Harvard History | May 24, 2012

Cartoonist KAL (Kevin Patrick Kallaugher '77) draws special Commencement cartoon

A Commencement cartoon by KAL

The normally sober and strait-laced Harvard Gazette, the University's official news publication, had a little fun with the cover of its Commencement issue, celebrating Harvard's 375th anniversary. Editorial cartoonist Kevin Patrick Kallaugher '77 (KAL), regularly featured in The Economist and The Baltimore Sun, rendered the John Harvard statue rising from its pedestal to lead the annual alumni parade, representing the infant College of 1636 (before there was, or could have been, a graduating class). This is, of course, his thirty-fifth reunion year.

The theme might be "John Harvard Walks the Yard!"—appropriately for a day in which 1995 Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, Litt.D. '98, a former faculty member, returned to Tercentenary Theatre to read his 350th anniversary poem, "Villanelle for an Anniversary," for Harvard's 375th. Its resonant refrain is, "John Harvard walked the yard." (The poem was also set to music, in a composition premiered during the Morning Exercises.)

Read more about KAL in “Where the Eyeballs Are,” from this magazine's archives, and see more of his work at his Kaltoons website.

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