Word: finley
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...John H. Finley `25 has for decades been the quintessential speaker for a Harvard gathering, and Commencement 1982 will be no exception. As his friends and colleagues repeat tirelessly, no one better symbolizes all that is special about the University: commitment, excellence, tradition. Few have been here as long or can express themselves in more vivid and stimulating terms...
...career in Cambridge spans more than 50 years, including these as an undergraduate and doctoral student, than as one of Harvard's most learned and popular lecturers, and as master of Eliot House from 1941 through 1968. Finley is more than just another life-long Harvard man; he is, says current Eliot master, Alan E. Heimert '59, "en embodiment of the golden age of Harvard...
...done, Finley has demonstrated an unusually effective and personal method of helping others, both through his teaching and during his term as a House master. As Eliot Professor of Greek Literature. Finley thrilled students for 30 years with passionate and image-filled lectures on the Classics, enabling even the most uninterested undergraduate to understand and enjoy the intricacies of Homer and Virgil. And, as Eliot House master for 27 years--the longest anyone has ever served in a master's post--Finley wrote letters of reference for every one of the approximately 150 seniors who graduated from Eliot each year...
...says that his teaching career at Harvard began purely by accident, when a position opened up after a professor suddenly became blind. But Finley quickly gained recognition on his own for his speaking style and colorful analyses of Greek figures, most notably the historian Thucydides, who served as the topic of several of Finley's written works. Referring to Finley's "imagined interpretations of such heroic figures as Achilles and Odysseus," longtime colleague Albert Lord '34. Porter Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature, emphasizes Finley's "elegance of expression...
...making these people alive and bringing their lives and motions to the students." Lord says, adding that Finley's "associations of ideas and images are frequently striking because they are quite homely." Finley says that an elocution class at Exeter provided his only "formal" training...