Peggy Noonan, the 1950s and Alan Greenspan
I was seated to the left, with four other nominees for honorary doctorates, the great crowd spilling before us, and I’ll tell you where my thoughts were, far away and far back in Massapequa, Long Island, when I was a child. Oh those old days in the 1950s, when the houses that became part of the great substantial suburbs of today were brand-new. Their dormers hadn’t been built yet; the lawns hardly had grass; the trees were plants held steady by sticks, a piece of paper attached by wire to the branches: “Apple tree.” “Peach tree.” So people from the city would know what it would become. At age 20 I was accepted to attend FDU full time during the day. I was a college student. And eager now, finally, to sit in a class and listen, absorb. I worked hard, did well, edited the school newspaper. In coming decades I went on to work as a writer for a radio station, then a network, then for a great president, now a great newspaper. I’m saying what you already know: Never count anyone o...
