Conferred May 27, 2001

Gerald Dorros
Robert H. Edwards
Rev. Peter J. Gomes
Linda J. Greenlaw

Gerald Dorros:
Gerald Dorros. We honor you as a physician, clinical researcher, inventor, surgeon, father of four Colby graduates, and wise counselor to the College you have adopted as your unofficial alma mater. After graduating from Dartmouth and receiving your medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, you joined the United States Army as a physician specializing in high-risk obstetrics. Early in your medical career you became fascinated by the possibilities of interventional cardiology and, in 1978, became one of the first three surgeons in the United States to perform coronary angioplasty. You have been a pioneer surgeon and educator in this field ever since, holding appointments to medical schools at Harvard, Boston University and Wisconsin. Not content with existing methods, you have always been a leader in developing new surgical procedures and devices, inventing and refining angioplasty catheters, stents, and many of the other tools that are now fundamental to successful treatment of vascular heart disease. In 1989 you and Myra brought your oldest child, Ari, to Mayflower Hill as a freshman. Ari was followed by his brother Eben, sister Isa, and youngest brother Noam. Throughout this period, you and your wife Myra served on the Parents Executive Committee, helping to raise funds to enhance Colby's academic and student life programs. In 1995 you made a significant gift for the renovation of chemistry laboratories in the Keyes Building and in 1996, the two of you made a second and even more magnificent gift to the Campaign by endowing the Dorros Family Professorship in Chemistry. In addition, you have been an Overseer since 1994. Jerry, had you and Myra shared only your four children with the College, we would have considered ourselves fortunate. But you have given much, much more to Colby in time, wisdom, compassionate concern, and resources. By bestowing an honorary degree on you, we honor a great Colby family and ourselves.

By the authority of the Board of Trustees of Colby College, I confer upon you, Gerald Dorros, the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa. The hood with which you have been invested and this diploma which I place in your hand are visible symbols of your membership in this society of scholars, to all the rights and privileges of which I declare you entitled.

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Robert Hazard Edwards:
Robert Hazard Edwards. Humanist. Over four decades and across four continents, you have been a creative and relentless pioneer in the search for better ways to expand human freedom and opportunity. Whether focused on Africa, the Middle East or Pakistan in your work for the Ford Foundation and the Aga Khan, or on the challenges of undergraduate education in America during the 20 years you served as president of Carleton and Bowdoin Colleges, or as a leader in the effort to bring the benefits of modern technology to Maine's public schools, you have been an enemy of ignorance and prejudice and a nurturer of wisdom and hope. At Bowdoin, our ancient rival and admired friend, you have led a renaissance. A bold and revolutionary change in the structure of student life, an expanded and modernized physical plant, a soaring endowment, and a vibrant faculty have been among the many consequences of your sure-handed administration. Your success at Bowdoin comes as no surprise to those who have followed the trajectory of your extraordinary career as a leader and builder. Wherever you have served your society, you have held steadily to a faith in charity, to high standards, and to the simple belief that you never go far wrong in expecting the best of people. Those have been your hallmarks. Enduring institutions serving a more tolerant and more trusting world will be your legacy.

By the authority of the Board of Trustees of Colby College, I confer upon you, Robert Hazard Edwards, the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. The hood with which you have been invested and this diploma which I place in your hand are visible symbols of your membership in this society of scholars, to all the rights and privileges of which I declare you entitled.

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Peter John Gomes:
Peter John Gomes: pastor, professor, teacher, humanitarian, scholar, biblical interpreter, cultural critic, and, most importantly, preacher without peer. As the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and the Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church of Harvard University, you are regarded as one of the most distinguished Christian preachers in the history of the English-speaking pulpit. As minister and pastor in the Memorial Church, you have transformed a university church into an international pastorate where peoples of all nations, kindreds, languages, and faiths gather to hear and be challenged by your rhetorical excellence, conceptual clarity, elegant prose, and edifying love. Over a lifetime you have served God and the family of humanity from the sweltering Southland to snowy New England and across oceans and international borders. Son of First Baptist and Bethel A.M.E. Churches of Plymouth, Massachusetts, distinguished graduate of Bates College and Harvard University, and, for over three decades, preacher to our world house by way of Harvard University, you, like Paul and Moses, have been an itinerant voice crying in the wildernesses of human hubris and trumpeting the superiority of love. You have demonstrated through sacrificial and courageous personal example that in a world easily content without God, women and men have the power, if they are willing to have the love, to be the action of God in this world. Your voice of excellence--your gift of sure and certain clarion call--invites us to rise to a good life that gives hope to a world of tribulation, that restlessly embraces joy, that corporately contends against evil, that receives in order to give, and that attends mystery with imagination. A great preacher, who inspired you, once described a world of three essences--faith, hope, and love--and then pointed out that "the greatest of these is love." We honor you today because you have courageously chosen "the greatest of these," and we honor you because you dare us to invest no less in humanity than God has invested as we seek to engage the problems of human community in the twenty-first century.

By the authority of the Board of Trustees of Colby College, I confer upon you, Peter John Gomes, the degree of Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa. The hood with which you have been invested and this diploma which I place in your hand are visible symbols of your membership in this society of scholars, to all the rights and privileges of which I declare you entitled.

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Linda J. Greenlaw:
author, swordboat captain, lobsterman, graduate of the Colby class of 1983. A third-generation Colby alumna, you majored in English and in Government and spent college summer vacations on a commercial fishing boat. After graduation, you made longliner swordfish vessels your career, working your way from deckhand to captain in three years. You have the distinction of being the first woman to have achieved this distinction and, as far as we know, you are also the first Colby English major to do so. Ship captains have the awesome responsibility to bring their crew and their ships back safely, no matter what conditions they may meet when they leave the security of their harbors. You have always returned home, and when your ship came into port, fully laden, the worldwide price of swordfish would fall, recounts Sebastian Junger. You skippered your boat, the Hannah Boden, unscathed through the infamous Halloween gale of 1991, the event that was chronicled in the best-selling book, The Perfect Storm, and the movie of the same title, in which you are portrayed. Your own 1999 best-seller, The Hungry Ocean, about your experiences as a swordboat captain, has been called by the New York Times: "a story of triumph, of a woman not only making it but succeeding at the highest level in one of the most male-dominated and most dangerous professions."

You have been featured on CBS's Sunday Morning and in the ABC special, Vanished, and were named by Boston magazine as one of the most intriguing women of 1997. Now retired from swordfishing, you divide your time these days between writing your next book, and fishing for lobsters on the Mattie Belle in the waters around Isle au Haut. Your College honors you for your uncommon courage, your fairness, your physical and mental endurance, in short, for all of the traits that make you, as Sebastian Junger writes, "one of the best captains, period, on the East Coast."

By the authority of the Board of Trustees of Colby College, I confer upon you, Linda J. Greenlaw, the degree Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. The hood with which you have been invested and this diploma which I place in your hand are visible symbols of your membership in this society of scholars, to all the rights and privileges of which I declare you entitled.

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