“Forget your nose-
put your whole face to the grindstone.
With such a brief frolic on this planet, every day must have meaning.
Work hard.
Then play hard.
See your friends. See your relatives.
Travel.
Try to fill a day with a day, not just the lagging memory
of a few hours.”
THOR A. BENANDER, THE SENIOR SPEAKER
“This country gives
lots of opportunities, and I decided to
take advantage of them.”
DANUTA TRZEBINSKAYAGER,
VALEDICTORIAN
A native of Poland, she came to Oneonta (N. Y) High School as an exchange student. After deciding to stay in America, she came to Union, where she not only had the highest grade point average of this year's class but won the Robert M. Fuller Prize for original experimental work in chemistry and competed on the
cross-country team. Married to Daniel Yager, who is in the Navy, she will attend Harvard University Medical School this fall after a trip to Poland to see her parents and brother.
The salutatorian was Teresa Hanlon, a psychology major from Castleton, N.Y., and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Psi Chi (the psychology honor society), Sigma Delta Pi (the Spanish honor society), and We Care About U-Schenectady (a student group that renovates homes for purchase by low income families).
“Wow, it's pretty neat!”
Philip Beuth 54, winner of an Eliphalet Nott Medal
The Eliphalet Nott Medal, created this year, recognizes the perseverance of alumni who have attained great distinction in their fields. Beuth, who received his BA in English, is the retired president of morning and night entertainment for Capital Cities/ABC in New York City.
Other alumni honored at Commencement were:
–Robert E. Bernhardt '73, the newly-appointed music director and conductor of the Rochester Symphony Orchestra. An
All-American third baseman at Union, he turned to music as a career when his competition for a spot with the Kansas City Royals was George Brett. Most recently he was music director of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra.
-The Honorable Victor H. Fazio '65 is a member of the House of Representatives from the Third Congressional District of California. He was elected president of the student
body in his first try at elective office. Victor in a race for the California Assembly in 1975, he ran successfully for Congress three years later and is now one of the leading Democrats in the House.
–R. Gordon Gould '41 is the inventor of the laser. He sketched the design in 1957, while a graduate student at Columbia University, and won a lengthy struggle for recognition after the Patent Office awarded a patent to another scientist.
–Estelle Cooke-Sampson '74, M.D., is a radiologist with Metropolitan Radiology Associates in
Washington, D.C., director of D.C. Imaging Associates, and a spokesperson for the D.C. Cancer Consortium.
“When you care for a place, it's remarkable how pleasant it is to help it reach its goals and how wonderful it is to make a difference.”
“When you care for a place, it's remarkable how pleasant it is to help it reach its goals and how wonderful it is to make a difference.”
–Norton H. Reamer 58, recipient of the College's Founders Medal for unusual and distinguished service to Union
President and chief executive officer of United Asset Management Corp. in Boston, Reamer has been a member of the College's Board of Trustees since 1973. He has led many of its committees, is the immediate past chairman, and currently serves as secretary.
His many activities on behalf of Union have ranged from leading alumni events, such as send-off parties for entering freshmen, to leading major fundraising campaigns. The renovation and expansion of the Murray and Ruth Reamer Campus Center was made possible by a gift from him in honor of his parents; the building was dedicated June 9 [see the story and photographs in this issue].
“Civility, accountability, responsibility-there's an important linkage among the three. Use the lives of Thoreau and Gandhi and King as yardsticks to measure your own lives and
–President Roger H. Hull, in his remarks to the graduates
“This was not to save my own life but to inform of the horrors of Auschwitz
–Ceslav Mordowicz, who received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree
Mordowicz, a Polish Jew, escaped from Auschwitz in May, 1944, determined to bring the horrors of the Nazi death camp to the attention of the world.
His testimony helped halt the deportation of Hungarian Jews, saving an estimated 200,000 lives. [For more on Mr. Mordowicz, see President Hull's column.]
“I'll put the entire speech in the Congressional Record.”
–Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, cutting short his Commencement speech as the sky grew dark and rain threatened
In his address, New York's senior senator noted the “striking parallel” between the political revolutions of the late eighteenth century and the economic revolutions of our time.
Until the late 1800s, he said, political thought turned on ways to inculcate virtue in a small class that governed. This country's founders, however, took the knowledge they had gained about humans' self-interestedness to create political solutions in which ambition would counteract ambition. Unlike the French revolutionaries, America's revolutionaries adapted the old order rather then try to abolish all traces of it.
So, too, with the economy, where the United States unlike the Soviet Union-has transformed the old economic order rather than try to abolish it. In the course of the past
half-century, Moynihan said, the United States has essentially learned to manage an industrial economy.
“Is the world transformed? Well, yes it is. And it would do us no harm to take note between bouts of self-abasement. The legitimacy of a free enterprise society, with free
labor and free markets, is acknowledged across the globe.
“Now then, are our troubles behind us? Assuredly not; obviously not.”
Moynihan said that his colleague and friend, Senator Bill Bradley, observes that “the fragile ecology of our social environment is as threatened as that of our natural environment.”
Consider, too, the state of the American family or note that in Washington the talk is less about how the economy can create jobs but how a dependent population can be induced to take them, he said.
“Surely that only strengthens the case for a `science of politics' that seeks, however so often in vain, to understand the world which we inherit but which we also in some measure create,” Moynihan said.
Better late than never…
Eight alumni whose studies at Union were interrupted received their bachelor's degrees at Commencement. The “new” graduates are:
- Sidney Brodsky, director of Pediatric Cardiology at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Fla.;
- Steven Hirsh, at attorney in Bemidji, Minn.;
- Charles S. Walkoff, a radiologist at the Atlantic City (NJ.) Medical Center;
- Judah Roher, a pediatrician in White Plains, N.Y.;
- J. Bradley Aust, Dorn Distinguished Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio;
- Levan Bedrosian, medical director of The Child's Hospital in Albany, N.Y.;
- William Kelly, a retired dentist in Schenectady;
- Paul Carbone, director of the University of Wisconsin Clinical Cancer Center and a professor at the University of Wisconsin.