This year’s Commencement speaker was Steve Jobs, a legendary pioneer in high technology, celebrated by computer users and music lovers for his bold vision and willingness to take risks. I thought Steve was an appropriate choice in a year when we also mark the 100th anniversary of the death of one of Stanford’s first pioneers and visionaries, Jane Stanford.
Jane and Leland Stanford were married in 1850 and moved from New York to Wisconsin, where Leland set up a law practice. When a fire in Leland’s office destroyed everything, he despaired. It was Jane, according to legend, who responded: “We will go to California!” Together they built a busy and prosperous life that included a term in the governor’s mansion and building the nation’s first transcontinental railroad.
Jane’s willingness to take a risk and try something different was an early indication of her spirit and drive. As biographers writing about Mrs. Stanford’s “iron will” have observed, she seemed at her best in the face of adversity. When the Stanfords lost their only child, Leland Jr., they grieved deeply. But they did not become bitter or turn inward. Rather, they devoted much of their wealth to establish the University as a memorial to their son. The Stanfords believed that, despite their grief, they had much to be thankful for and that it was their duty to share these gifts.
Nearly 500 students, men and women, attended the University’s opening day ceremonies in 1891. Senator Stanford asked his wife to address them. She agreed, but when the time came, she was overcome by the emotion of the day. Six years later, she sent President David Starr Jordan a copy of the remarks she was unable to read.
“Our hearts have been more deeply interested in this work than you can conceive,” she wrote. “It was born in sorrow but has now become a great joy. . . . I desire to impress upon the minds of each one . . . the hope that you will each strive to place before yourselves a high moral standard; that you will resolve to go forth from these classrooms determined in the future to be leaders with high aims and standards; and live such lives that it will be said of you that you are true to the best you know. . . .”
Less than two years after the opening day ceremonies, Senator Stanford died in his sleep and Jane was left to shoulder the financial burden of the new University on her own. No one expected it to remain open. But Jane Stanford was a strong-willed woman. After two weeks of reflection, she declared that Stanford University would not close its doors.
She took control. University expenses and salaries were cut. After the probate court set aside an allowance for her, she slashed her own expenses, released most of her personal staff and took only a small amount for her needs; the rest she channeled to the University. Then she learned that the federal government was suing the estate for loans made to the Central Pacific Railroad. The Supreme Court eventually rejected the government’s claims, and in 1898, the estate was released from probate. By sheer force of will, Mrs. Stanford had guided the University through lean and difficult years, ensuring that it would endure for generations to come.
In 1904, a year before her death, she told the University’s trustees:
“Through all these years I have kept a mental picture before me. I could see a hundred years ahead when all the present trials were forgotten, and all of the present active parties gone, and nothing remaining but the institution. I could see beyond all this the children’s children’s children coming here from the East, the West, the North and the South.” These are my favorite words of Jane’s. They express the University’s commitment to the future and to the education of our youth.
It is now “a hundred years ahead” and we are the inheritors of that legacy—one of great personal vision and fierce tenacity, of dedication and service to the highest purposes. We must carry the torch forward, so that the spirit Jane Stanford so boldly embodied will continue to inspire future generations. We must have a vision and an ambition for Stanford that is as compelling and as forward looking as that mental picture Jane envisioned more than 100 years ago.
