When Ann Curry, news anchor of the Today Show, gave the commencement speech at Wheaton College in Massachusetts last Saturday, she listed several famous graduates — Wes Craven and Billy Graham among them — of the wrong Wheaton College.
Curry mistakenly listed the graduates of an evangelical school in Illinois rather than the secular, once all-women college in Massachusetts.
“I am mortified by my mistake, and can only hope the purity of my motive, to find a way to connect with the graduates and to encourage them to a life of service, will allow you to forgive me,” Curry said in an open apology letter on Wheaton’s web site.
The text and video of her speech, posted on the site, have been edited of the mistakes.
Curry has worked on the Today show since 1997. She also hosts Dateline NBC and subs for Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News.
“It is with a heavy heart that I ask you to forgive me for mistakenly naming graduates of the other Wheaton College in my address,” she later wrote. “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 Lesley Stahl right.”
She also thanked the students for being polite in the face of her gaffe.
“Even with my blunder, the students were also gracious enough to react with a standing ovation. Now THAT is good manners,” she wrote.
She was awarded an honorary doctor of humane letters.
