Commencement

Irish sunshine

IT didn't really rain at the 211th commencement exercises. It was more like Irish sunshine, scattered drops here and there, making note-taking difficult and, no doubt, besmirching a camera lens or two.

Even if it didn't really rain, there was an appropriate amount of mist at the ceremonies. Mist in the eyes for John Kemeny's 12th and final commencement as president; mist for the 957 seniors setting out in an unsure world; and mist for one Diane Knappert, a doughty, petite lady who is the first of her sex to earn a doctor of engineering degree from Thayer.

As the exercises started under gray skies with a freshening wind that betokened moisture, it looked a gambler's chance that commencement factotum Fritz Hier '44 made when he decreed they would be held on Baker's lawn and not on Thompson's floor. It was a gambler's chance he, and everyone else there, won. And everyone else there totaled a robust 8,000 souls.

The 50-year and older classes came first to standing applause by that 8,000. Leading them was Howard Buffington of the class of 1916. After they were seated, the two patriarchs of the lot, Kenneth Clark and Arthur Winship, a couple of 91year-old youngsters in Hanover for their 70th reunion, were properly piped aboard.

If possible, it seemed that more cameras were present than at any previous commencement and that the lenses on same were longer. But, by and large, they were handled with restraint, and the streaks of their flash equipment only seemed, for an instant, to be lightning.

While the soon-to-be graduates were filing in, honorary-degree recipient George Ball, no fool after all those years of diplomacy, was seen conversing mightily with honorary-degree recipient Meryl Streep, up on the platform. Streep was later to wave winsomely to the senior class, which gave her a tumultuous acclaim.

Then the degree-granting ("the harvest of these four years," as Chaplain Warner Traynham '57 called it in his invocation) began. Trustee David McLaughlin '54, soon to trade that hat for another one, was very twig to come forward to shake the hand of son William R. after he received his Tuck M.B.A. and to buss the cheek of daughter Susan D. after she garnered her A.B. (Two other kin of a Dartmouth president, collateral descendants of E. M. Hopkins 'Ol, also earned degrees Nancy Siegler, and Susan Hopkins, A.8., both granddaughters of Robert Hopkins 'l4).

President Kemeny asked Diane Knappert to come to the platform "because you look so lonely down there," but, once on the platform, she looked quite dwarfed by the College's lofty robing marshals. At the conclusion of the A.B. granting, academic mortar boards were sailed in the air, a 1981 innovation, and a champagne cork or two was observed airborne among them.

Then John Kemeny, in his final valedictory, urged the graduates to forswear prejudice and "to use your talents, your very considerable talents, to make this a better world for all of us." He also charged them to go out and tell 40,000 alumni "about the Dartmouth you know and love," and tell them not to rely on rumors or third-hand reports or on "publications with ulterior motives that will twist the truth to fit their needs."

To a standing ovation, John Kemeny scaled his academic headgear in the air. The Hartt Brass Ensemble swung into a catchy version of the "Colonel Bogie March" and the academic procession moved out.

Near the center of the Green, John Kemeny embraced wife Jean. A long step toward retirement was now behind them.

Dean of the College Ralph Manuel '58congratulates one of the 957 new alumni.Below, John and Jean Kemeny marching inthe recessional of his 12th commencement.Kemeny signed the diplomas of one thirdof the alumni during his presidency.