The Wright stuff
The New York Times covers Dartmouth President (and former Marine) James Wright in his mission to counsel wounded veterans at Bethesda and at Walter Reed Army Medical Center: "The few, the proud, the Dartmouth-bound." Tamar Lewin reports:
When he first met James Wright, the president of Dartmouth College, two years ago, Samuel Crist was in a hospital bed at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., recuperating from gunshot wounds from a firefight in Falluja, Iraq.The Times story also notes the election of Professor Stephen Smith to the Dartmouth board. I get the sense that the Times does not approve, but Professor Smith will contribute the kind of diversity to the Dartmouth board that Mr. Crist will contribute to the student body.“I was pretty heavily medicated, so my memory is a little bit foggy, but he was visiting people and asking about their experiences in the war, and pushing people to get an education,” said Mr. Crist, 22, who grew up in Lafayette, La. “He said he’d been a marine, too, and he’d gone to college after he got out as a lance corporal, the same rank I separated at.”
That hospital visit changed things for both Mr. Crist and Mr. Wright: On Mr. Wright’s advice, Mr. Crist enrolled in college courses in Texas, and next fall, will transfer to Dartmouth.
PAUL adds: The New York Times story notes that President Wright has made eight more visits to wounded veterans at Bethesda and at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, and, with the American Council on Education, started a program to provide individualized college counseling to seriously injured veterans. Wright also sends "care packages" to Dartmouth alums serving overseas. They include maple-sugar candy and a book of Robert Frost poems.
I'm proud of my college and its president.
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