The Senior Seniors

Photograph by Jim Harrison

George Barner

The oldest graduates of Harvard and Radcliffe present on Commencement day were Marjorie (Prince) Thomas ’42, 92, of Bedford, Massachusetts (accompanied by her husband, Edward Thomas ’41, who was celebrating his seventieth reunion), and Donald F. Brown ’30, Ph.D. ’55, 102, of Stow, Massachusetts. Both were recognized at the afternoon ceremony. (The oldest class representative was George Barner ’29, 102, of Kennebunk, Maine, who is three and a half weeks younger than Donald Brown.) Marjorie and Edward Thomas were married while she was still at Radcliffe College. Because he was in the U.S. Navy at the time, she left college to be with him, but more than three decades later she returned to campus “because I had made a promise to my mother that I would graduate.” She received her bachelor’s degree in 1978.

According to University records, the oldest alumni include: Halford J. Pope ’25, M.B.A. ’27, 107, of Hilton Head, South Carolina; Rose Depoyan ’26, 105, of Brockton, Massachusetts; Edith M. Van Saun ’29, 104, of Sykesville, Maryland; Priscilla Bartol Grace ’58, 104, of Woods Hole, Massachusetts; Ruth Leavitt Fergenson ’28, 103, of Rockville, Maryland; Dorothy P. Collins ’30, 103, of Hyde Park, Massachusetts; Rawson L. Wood ’30, 102, of Center Harbor, New Hampshire; Elliott C. Carter ’30, 102, of New York City; and Bertha Fineberg ’31, 102, of Gloucester, Massachusetts.