The College of William and Mary has an interesting history surrounding its commencement speakers, including this year’s orator — Glenn Close — who, on May 11, will make her second appearance addressing graduating students.
Award-winning actress Close, a 1974 William and Mary alumna and Phi Beta Kappa honoree, majored in theater and anthropology. She spoke earlier in 1989 when she also received the honorary doctor of arts degree. Records indicate that she came to speak after President George H. W. Bush declined an invitation.
Close is the second person to give two commencement addresses at the college. Dr. William T. Sanger, who was president of the Medical College of Virginia (now the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center), from 1923-1956, spoke in 1928 and again in 1953, when he received an honorary doctor of laws degree.
For much of its early history, at least 150 years, William and Mary students gave “orations” at commencement. The first recorded incident was in 1700 “it being a new thing in America to hear Graduates perform their academic exercises.” It is not believed students spoke in ceremonies after the Civil War. The practice was resumed in 1970 and has continued since.
No sitting president of the United States has been a William and Mary commencement speaker.
In May 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson declined an invitation by the senior class to give the commencement address, just four weeks before the event. This was not surprising, because in November 1967 he had received an unexpected message in a sermon from the rector of Bruton Parish Church questioning the Vietnam War.
Michigan Rep. Gerald R. Ford, then the minority leader of the House of Representatives and on the student commencement list, agreed to speak just two weeks prior to the event. Ford, however, did not receive an honorary degree as is the custom for many commencement speakers. Ford became the 38th U.S. president six years later.
About 30 months after he left the presidency, George H. W. Bush finally visited the college to speak at the 1995 commencement, calling William and Mary “A Place of Possibilities.”
With many military installations within close proximity of the college, it is understandable that a number of Army and Navy officers have spoken at commencements. General George Catlett Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, spoke at the 1941 ceremony, just six months prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that took the U.S. into World War II. Marshall avowed, “The times demand courageous men with unselfish purpose and truly great ideals.”
The next year — 1942 — Navy Admiral Ernest J. King took time off from his responsibilities as Chief of Naval Operations and Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, to speak at graduation exercises. King declared that the nation “will win this war [but] it will involve untold labor, a multitude of heartaches and sacrifices such as we have never yet known.”
In 1985 Commodore (later rear admiral) Grace Hooper, a mathematician, computer specialist and a leader in software development, spoke and received an honorary doctor of laws degree. Hooper retired the next year at the age of 79 years, eight months, after 42 years of military service.
Lt. Gen. Colin L. Powell gave commencement remarks in 1988 when he was President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Adviser. He later became a four-star general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first African-American to serve in either position. Powell also served as secretary of state, 2001-2005. All three of his children graduated from William and Mary and son Michael, class of 1985, was on the board of visitors (2002-2009 and rector of the college the last three years.
Brent Scowcroft, who succeeded Powell as National Security Adviser, spoke at the 2000 commencement. Through his career as an Air Force officer rising to the rank of lieutenant general, Scowcroft served as an adviser to presidents Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush and Richard M. Nixon.
In the 20th century several William and Mary faculty members also gave commencement addresses, the last being Dudley Warner Woodbridge in 1950. At that time, he was Chancellor Professor of Jurisprudence and acting dean of the Department of Jurisprudence, becoming dean of the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the college in 1953. Later in 1950 Life magazine recognized him as one of the nation’s top eight “great teachers.”
A host of notables from all walks of life have come to William and Mary’s past commencements to speak including: Condoleezza Rice (2015), former secretary of state; journalist Jim Lehrer (2012); Robert M. Gates, secretary of defense (2007); Archbishop Desmond Tutu (2006); Lady Margaret Thatcher (1997), former prince minister of Great Britain; James W. Baker (1992), secretary of state; and two authors and columnists, Art Buchwald (1980) and William F. Buckley Jr. (1981).
National Public Radio has an Internet web site, “The Best Commencement Speeches, Ever,” with 354 speeches from 1774 through 2018. Two William and Mary speeches are listed, and both were delivered by the college’s alumni. In 2004, comedian and political commentator Jon Stewart, class of 1984, said, “So how do you know what is the right path to choose to get the result that you desire? And the honest answer is this. You won’t.”
In 2011, financial guru Joe Plumeri, class of 1966, said, “You can Google for an answer. You can Google for a mate. You can Google for a career. But you can’t Google to find what’s in your heart — the passion that lifts you skyward.”
Kale, a long-time Williamsburg area resident and contributor to the Williamsburg Magazine, is a former journalist and historian who has written several books on local history.