University President Derek Bok, who oversaw 20 transformative years at Harvard from 1971 to 1991 (and an additional one in 2006-2007), was also a promoter of modest living. In lieu of using the University limousine service, he drove a red 1969 Volkswagen Beetle to work each day and, after he first left the post, donated the Bug to Phillips Brooks House (PBH).
PBH auctioned off the car in 1992, using the proceeds to help fund its public service programs. The surprised new owners were Moshe and Carolyn Gershovich. She was a University staffer with a degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education; he was earning his Harvard doctorate in Middle Eastern studies. The bid came about during “an all-nighter,” recalls Carolyn, who now goes by the last name Moore. “We had a small baby, and a whole lot of coffee.” Giddily hyped up, they saw an auction notice for the car, and she remembers rambling on about it: “If Derek Bok married Bo Derek, would their names be Derek Derek Bok or Bo Derek Derek?” That became “the joke from hell—so, we bid $666 for the car, the devil’s numbers, believing it was never going to happen,” she says. “But then it did happen.”
They picked up the zippy semi-automatic Bug, equipped with a sunroof. Come spring, she says, “we cranked that sucker open!” The car also got the young couple to and from Children’s Hospital, where their baby underwent several surgeries. Thus “the car,” she notes, “was more than just fun to own. It was a godsend.” Moshe graduated in 1995, and the family later headed to Morocco for his university teaching job. They sold the Bug to another Harvard staffer, Moore reports, “to keep it in the family.”
