Posted by krn on November 27, 1998 at 02:51:42:
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 Harvard University 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. 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
saw you for a few minutes, then they would leave," she told the
president.
In exasperation, he 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. My husband and I would like to a
memorial to him, somewhere on campus."
The president wasn't touched; he was shocked. "Madam," he said
gruffly,
"We can't put up a statue for 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 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 homespun suit, then exclaimed, "A building! Do you have any
earthly idea how much a building costs? We have over seven and a half
million dollars in the physical plant at Harvard."
For a moment the lady was silent. The president was pleased.
He could get rid of them now.
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.
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.