Ponzi's Scheme by Mitchell Zuckoff Page A

to save his son from the ignominy of being exiled from Harvard. He took a piece of
Post
stationery and wrote a careful reply to Wells: “Richard is a boy of more than average ability, and there is no good reason he should not stand well in his class. Unfortunately he seems to have a habit of acquiring a great deal of information about everything except the studies he is actually pursuing. It is, of course, a great disappointment to his parents that he should not attend properly to the business in hand.” Edwin Grozier vowed to do everything possible toward “obtaining the desired result.”
    As if to purposely break his father’s promise, Richard did even worse. His professors took notice. “My dear Mr. Wells,” literature Professor W. G. Howard wrote the dean. “So far as I know R. Grozier I am inclined to think that temporary separation from College would be the most wholesome medicine that could be administered to him.” After receiving that letter, Wells wrote Richard’s father another warning. Edwin Grozier answered with a father’s lament.
    â€œI . . . very much regret that my son, Richard, did so poorly in his midyear examinations,” he wrote. “I am much puzzled by the young man’s failure to do well in his college studies. He is naturally bright; his fund of general information is unusually good; he has no bad habits that I know of. We see a great deal of him at our home, and he devotes a good deal of time to study. Why he fails to do, at least, fairly well is an enigma to me.”
    The letter traffic continued through spring 1906, the end of Richard’s freshman year. For the year, he received a B in physics, D’s in French, philosophy, and math, and a failing grade in English composition. Already on probation, Richard was, in Harvard parlance, “separated” from his class. He was entitled to petition for reinstatement, but Dean Wells suggested that it was not worth the bother. Some men just were not cut out for Harvard. Edwin Grozier was not ready to hear that.
    At his father’s insistence, Richard attended a Harvard summer school program and did well enough to seek readmission. With more assurances to the dean from Edwin and warnings from Wells about staying on track, Richard was readmitted as a sophomore. But soon the pattern repeated itself, and by the following spring Richard was back on probation. No longer a freshman, Richard now came under the purview of the dean of Harvard College, a well-fed man named Byron Satterlee Hurlbut. He invited Richard to his office.
    â€œI beg to thank you very much indeed for your kind and inspiring talk with my son, Richard,” Edwin Grozier wrote Hurlbut afterward. “Needless to say I am very fond of Richard. He is my only son, and I believe he has fine natural capacities. But he has sadly neglected opportunities, despite many urgent talks on my part. He seems much impressed by the timely advice which you gave him.”
    â€œI think we can get the boy on his feet all right,” Hurlbut answered. “There is no reason why he should not win relief from probation at the final examinations. What he needs most is to realize that it is time to look at things as a man does.”
    More letters followed between Hurlbut and Edwin Grozier, but Richard’s schoolwork continued to lag. His father’s letters to the dean became increasingly apologetic: “I am extremely sorry that despite the utmost efforts of his parents the young man has made no better showing.”
    At the end of his sophomore year, Richard’s probation led again to separation—he had earned D’s in four of the eight classes he had taken since entering Harvard, and he had failed English again. That failure, Hurlbut told Edwin Grozier, was due to simple neglect. It was back to summer school, after which, in September 1907, Richard petitioned to be readmitted, this time not as a member of his own class but as