The following is a blog post by Eric Starkman of Starkman & Associates in NY who first shared this story with Diane Brady.
Fraternity by Diane Brady: The Book Only One Journalist Could Write
By Eric Starkman
January 10, 2012
Back in 2005, I read a profile in the New York Times about Ted Wells, the high-powered Washington attorney retained by former Dick Cheney aide Scooter Libby to spearhead his defense against charges of obstruction of justice, among others. The article mentioned that Wells, an African American, had attended the College of the Holy Cross. This struck me as an unusual choice given the racial tensions of the late 1960s.
STARKMAN has quite an affinity for Holy Cross, as we have a longstanding relationship with the institution that has yielded numerous impressive interns who now work for us full-time (see here and here). Our other Holy Cross connection is through our friend and client Stan Grayson, the vice chairman and chief operating officer of M.R. Beal, the nation’s leading and oldest minority-owned investment bank. Grayson attended Holy Cross on a basketball scholarship and was the first African American basketball player inducted into the school’s sports Hall of Fame. He also was the first African American to head the municipal bond team of a major Wall Street firm.
So, when Grayson told me that he and Wells had attended Holy Cross together and remain close friends, I told him I found it interesting that a college that had virtually no minorities at the time had yielded two trail-blazing African Americans. He replied that there were actually five such men in his class that went on to great achievement in their fields. Their other classmates were Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justice; Edward Jones, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and Eddie Jenkins, a running back with the legendary 1972 undefeated Miami Dolphins.