His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [301]
Frank’s tirade did not embarrass the President or First Lady, but their son, Ron Reagan, Jr., confided to friends his shame and disgust over his parents’ friendship with Sinatra. A few months later, on May 23, 1985, the President presented Sinatra with the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His fellow recipients were Jimmy Stewart, the President’s favorite movie star; marine explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau; former secretary of the Smithsonian Institution S. Dillon Ripley II; retired Army General Albert Wedemeyer, a World War II hero in the Pacific Theater; retired Air Force General Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager, record-setting test pilot and first man to break the sound barrier; philosopher and educator Sidney Hook; former ambassador to the United Nations Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick; and Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun who won the Nobel Prize for her work among the poor of Calcutta.
On the day of the presentation ceremony, the President addressed the honorées in the Blue Room of the White House.
“My guess is that probably as long as this nation lasts, your descendants will speak with pride of the day you attended a White House ceremony and received this, the Medal of Freedom,” he said. “Each of you has achieved the hardest of all things to achieve in life, something that will last and endure and take on a life of its own. And fifty years from now, a century from now, historians will know your names and your achievements. You have left humanity a legacy.”
Placing the beribboned medal around Frank’s neck, the President said: “His love of country, his generosity for those less fortunate, his distinctive art, and his winning and compassionate persona make him one of our most remarkable and distinguished Americans and one who truly did it his way.”
There was to be still another award for Frank that day, this one back in Hoboken. Having ridiculed his hometown as a “sewer” for so many years, he was now returning in triumph to receive an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the Stevens Institute of Technology, the school his parents had prayed he would attend.
When the trustees had announced that they would confer this award on him, more than one hundred graduating seniors, one-third of the student body, signed a protest, citing his lack of educational credentials.
“The fact that Sinatra was born in Hoboken is a poor excuse for bestowing this honor,” said the petitioners. “An honorary degree is awarded to someone who has distinguished himself in a particular field. Frank Sinatra is recognized in the area of entertainment, not engineering, not science, and not education. The stories say that Sinatra always wanted to go to Stevens when he was growing up in Hoboken. If he wanted it that badly, why didn’t he bother to graduate from high school?”
The institute, though, stood behind its choice, saying that Frank was being honored as a humanitarian.
So on May 23, 1985, Sinatra went to Hoboken to receive an honor personally important to him. With the honorary doctorate he was finally making his parents’ dreams of a college degree come true. He could stand up with pride to the memory of his mother and father.
Standing proudly in the black robes of a baccalaureate, he touched his tasseled graduation cap and beamed as the chairman of the Stevens board of trustees handed him the diploma and draped the red and gray engineer’s hood over his shoulders. Walking to the center of the stage, he looked out on the stately