Seniors say goodbye

Under a blanket of blue sky and sunshine, 447 seniors received undergraduate degrees as Wittenberg concluded its 154th academic year, May 15.

The processional began at 1:30 p.m. and the commencement ceremony at 2 p.m. in Commencement Hollow. Family and friends filled the stands, chairs and hillside to celebrate the milestone with the graduates.

Of the 447 seniors, whose class motto was “It takes courage to grow up to be who you really are,” 25 graduated with university honors and 42 wore the colors of departmental honors.

Forty-eight graduated cum laude; 43 graduated summa cum laude; and 21 graduated magna cum laude. Receiving the honorary doctor of humane letters degree with journalist Helen Thomas (page 8) was Shakespeare scholar David Bevington.

Theologian Clark Hobby received the doctor of divinity degree, and the late Nobel laureate Gertrude B. Elion was awarded the doctor of science degree posthumously.

Bevington is the Phyllis Fay Horton Professor of the Humanities at University of Chicago in English and Comparative Literature and the author of Mankind to Marlowe (1962); Tudor Drama and Politics (1968) and Action Is Eloquence: Shakespeare’s Language of Gesture (1984).

He received his bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University and taught at his alma mater and the University of Virginia prior to going to Chicago in 1967.

Hobby has been a leader in the Lutheran Church as a pastor since his ordination in 1962 and has served five Lutheran parishes in Indiana. Since 1993 he has been at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in New Castle, Ind.

A member of Wittenberg University’s Board of Directors and an honorary member of the Wittenberg Alumni Association, Hobby entered the University of Illinois at age 26, completing his bachelor’s degree in 3 1/2 years.

He later earned his master of divinity degree from Christian Theological Seminary and his doctor of ministry from United Theological Seminary.Elion shared the 1988 Nobel Prize for Medicine with George H. Hitchings and Sir James Black.

Scientist emeritus with Glaxo Wellcome Inc. in Research Triangle Park, N.C., she is credited with the synthesis and co-development of two of the first successful drugs for the treatment of leukemia, as well as azathioprine, an agent to prevent the rejection of transplanted kidneys and to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

A native of New York City, Elion received her bachelor’s degree from Hunter College in 1937 and her master’s degree from New York University in 1941. Her degree was accepted by her nephew, Jonathan Elion.