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A Street Prince Triumphs Over His "Silver Bullet"

Genghis Lapointe, ALB '98

I am standing here today to bear witness, with my own story, to the lasting success of the vision of A. Lawrence Lowell and the Harvard Extension School. My story is about a boy privileged with a strong childhood education who, entering manhood, was shot with a "silver bullet" that put aside his dream of education for over 20 years, and about the redemption of that dream.

Genghis Lapointe

I am a first-generation American. My father was born in a farmhouse in the backwoods of Quebec. His family auctioned the farm in the twenties and moved to Fall River, Massachusetts, to work the mills. The family placed a premium on education; they viewed it as a religious expression. When my schooling began in the 1950s, the French-Canadian immigrant culture in Fall River was still strong and insular. The consequence to me was that I attended very fine but very cloistered grammar and high schools. I gained a solid academic footing along with the impediment of an eighteenth-century French view of the world. For example, the sainted nuns who first taught me history seemed to me to prefer monarchy to democracy. Thus, when I went off to college in 1967 and found myself on my own for the first time, I got lost between my narrow worldview and the wide-openness of college life. I lacked savoir vivre. I began to ask myself the big questions about the cosmos and about life, questions that appeared to make college irrelevant. Such a perspective on college was, of course, not uncommon in 1967. I found myself with what was at the time and place a small group of fellow questioners; we were the hippie cognoscenti and had all the answers to everything. In short order I tuned in, turned on, and dropped out.

Soon I was a street person in Cambridge. For years I lived underground to avoid a trip to Vietnam, hawking newspapers, moving furniture, or painting interiors to get by. I was an immigrant's son moving in the opposite direction from assimilation. Like so many of the generation that created a counterculture, I deliberately reinvented myself as a native-born alien living in the shadows of a larger culture and opportunity. If one looks up the October 2, 1973, issue of the Boston Phoenix, one will find an article titled "Cambridge Street Prince." That was me. It has been a long way back.

What is the difference between that street person and the one who, with Harvard degree in hand, lives in a world wide open with possibility? Little else but luck, the guidance of a few kind people, and one very golden opportunity: the Harvard Extension School.

As the years went by, I harbored a dream of getting an education, but, with youthful certainty of my own immortality, I put it off. There was plenty of time, and, besides, I told myself that I would be too impatient and bored to spend eight long years, going to school half-time to get a degree. Then one day, nearing my 40th birthday, I asked myself what I had done in the previous eight years. The answer caused me to enroll in an Extension course. Having done so, I was immediately awestruck by the inestimable amount of fascinating knowledge so readily available to me. Making a commitment to live out my dream, I applied for degree candidacy.

I thoroughly enjoyed most of my schoolwork. Some of my teachers and classmates know that I was often held spellbound by lectures; they know because my exuberance was obvious. On the other hand, there were times that I was discouraged when a particular course or assignment taxed my abilities and self-discipline. I managed to push on by reminding myself of the reward. I overcame moments of discouragement by reminding myself that one day, a Thursday in June, the boundaries of my life would change. Whatever one's next goal in life might be, nothing is beyond the reach of a Harvard grad!

The hope for this Commencement Day kept me steadfast through the process. The process itself slowly changed me in unanticipated ways. I knew I was gaining knowledge, ability, and perhaps wisdom, but some forms of personal growth truly surprised me. I recall one trivial and unforgettable incident that served as a revelation to me.

One night a few years ago, I was up very late. It was about five degrees Fahrenheit outside, and I knew that there were guys sleeping on the ventilation grate on Holyoke Street. So I took an old, unused overcoat that I had been meaning to get rid of, and I drove there. I got out of the car and carefully placed it over one of the sleeping men. As I got back into the car, I remembered that I used to hide little treasures in the pockets of overcoats in case of burglary. So I got out, walked over, and went through the pockets. As I got back into the car, I had a thought that startled me: What if one of my deans or teachers was in one of the many Harvard-owned windows above me and saw me rifling through the pockets of an unconscious street person? At that moment, it dawned on me that I had been shedding some of my residual street sensibilities for a much more enjoyable and sensitive relationship to society at large. I was amazed: I was exchanging alienation for decorum, and it felt grand.

Until this past academic year, when this Commencement began to feel imminent, I have never quite felt far from the street. In fact, I've always given the school a post office box as my address--in part because I wanted to be sure that my education would not be ended should I find myself back on the street.

On this day, there is a great deal of distance between me and the street, and the greater part of that distance is measured in Harvard Extension course credits. President Lowell's vision reached out across the twentieth century to re-enfranchise this self-alienated Cantabrigian. So ends my story.

Mine is but one of about 200 stories that are completed here today. Most of us new alumni are today fulfilling dreams deferred. In his wonderful novel, The Natural, Bernard Malamud tells the story of a dream deferred. His protagonist, Roy Hobbs, dreams of becoming a great baseball player. However, his trip to the major leagues is delayed for many years by his being shot with a silver bullet.

The silver bullet is, of course, a metaphor for the aggregation of all the small and large impediments that we file under the rubric fate. Except for the very young among us, we new alumni have experienced all manner of manifestations of the "silver bullet." Some delays of education have been joyfully chosen, some sadly endured. There have been marriage vows to keep, children to raise, sick family members to nurse or to bury. There have been failures at first attempts at college. There have been economic constraints. Some of us simply had to find a way to Cambridge. Some of us had to answer the call of art or the call of travel or--closer to home--the call of the wild. For each of us, the "silver bullet" has comprised a different array of delays.

Roy Hobbs, the baseball player making a comeback in middle age, acquires the wisdom to know that all he really has to do to overcome his silver bullet and to fulfill his dream is to hit that one really important homerun. Roy hits his homerun, and it changes forever his life and his world.

Our silver bullets are personal to each of us. Our stories are all different, but they all share the same ending: Today we have hit our homeruns!

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