Orator's Story: Rumbles to Writs

A student orator at Commencement exercises this morning threw aside tradition and told his own story -- how he fough his way out of a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn and a series of odd jobs into Harvard Law School.

Joseph N. Sorrentino, chosen in a University-wide competition to give one of the English parts at the ceremony, said that, a gang fighter and the son of a street sweeper, he had flunked out of high school and taken a series of odd jobs from office boy to bleach factory worker.

Only after leaving some 13 jobs, he said, was he able to realize that the "only chance for a better life was through education." So he went to night school and graduated first in his class. He was admitted to California at Santa Barbara, where he became student body president and graduated magna cum laude.

After reenlisting in the Marines and changing a General discharge to an Honorable one, he was accepted at the Law School. Now, three years later, Sorrentino said -- in true Horatio Alger fashion -- that he wants more of "those risks that make life exciting."