Commencement Tragedy

"How can one explain or make sense of the death of a beautiful and talented young woman who had just found her voice and was on the threshold of singing her own hard-earned personal song to the world?" President James O. Freedman asked at a Storrs Pond memorial service for Stacey Coverdale '88. The Dartmouth student was killed in a car accident in West Lebanon on the night of her graduation. Her father, mother, four-year-old half-sister and a family friend, all from Philadelphia, were critically injured, and classmate Steven Gutmann received head and ankle injuries. They had collided head-on with a car driven by Bruce Greenberg '90. Greenberg, who was not seriously injured, was later indicted for manslaughter and second-degree assault.

A member of the Shinnecock tribe of Long Island, New York, Coverdale had worn a traditional Indian dress to her graduation. During her junior year she was vice president of Native Americans at Dartmouth. For a senior project she and Jennifer Anderson '88 put together a multi-media exhibit about Shinnecock women that was on display in Carpenter Hall when Coverdale died. She is to be featured in an upcoming documentary film by Canadian filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin about Native Americans at Dartmouth.

Accident victim: Stacey Coverdale died graduation day.

Bird watching: Samuel Smith '49, associate director of the Alumni Fund, scopedout the peregrine falcons that nested in spring at Holt's Ledge.