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Commencement 2001 Roundup
Commencement Weekend:
schedule of events
Read
President Adams's Baccalaureate address.
Commencement address by Reverend
Peter Gomes
Senior Class Speaker Address by Todd W. Miner
Press Release:
Reverend Peter Gomes,
Commencement Speaker
Read Commencement citations for:
Reverend Peter Gomes
Gerald Dorros
Robert H. Edwards
Linda J. Greenlaw '83
Honorary
Degree Recipient Bios:
Gerald Dorros
Robert H. Edwards
Rev. Peter J. Gomes
Linda J. Greenlaw '83
Past Commencement Speakers

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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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