Honorary Degrees
MARIAN SULZBERGER HEISKELL - Daughter of New York's most famous journalistic family, you have written a record of your own, a remarkable record of public service.
You are director of special activities for The New YorkTimes. You are chairman of the board of the Community Service Society, the largest nonprofit, nonsectarian social agency in the nation. You are co-chairman of the Mayor's Council on the Environment in New York, a member of the Advisory Council on National Parks, trustee of the National Planning Association, trustee of Rockefeller University and of the Botanical Gardens, a charter member of the Overseers of the Dartmouth Medical School, and a director of the Inter American Press Association.
A lover of the out-of-doors, you never miss an opportunity to fight for the preservation of natural beauty. An ardent conservationist, you serve as a trustee of the Consolidated Edison Company, and urge New Yorkers to use less electricity. A director of The New York Times, you criticize editorial policy by writing a letter to the editor. But you are happiest in private enjoyment of nature, particularly when fishing off Bumpy's Boat.
You have long-standing family ties to the College. But today we adopt you into the Dartmouth family by conferring the College's honorary Doctorate of Laws.
LLOYD DEWITT BRACE - Banker extraordinary, statesman of business and education, you were born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and raised in Boston. Entering Dartmouth with the Class of 1925, you demonstrated your leadership qualities as a member of Palaeopitus, manager of the ski team, organizer of Winter Carnival, and president of the Dartmouth Outing Club. You may even have inaugurated the Foreign Study Program when you worked your way across the Atlantic on a cattle boat.
After graduation you joined the nation's oldest bank, as a clerk. But when you were promoted to assistant cashier in just three years, it must have been clear to everyone that your reaching the presidency of the First National Bank of Boston, and its chairmanship, was preordained. You are a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Your wise counsel was sought by many of our nation's industrial giants; and in addition to these corporate directorships you served untiringly as a trustee of Massachusetts General Hospital, of M.I.T., of the Boston Museum of Science, and of the Rockefeller Foundation. You exemplify within your person the free enterprise system at its finest.
You served Dartmouth as a Trustee for 22 years, and during a period of significant change the Board repeatedly turned to you for roles of leadership. You have a reputation for speaking only when you know exactly what you are talking about; perhaps that is why, when you speak in your calm voice, everyone listens. You became the first Trustee - other than the President - to be elected chairman of the Dartmouth Board. Under your chairmanship the Board launched the Equal Opportunity Program conducted the Third Century Fund Drive, and searched for anew President. Your record of achievement was truly outstandings - with the possible exception of the selection of the 13th President.
Dartmouth College is proud to recognize one of her most loyal sons by awarding you the honorary Doctorate of Laws.
ROBERT JAMES KEESHAN - Good morning, Captain! You were born in New York and you tell us that your childhood was "delightfully free from worries or insecurities." Perhaps that is why you have produced the gentlest and friendliest TV show for children.
While a student at Fordham, you assisted in the Howdy Doody show on NBC, and accidentally stumbled into the role of Clarabell the Clown. But after becoming a father you realized that children's TV was full of slapstick and violence. You do not look like a revolutionary, but a revolution is what you accomplished when you persuaded CBS that young children are intelligent and that they have the potential for good taste.
While you realized that to retain the attention of the young the show must always entertain. Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Green Jeans, and Bunny Rabbit introduced good manners, good music, and gentle education. Yours is the longest running daily show on network television and you have influenced an entire generation. It is hard to believe that a boy who would have seen your first show at age four would be old enough today to graduate from Tuck School, or that a girl who watched you at age two could be a member of the Class of'75. [Mr. Keeshan's son and daughter.]
You have always maintained the highest standards. You rejected cartoons showing excessive violence or propagating racial prejudice. You were most selective in your sponsors, even when sponsors were hard to come by. In one of your Peabody awards your program was cited as "the only one that puts the welfare of the children ahead of the welfare of the sponsor."
A generation of parents is in your debt for influencing their children for the better. As one of those parents, I am happy to award you the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoriscausa.
JAMES BURLEIGH THOMPSON - Born in Calais, Maine, the son of a minister, you graduated from Dartmouth in 1942. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, you earned your Ph.D. from M.I.T. You have been on the Harvard faculty for a quarter of a century and are chairman of the Division of Geological Sciences.
A truly outstanding teacher, you are noted both for the excellence of your field work and your command of theoretica tools. You have drastically altered our understanding of the geology of New England, and have shown that the Green Mountains and the Alps have much more in common than just skiing. A colleague of yours has said about you that "His facility wit thermodynamics and mathematics is almost frightening.... I remember vividly his solving, on the back of an envelope, in ten minutes, a problem I had been struggling with for several months."
You are a recipient of the Arthur L. Day Medal, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A powerful theoretician, you have nevertheless warned that in the enthusiasm of applying abstract theory we must never lose sight of the rocks. You are therefore fortunate in being able to combine vocation and avocation, since "not losing sight of the rocks" requires travel, skiing, and mountain-climbing.
The College is proud to pay tribute to a distinguished scientist and teacher within the Dartmouth family, by awarding you the honorary Doctorate of Science.
JUSTIN BROOKS ATKINSON - Born in New England, the son of a newspaperman, you printed your own newspaper at age eight. After graduating from Harvard, you entered the teaching profession. You were appointed Instructor of English at Dartmouth, receiving the magnificent salary of $1,000. But a raise of ten per cent the following year was insufficient to keep you from your true love, journalism.
The turning point in your life came when you discovered that theater critics received free tickets to plays. As critic for The NewYork Times, for 35 years you produced theater reviews that became a model for objectivity, accurate observation, and polished style. You won the respect and esteem, and - astonishingly - the affection of those you criticized. You received citations from Actors' Equity, from off-Broadway theaters, and had a theater named in your honor.
But you are a journalist in the broadest sense of the word. You were a war correspondent in China during World War II, and won a Pulitzer Prize for your reports on Russia. You are an essayist whose love for nature is eloquently reflected in what you have written of birds and boats, mountains and rivers.
You have said that "It is not enough just to be alive. It is important to be alive in a beautiful place." Dartmouth College, which shares this conviction, is pleased to award you the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa.
GODDARD LIEBERSON - Composer, musician, writer, business executive, you are truly a Renaissance Man. Born in England, raised in the U.S., you studied at the University of Washington and the Eastman School of Music. From composing choral music you went to Columbia Records to build up a classical collection.
Your recording of American orchestras quickly proved a success. You were the first executive to realize that long-playing records would dramatically alter the listening habits of the world. Usually ahead of your time, many of your ideas were adopted Usually thanks to your great powers of persuasion. The two-million member Columbia Record Club might well not have been born. Excursions into historic recordings seemed risky, until Edward R. Murrow's memorable "I Can Hear It Now" proved otherwise. You pioneered in original cast albums and the recording of great plays. But when you wanted to have CBS underwrite an entire musical, the gamble was considered too great. Fortunately for CBS you talked them into it; the name of the show was "My Fair Lady."
You are an incomparable raconteur and an incorrigible wit. That is why your many famous friends and admirers provided the most original set of tributes on your 25th anniversary at Columbia. Adlai Stevenson wrote: "Think of it! Twenty-five years. If my friend Lieberson were President of the United States instead of Columbia Records, he would now be in his seventh term. And I am not even in my first. But he deserves re-election. He can certainly run on his records. Hail Lieberson! Hail Columbia!"
Total devotion to the arts has guided your life. You have given major impetus to the careers of such artists as Bruno Walter, Igor Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein, and Barbra Streisand. You have encouraged growth of the arts wherever you had a chance. You are a director of the Metropolitan Opera, and - more importantly - chairman of the Overseers of Hopkins Center.
Dartmouth College pays tribute to your immense contributions to music and the arts by awarding you the honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.
BENJAMIN ELIJAH MAYS - Born in South Carolina 80 years ago of slave-born parents, you are a distinguished scholar and one of the nation's most respected educational leaders.
You had to fight both the prejudices of society and the opposition of your father to obtain a high school education in the Deep South. Desirous of higher education in the North, you wrote to Daniel Webster's college, but unfortunately the Dartmouth catalogue frightened you - totally unnecessarily as you later realized. An honor graduate of Bates College, you obtained your Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. An ordained Baptist minister, your first job after college was teaching mathematics at Morehouse. You married Sadie Gray with whom you worked side-by-side for 43 years.
Your first call to educational leadership was as dean of the School of Religion at Howard University, where in six years you achieved a significant rise in academic standards. In 1940 you accepted the challenge of becoming the sixth president of Morehouse College. You said that: "To be a president of a college and white is no bed of roses. To be president of a college and black is almost a bed of thorns." In your 27 years of remarkable leadership you raised that small college from one of the lowest points in its history to an institution of true distinction. With some 100 publications you set a high standard for your faculty, and of your students you demanded the same high ideals and hard work that you practiced in your own life.
Spiritual mentor of the late Martin Luther King Jr., you played a major role in the fight for social justice in America. For you this is a never-ending fight, as witnessed by the fact that at age 75 you were elected president of the Atlanta Board of Education.
A catalogue deprived Dartmouth of the privilege of having you as a member of the Class of 1920. But Daniel Webster's college today claims you as a member of the Class of 1975, by awarding you the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
