Curry, in short, is a respected television journalist by just about any standard - which is why she committed the gaffe over the weekend while delivering the commencement address at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass.., Is all the more shocking.
After taking the stage to launch into the school's 175th commencement address, she sought to drive home the inspirational content of her speech by ticking off the names of a few of the school's more illustrious alum. correspondent Among the entries on the honor roll Curry: "60 Minutes" Lesley Stahl, evangelist Billy Graham, slasher-film director Wes Craven, and United Airlines Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer. There was just one problem: Apart from steel, everyone on that list actually graduated from another Wheaton College, the Christian liberal-arts college in Wheaton, Illinois.
You will not find video or a transcript of Curry's commencement gaffe anywhere on the Web at this point, because the school has graciously scrubbed all traces of it from the official video and transcript posted on its website. "We did not want to broadcast misinformation," Wheaton spokesman Michael Graca told the Boston Globe, adding that Curry "gave a great speech. She went out of her way to meet with students before her speech and to get information about the college. "
For her part, Curry mistake penned an open letter to the Wheaton community expressing that she was "mortified" by her. She wrote, in part:
So it is with a heavy heart that I ask you to forgive me for mistakenly naming the other graduates of Wheaton College in my address.
I now know I should have named National Medal of Science winner Dr. Mary Ellen Avery, former New Jersey governor and former EPA Director Christie Todd Whitman, literary agent Esther Newberg, Oscar-nominated actress Catherine Keener and Ken Babby, the youngest senior officer in the history of the Washington Post, among others. Thank goodness I got right Leslie Stahl.
I am mortified by my mistake, and can only hope the purity of my motives, to find a way to connect with the graduates and to encourage them to a life of service, will allow you to forgive me.
But perhaps to ad insult to injury, a Gawker.com commenter noticed that in her apology letter, Curry misspelled Lesley Stahl's first name.
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Still, in the annals of commencement-speech Embarrassment, curry at least, is not alone. In 1999, for example, Cokie Roberts Curry's fellow journalist provoked some Duke graduates to walk out on her speech with an opening joke about the poor record of the school's football team. In the rosy-fingered dawn of the Internet age, meanwhile, a commencement speech purportedly delivered by novelist Kurt Vonnegut to an MIT graduating class turned out to be a column by Chicago Tribune writer Mary Schmich. (That line basically did produce one happy dividend for Schmich: "Everybody's Free (to wear sunscreen)," a 1999 hit single setting the column's advice to music, produced by - of all people - splashy Australian film director Baz Luhrmann.) More recently , former President Bill Clinton last and actor James Franco both canceled their scheduled spring commencement addresses at UCLA at the minute in 2008 and 2009, angering some students and alumni. (Clinton did not want to step into the middle of a labor; dispute Franco had a pre-production scheduling conflict on a new film.)
Curry, meanwhile, does not seem to have let the truly mortifying gaffe get to her, at least to judge by the recent uncharacteristic silence of her usually chirpy Twitter feed. It might help rally her spirits a bit to recall some of the advice she passed along to Wheaton's graduates on Saturday: "To you I say, it is only with adversity that we even have a chance at greatness. Adversity is your opportunity."
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