your insatiable curiosity about the world and about your fellow human beings led you into careers that made your name - and your face - well-known all over the world.

Your autobiography, Don'tFall Off the Mountain, shows a deep concern about the problems of mankind, whether you write about civil rights workers in the South, about beggars in India, or about the plight of the Masai warriors. You feel deep empathy for people of all races and all walks of life. Perhaps this explains your style of acting, so uniquely your own, that your performance is totally convincing whether you play a nun, a vulnerable secretary, or Irma la Douce.

With a deep belief in the democratic process, you have refused to play the traditional role of the movie star in politics. You proved yourself an effective campaigner for the candidates of your choice, working 18-hour days, writing your own scripts, and always speaking to the issues. Yours is truly the face (and the mind) that launched a million votes.

You have a compassion based on first-hand experience, a tough-minded independence, and a deep commitment to understanding the meaning of life. You have said that you cannot enjoy anything unless you work hard at it. You have worked very hard, and clearly you enjoy life to the fullest.

We take pleasure in welcoming you into the Dartmouth family by awarding you the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.

Born in a small town in the Midwest, you came to Dartmouth to study medicine. But the attraction of the Dartmouth Players was greater than that of the pre-medical curriculum, and the theater and films have been your life ever since.

After graduate work at Harvard, you combined a career of drama criticism with work as a stage manager. You traveled widely in Europe and returned to a career as theater director. You worked in radio and made educational and documentary films. You staged several spectaculars and directed the brilliant production of Brecht's Galileo. After experimenting with nearly all media of communication, at age forty you made your first full-length feature, the memorable Boy with Green Hair.

Your life has since been a continual battle for the right to make great films. You have fought commercialism, low taste, and the stifling effect of studios. Victim of a national witch hunt, you moved to England where you seem to produce a masterpiece a year.

A warm compassionate romantic, you are also a perfectionist. You have become an expert on script writing, art direction, scoring, photography - even fund raising. You have made major financial sacrifices, and persuaded great stars to do the same, so that you could make a film the way you believe it had to be made. In spite of all your successes, you once had to persuade your backers to sell a completed film in which they had lost faith. And this was The Go Between, which would win for you the Golden Palm, the Grand Prix at Cannes.

You returned to your Alma Mater in 1970, as a visiting professor, to discover Hopkins Center and a great reservoir of talent in the student body. You also discovered that teaching is rewarding, but very hard work!

Dartmouth proudly pays tribute to the many contributions to the Arts of one of her sons by awarding you the honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.

Son of immigrant parents, born in New York City, you attended Dartmouth College and the Amos Tuck School. A turning point in your life was the taking of an aptitude test which showed that you were not qualified to become a salesman. So you went on to become one of the most successful salesmen in the history of the insurance industry. You never have learned the meaning of the word "impossible."

Entering life insurance right after Tuck School, you began a 50-year career that took you to the top of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company. Your ability to motivate people has become legendary. Any agency assigned to you would overnight become one of the best in the nation. You were the youngest man ever elected president of the National Association of Life Underwriters. During World War II you served in the U.S. Navy, rising.to the rank of captain. You went on to become managing director of the Life Insurance Agency Management Association, and then president and chairman of Connecticut Mutual.

Your outstanding career, your many community services, and your various contributions to education have been recognized by an immense number of awards. Perhaps the number of these awards testifies not only to the fact that there are so many areas in which you deserve recognition, but also that you are possibly the best after-dinner speaker in the country. You served as a trustee of Lawrence Academy, were a founder of the University of Hartford, and a pioneer in continuing education, but the educational institution you have served longest and best is Dartmouth College. You have served the College as Alumni Fund Chairman, as an Overseer of Tuck School, as head of the first capital fund campaign, and in a wide variety of other roles during your 20 years as a Trustee. It is rumored that during your term as Chairman of the Board you wrote more letters on behalf of the College than did the President.

But more than for your achievements you deserve recognition as a very special human being. You are kind, you are intensely loyal, and you never lose faith in the goodness of your fellow human beings. Your Alma Mater is proud to award you the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.

You were born in Boston, graduated from Boston Latin School, received degrees from St. Mary's College and Catholic University, and were ordained at Mount Saint Alphonsus Seminary thirty years ago this month. In 1969, Pope Paul appointed you a Prelate of Honor with the title of Monsignor.

For the past twenty years you have committed your ministry to Dartmouth students, faculty, and alumni. Your ministry has offered encouragement, direction, and hope to thousands of young men. You have boundless energy and enthusiasm, you have the ability to listen without condemning. to give counsel without preaching. You have a knack for solving difficult problems and have unlimited compassion for vour students. To help out a student in distress you have been known to lend him the entire Sunday collection!

Nor does a student's association with Father Bill end at graduation. Graduates are married and buried from the Aquinas House Chapel, and alumni children are baptized there. From the testimony of your past students we may conclude that you must have the most devoted parishioners in the Nation. You have the ability to evoke that which is novel and humane in those around you. Your presence among us is, in the best sense of the word, a blessing.

While generations of students have long ago adopted you into the Dartmouth family, we wish to make the adoption official by awarding you the degree of Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa.

Born and raised on a farm, educated in part by your parents, you went on to Yankton College in Yankton, South Dakota. A brief turn as a secondary school teacher whetted your appetite for a teaching career, and you continued your studies at Oxford and Harvard, disappointing your father by not becoming a professional baseball player.

You joined the Dartmouth faculty 40 years ago and, except for wartime service in the OSS and for various visiting professorships, you have been here ever since. Dartmouth is a better place because of your presence.

Generations of Dartmouth students will testify to your dedica- tion and effectiveness as a teacher, as well as to the leadership you provided for the Great Issues Course when it was truly great, and for the Senior Fellowship program. You made learning and scholarship exciting for your students.

You seem quite incapable of writing a book without winning a major prize. Your most recent achievement, the completion of the definitive biography of Diderot is a landmark both in historical scholarship and in clarity of exposition. Aided, as always, by your wife Mazie, you have produced a work that is eloquent testimonial to the fact that both the subject and the author are universal men.

Your life is a dramatic demonstration that "publish or perish can be a perilous principle. A narrow application of this principle would have deprived Dartmouth not only of one of her most beloved teachers, but also of one of her most distinguished scholars.

Your adopted college is proud to present to you the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa.

You were born in Middlesex in England, but spent most of your life at or near Stanford University, an institution of which your father was once president. You yourself attended Stanford and were a member of the swimming team, of the soccer team, and of Phi Beta Kappa. After graduate work at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Minnesota, you started your remarkable career as a specialist in internal medicine.

You were a faculty member first at the Mayo Foundation and then for many years at Stanford University. You served as a doctor in the U.S. Navy, and have served your government as an adviser in many diverse capacities. You were President of the American College of Physicians and became the first son of a President of the American Medical Association to follow in his father's footsteps.

You believe that adequate health care is the right of all citizens. And you practice what you believe – you were instrumental in developing a clinic in the Mission District of San Francisco. As President of the A.M.A. you were a strong supporter of community health centers. You urged the organization to guide change rather than to oppose it. You said, "In the fast pace of our times, anything that overemphasizes braking instead of steering through the traffic of change, is in great danger of being run down."

One of the nation's busiest medical statesmen, you still find time for such avocations as dirt farming, trout fishing, and Dixieland music.

Dartmouth once had the pleasure of presenting an honorary degree to your father. Today we honor the distinguished son of a distinguished father by awarding you the honorary Doctorate of Science.