A lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband, dressed in a homespun
threadbare suit, stepped off the train in Boston, and walked timidly without
an appointment into the president’s outer office. The secretary could tell
in a moment that such backwoods, country hicks had no business at Harvard
and probably didn’t even deserve to be in Cambridge. She frowned.
“We want to see the president”, the man said softly.
“He’ll be busy all day,” the secretary snapped. “We’ll wait,” the lady
replied.
For hours, the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally
become discouraged and go away. They didn’t. And the secretary grew
frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president, even though it was
a chore she always regretted to do.
“Maybe if they just see you for a few minutes, they’ll leave,” she told him.
And he signed in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance
obviously didn’t have the time to spend with them, but he detested gingham
dresses and homespun suits cluttering up his outer office. The president,
stern-faced with dignity, strutted toward the couple.
The lady told him, “We had a son that attended Harvard for one year. He
loved Harvard. He was happy here. But about a year ago, he was
accidentally killed and my husband and I would like to erect a memorial to
him, somewhere on campus”.
The president wasn’t touched and he was shocked. “Madam,” he said gruffly,
“we can’t put up a statue or every person who attended Harvard and died. If
we did, this place would look like a cemetery”.
“Oh, no,” the lady explained quickly, “we don’t want to erect a statue. We
thought we would like to give a building to Harvard.
The president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and his
homespun suit, then exclaimed, “A building! Do you have any earthly idea
how much a building would cost? Right now we have over seven and a half
million dollars in all the buildings on our campus at Harvard”.
For a moment the lady was silent.
The president was pleased. He could get rid of them now. And the lady
turned to her husband and said quietly, “Is that all it costs to start a
University? Why don’t we just start our own?”
Her husband nodded.
The president’s face wilted in confusion and bewilderment. And Mr. and Mrs.
Leland Stanford walked away, traveling to Palo Alto, California where they
established the University that bears their name, a memorial to a son that
Harvard no longer cared about.
~~
Dr Bob Griffin
[email protected] www.grif.net
“Jesus Knows Me, This I Love!”