Hank Aaron waves after receiving honorary degree from Princeton University
Tuesday, Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron was one of six people awarded an honorary degree during commencement at Princeton University. Mr. Aaron, who in 1974 controversially surpassed Babe Ruth as the leading home run hitter in Major League Baseball received a Doctorate of Humanities.
A portion of his biography presented by the university reads….
-
He was 17 when he left Alabama and embarked on one of the greatest careers in baseball history, beginning in the Negro American League. When he joined the major league Milwaukee Braves, his signing bonus was a cardboard suitcase. When he retired after 23 major league seasons, he probably held the record for the most records held, including the record for career home runs at 755. As he approached Babe Ruth’s record of 714, he received almost a million letters, many of them abusive. Today America is a much better place with much more opportunity for all, in part because he gave all of us an imperishable example of grace under pressure.
Dr. Aaron’s fellow honorees were:
Geoffrey Canada, champion for children in Harlem; Susan Desmond-Hellmann, clinical researcher and chancellor of the University of California-San Francisco; Charles Gillispie, Princeton’s Dayton Stockton Professor of History Emeritus; Judith Jamison, dancer and choreographer and artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; and Princeton alumnus Robert Rawson Jr., legal expert and long-serving member of the University’s Board of Trustees.
AP Photo
