Remembrance

Mark Zurolo ’01MFA

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Friends and family of Roosevelt Thompson ’84 were on hand in November when the Calhoun College dining hall was named in his honor. Thompson, a Yale football player, Rhodes Scholar, and recipient of the top junior prize for scholarship and character, had lived in Calhoun; just weeks before his graduation, he was driving back to Yale from his native Arkansas when a truck swerved into his car, killing him instantly.

Before the naming ceremony, a woodcut portrait of Thompson by German artist Mirjam Brückner had been installed in the dining hall. “It was clear to anyone who spent time with Rosey that he was remarkable,” wrote former president Bill Clinton ’73JD in a letter to Yale president Peter Salovey ’86PhD marking the occasion. (Thompson interned for then-governor Clinton for several summers.) Calhoun classmate Errol Crook ’84 called Thompson an “ordinary person who did extraordinary things.”