Ponzi's Scheme by Mitchell Zuckoff Page B

a second-time sophomore. The request was granted, and he returned to Harvard.
    Two months later, in November 1907, the
Boston Globe
ran a brief news item that went a long way toward explaining why Richard Grozier was not focused on his studies. The headline read: ROMANCE DISCLOSED; NEWTON HIGH SCHOOL GIRL TO WED HARVARD MAN . Below it was a photograph of an attractive, serious-looking woman with a fashionable choker necklace and her hair swept high on her head. Her name was Vera Rumery and, despite the headline, she was no high school girl. She was twenty-three, the daughter of a former alderman, a young woman two years older than Richard. The story began: “The pretty romance of one of Newton High School’s most popular young women athletes and a Harvard junior was revealed today by the engagement announcement of Miss Vera E. Rumery of Newtonville and Richard Grozier of Cambridge.” Richard was not technically a junior, but an engagement announcement was no place to air his academic failings. The next three paragraphs described the bride-to-be’s prowess at field hockey and her devotion to snowshoeing. It mentioned her family and Richard’s father, though it neglected to note that Edwin Grozier was editor and publisher of the rival
Post.
The last line of the story struck the only odd note: “Because of the illness of Mr. Grozier’s mother the date for the wedding has not been fixed.”
    In the immediate afterglow of the engagement, Richard pulled up his grades enough to rejoin his class as a junior in February 1908. But by spring Richard was back to his old habits and in danger of again failing freshman English composition. Once more, he became a topic of discussion for Harvard’s academic masters.
    â€œI am sick in bed,” Richard wrote Hurlbut in April while he was suffering from an ear infection. “Can you put off action on my case until I am able to see you?” The dean granted his request, and also agreed to hold off writing another letter to Richard’s father. Two weeks later, though, the board stopped waiting and placed Richard on probation for his third time in three years at Harvard. He was failing three of his five classes, and Hurlbut wrote again to Edwin Grozier. This time the dean injected a touch of melancholy not found in their earlier exchanges.
    â€œIt is unnecessary for me to write you about the meaning of probation, for Richard has been on probation before,” Hurlbut wrote. “I hope that his final record will justify his relief from probation, so that it will be unnecessary to close his connection with the College. I wish that you would let me know of anything I can do to help the boy. Personally, he is a very attractive fellow, but I judge him to be as restless as the sea, or anything else that is a comparison for great restlessness.”
    Hurlbut’s sympathy was answered by Edwin Grozier’s rising frustration.
    â€œI do not see what you could do to help the young man, as you kindly offer,” the elder Grozier wrote. “It is up to him to help himself. That is what I am earnestly urging him to do, and hope to succeed. I am confident that he has his full share of natural ability, but to keep him down to the actual work in hand is the difficulty.”
    A month later, in June 1908, at the end of Richard’s junior year, his third probation turned into his third separation. Hurlbut suggested that it was the last time.
    â€œYou are, I am sorry to say, dropped for two reasons; first, because of your unsatisfactory work for the year, and secondly, because of your failure to secure the necessary total of grades requisite for promotion to the Senior Class,” Hurlbut wrote to Richard. A special vote of the Administrative Board would be required for readmission, but Hurlbut thought that unlikely. “Personally I feel that experience out in the world would be better for you than a further attempt to succeed here at