Gracious Graham

The subject line flashed across my computer screen yesterday afternoon: Graham Hovey 1916-2010‏.

In an instant, I knew that the distinguished white-haired gentleman who had played a pivotal role in my career development had died. A week ago, he broke a hip in a fall and was hospitalized. Five days later, on Saturday, he died in his sleep. He was 94.

By the time I met him, Graham Hovey (rhymes with lovey-dovey) was a retired foreign correspondent and editorial writer for The New York Times and director of the Michigan Journalism Fellowships program (now known as the Knight-Wallace Fellowships). It was he who interviewed me in a Seattle hotel lobby and who later phoned me with the news that I had been selected, at age 31, to be one of a dozen U.S. journalists to spend an academic year at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. It was and remains a year that was pivotal in my personal and professional growth and, as a side benefit, also helped propel Lori into her career as a personal trainer.

The program offered us fellows a chance to pursue a yearlong study plan of our own design -- free of tuition, grades or exams of any sort -- while taking advantage of everything the world-class university had to offer, including season tickets for the football season. (There's nothing more exciting than being part of a crowd of 106,000 fans cheering the Wolverines to victory over arch-rival Ohio State on a crisp Saturday in November.)


Unlike more single-minded peers, I took a broad approach in my studies, focusing on 20th century U.S. history and literature in an attempt to fill in the gaps in my undergraduate education. I took courses in African American and Mexican American literature, the Vietnam War and much more. I also joined in the twice-weekly seminars, featuring boxed wine, that Graham arranged for us with outstanding faculty and visiting scholars and professionals, including Norman Mailer and Leonard Bernstein. Lori, meanwhile, took classes in kinesiology and performed on stage with an African dance troupe -- the only young mom among the students, I'm sure.

The program ended with a chaperoned two-week excursion to Japan and, on the way back to the States, a stopover in San Francisco to meet one-on-one with author Richard Rodriguez, whose autobiography, "Hunger of Memory," I'd read in one of my UM classes and whose experiences as a Mexican-American "scholarship boy" amplified my own.

All of this, you can imagine, was pretty heady for the only son and middle child of parents whose circumstances prevented them from even attending high school. I'd grown up and lived my whole life on the West Coast, so moving to Michigan for nine months was the beginning of my education about the Midwest and its crucial role in the economic and social history of the United States. Along the way, we endured our first tornado scare (huddled in the middle of the night in the basement of our rental home), the most frigid weather we'd ever lived in (frost formed on the inside of our windows) and separation from family, friends and co-workers.

Graham's role in all of this? Along with his wife Mary Jean, he made us feel truly welcome, as if Lori and I and our two little ones (Nathan was 3 years old, Simone only 6 months old) were the only people in the program who mattered. True, we came farther and arrived sooner than anyone, but Graham was so gracious in inviting us to their townhouse, in always inquiring about our kids (he dubbed Nathan "Chief Sock-in-the-Wash") and, afterward, writing a meticulously crafted and perfectly typed letter at Christmas that kept us up to date.

Graham loved the opera and a fine glass of red wine. He had a soldier's posture, an expansive vocabulary and an amazing ability to recall names, dates, places, people and other details when discussing history or current events. He practiced good manners and frowned at profanity. I will always picture him in a navy blue blazer, with gray slacks, a white shirt and perfectly knotted tie. He was kind and sophisticated, always interested in knowing how you were doing and, true to the stereotype, something of an absent-minded professor.

I'm sorry that I don't have a photo of Graham to share. What I can do is link to his obituary in the Wilkes-Barre (Pa.) Times Leader and affirm that he epitomized the qualities of gracious, as defined by Webster's New World Dictionary: "having or showing kindress, courtesy, charm, etc." and "characterized by the taste, luxury, and social ease associated with prosperity, education, etc."

Photos: Knight-Wallace Fellows program