04-22-2020, 01:48 PM
My two favorite Don Kennedy anecdotes:
First, the department in the administration where I worked in the early 90s was ground zero for the government investigation into Stanford’s indirect cost policies. Once a month or so, he would come to our office at lunch time, sit in our conference room and invite any or all of the staff to join him and eat our lunch while we asked him whatever we wanted to ask about the controversy, on any subject, “including the damn boat.” (Some of you will remember what that refers to.) After Gerhard Casper became president in 1992 (two years before the brouhaha was settled), neither he nor Condi, his Provost, darkened the door of our department, not once. I didn’t fully appreciate DK’s openness at the time my fellows and I were experiencing it.
Second, I am (as some of you probably know) a lifelong Tom Lehrer fan. When Don was asked for his opinion of the Band during the time of the Oregon spotted owl controversy, his response was a variation on something Lehrer said about himself; he said “their muse [was] not burdened by such inhibitions as taste.” Once I knew he was a Lehrer aficionado, I struck up a conversation with him about the guy, and Don proudly told me that he purchased Tom Lehrer’s first album from his very own hands in Harvard Square.
RIP Don.
First, the department in the administration where I worked in the early 90s was ground zero for the government investigation into Stanford’s indirect cost policies. Once a month or so, he would come to our office at lunch time, sit in our conference room and invite any or all of the staff to join him and eat our lunch while we asked him whatever we wanted to ask about the controversy, on any subject, “including the damn boat.” (Some of you will remember what that refers to.) After Gerhard Casper became president in 1992 (two years before the brouhaha was settled), neither he nor Condi, his Provost, darkened the door of our department, not once. I didn’t fully appreciate DK’s openness at the time my fellows and I were experiencing it.
Second, I am (as some of you probably know) a lifelong Tom Lehrer fan. When Don was asked for his opinion of the Band during the time of the Oregon spotted owl controversy, his response was a variation on something Lehrer said about himself; he said “their muse [was] not burdened by such inhibitions as taste.” Once I knew he was a Lehrer aficionado, I struck up a conversation with him about the guy, and Don proudly told me that he purchased Tom Lehrer’s first album from his very own hands in Harvard Square.
RIP Don.