Wish I Were There

A broken ankle snaps a Commencement streak.

Even in the hospital, Gifford Combs celebrated Commencement.

Gifford Combs ’80 took an unfortunate tumble on some steps in midtown Manhattan a week and a half before Commencement, breaking his left ankle in two places. He has been hospitalized since.

Because Combs had attended every Commencement since the spring of his freshman year (except in 1982, when he was living in China), his Weld Hall and Eliot House roommate, David Scheinberg ’80, offered to recruit a team of classmates to wheel Combs and his hospital bed into Tercentenary Theatre for today’s ceremony. Combs decided he’d better stay in bed in New York, where his ankle is on the mend, but the photograph he forwarded shows where his heart lies. And, he reported, his surgeon, John P. Lyden ’61, is in Cambridge this week, celebrating his fiftieth reunion.

 

Sub topics

You might also like

Saluting the 2025 Centennial Medalists

Four alumni of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences are honored.

International Student Ban Casts a Shadow on Harvard Commencement

Graduates discuss Trump's moves as students and alumni hold rallies

The Shape of Sound

Jessica Shand blends math and music.

Most popular

Harvard Medical School Renames Diversity Office, Revamps Recruitment Program

The latest in a broader rollback of DEI at the University

Nieman Fellow Eliza Griswold Wins Pulitzer Prize

Her book Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America is the choice in general nonfiction.  

12,000 Harvard Alumni File Amicus Brief in Funding Freeze Lawsuit

Alumni from every Harvard school and class since 1950 rally behind the University 

Explore More From Current Issue

Harvard Percussionist and Composer Jessie Cox

An experimental percussionist-composer pushing the limits of music

The Estate Behind Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park

Park offers art, nature, and history in New Hampshire

Addressing Gaps in Care for Patients with Disabilities

Lisa Iezzoni explores the unmet needs of patients with disabilities.