By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 16, 2023 – My very good friend Professor Leon Dash, a former award-winning reporter at the Washington Post, reposted an incredible story on Facebook that I absolutely had to share with readers of my online publication, BAHAMAS CHRONICLE, which has a huge following among the Bahamian diaspora across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom as well as in The Bahamas and the wider Caribbean.
Here’s that amazing story reposted by Professor Dash, under the heading, A strange visit to the house:
“A woman in modest dress, accompanied by her husband, dressed in a comfortable but cheap suit, got off a train at Boston Station and went to the Harvard University principal’s office.
They did not make an appointment. At first glance, the secretary decided that those people at Harvard had nothing to look for.
“We’d like to meet with the school principal,” the man said in a silenced voice.
“He’ll be busy all day,” the drought secretary answered.
“We’ll wait,” the woman said.
The secretary ignored the visitors for several hours hoping that at some point they would be disappointed and leave on their own. However, when she made sure that they wouldn’t go anywhere themselves, she decided to harass the director and inform about their visit.
“Maybe if you accept them for a minute and wake them up, then they’d rather leave? ” she asked the director
The director sighed angrily and agreed. As important as he is, he certainly does not have time to accept people dressed so modestly.
When the visitors entered, the director immediately measured them with his stern and arrogant gaze. The woman turned to him:
– We had a son, he studied at your university for a year. He loved this place and was very happy here but sadly passed away a year ago unexpectedly. My husband and I would therefore like to leave some memory of him on the territory of this university.
The director was not happy about it at all, but on the contrary he was very irritated.
– Lady! – he replied impudently, – we can’t build monuments to everyone who studied at Harvard and died. If we did, it would soon be a cemetery.
– No, I didn’t mean so – the woman quickly objected, – we don’t want to build a monument, nor a statue, we want to build a new building for Harvard.
The director looked at the faded checkered dress and a cheap suit and exclaimed, “God, do you people have any idea how much such a building costs? All Harvard buildings are worth over seven million dollars together!
The wife hasn’t said anything in a minute. The director had an ominous smile of joy. So they will see her out of here after all!
The woman turned to her husband and said quietly:
– Is it so cheap to build a new university? So why don’t we build our own university?
The man gave a nod in agreement. Harvard director faded and looked confused.
The Stanford spouses got up and left the office without further ado.
In Palo Alto, California, they established a university that bears his name – Stanford University in memory of their beloved son.
(Wikipedia: “Stanford University was founded by a train tycoon, US Senator Leland Stanford and his wife Jane Stanford. The university is named after their only late son, Leland. Leland Stanford, Sr. told his wife, “From now on, all the children in California will be like our own children”… )
I must confess that initially I had serious doubts about the veracity of this incredible story, but I have personally known Professor Dash from I was Editor of the Freeport News in Grand Bahama and he was a consultant with The Nassau Guardian for two years from 2006 to 2008 and – in Bahamian vernacular – he is “no trifling man.”
I first met Professor Dash in 2006 during one of his periodic visits to Nassau as a consultant with the Nassau Guardian, which owned The Freeport News, and I attended a board meeting.
Shortly after the late Sir Charles Carter became Publisher of The Guardian in 2006, he contacted his old-time friend with whom he had attended high school in New York and who had established a very successful career as a journalist in the United States.
Sir Charles had also become a renowned journalist, but radio and television were the foundation for his journalistic accomplishments, and he realized that the challenges that lie ahead as publisher of one of The Bahamas’ leading daily newspapers required the advice and support of someone who had experience in the print aspect of the Fourth Estate. Therefore, he placed a phone call to his old high school buddy, Leon Dash, and convinced the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who had become a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to visit Nassau to discuss the possibility of becoming an editorial consultant for The Guardian.
Given his pioneering background in helping to “tear down” racial barriers in journalism at the Washington Post, Dash immediately devised and established a journalistic training program at The Guardian after he agreed to become a consultant. He took his training program one step further by arranging for several young reporters at The Guardian, who had undergraduate degrees in journalism, to obtain scholarships at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study for their Master’s Degree in journalism.
The first young journalist to benefit from his scholarship program was Thea Rutherford, who had been a reporter at The Freeport News when I was its editor from 2003 -2009 before she joined the staff of The Guardian. Actually, because both The Guardian and The Freeport News were owned by the same company, Thea’s “transfer” came after she decided to relocate to Nassau from Freeport.
Thea was an ideal first choice by Dash for advanced training in journalism. She had obtained a Bachelor’s degree in History and Political Science from Canada’s McGill University in 2004. She joined the staff of The Freeport News shortly after she graduated from McGill and was an exceptionally good reporter.
Because I previously lived in Washington, D.C., for 21 years before returning to The Bahamas permanently in 1996, I knew Dash was an award-winning journalist at the Washington Post, but I did not know him personally when I met him at the first board meeting I attended at The Guardian.
His contributions to those meetings impressed me tremendously and there was no question in my mind that Sir Charles, with whom I had shared a close friendship from boyhood days, had made an excellent choice in “contracting” the services of his boyhood friend as a consultant.
I still do not know the full story as to why the contractual arrangement between Professor Dash and The Guardian ended, but published reports at the time indicated that he tendered his resignation as a member of The Nassau Guardian Board of Directors in December of 2008 in the aftermath of Sir Charles resigning as publisher. There is no question, however, that Professor Dash’s two-year stint as a consultant at The Guardian by any yardstick or measuring rod noticeably enhanced the quality of journalism at that daily newspaper tremendously.
Incidentally, Professor Dash was one seven black reporters from The Washington Post metropolitan desk who in 1972 took a stand for equality in the newsroom—becoming the first to challenge a major U.S. newspaper on its hiring practices—when they filed a formal complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Known as The Metro Seven, they were represented by renowned Washington, D.C., lawyer Clifford Alexander.
