Presidential Honors for Tulane

In a ceremony filled with jazz music and images of Hurricane Katrina, former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton urged graduating students at Tulane University to remember the anguish of the last year and make time to serve others.

The joint commencement addresses were delivered during an often-emotional event where students wore Mardi Gras beads and waved handkerchiefs imprinted with, “Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?”

“Floodwaters couldn’t break the spirit of the people who call this remarkable, improbable city home,” Bush said.

He urged students to “get off the sidelines” and “find a way to be of service to others.” Bush said that one of his most rewarding projects was a 1952 push to get a YMCA off the ground in Midland, Texas.

“We didn’t change the world, just a tiny, small corner of it,” Bush said.

Clinton asked students to fight acts of terrorism and the “dramatic change in climate which has given us a decade of Katrinas and tsunamis.”

A Dixieland version of “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” played by a jazz band at the start of the program reflected the rhythms of life, Clinton said. The song began as a slow, beautiful dirge, but ended with a joyful, celebratory flourish that signified a new beginning.

“Life is like that. Life is about new beginnings. I wish you many,” Clinton said.

The former presidents, who teamed up to raise money for victims of the late 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, received honorary doctorates in law from the university.

More than $100 million has been contributed to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, $30 million of which has been earmarked for 33 institutions of higher education in the Gulf Coast region, including Tulane.

Saturday’s ceremony was Tulane’s first university-wide graduation since the August storm flooded the school and forced it to close for the fall semester. Students scattered to 593 universities around the country, but 93% of full-time students returned for the spring semester, school officials said.

In what Tulane University President Scott S. Cowen called a Louisiana lagniappe -- a little something extra -- New Orleans native Ellen DeGeneres made a surprise appearance to congratulate the nearly 2,200 graduates. Wearing a white bathrobe -- “I was told everybody would be wearing robes”-- the comedian commended the students for making it through the last year.

“You’re amazing people. You’re a very famous graduating class to go through what you’ve gone through,” she said. DeGeneres told the graduates that she never went to college. “This is the closest I’ll come to graduating,” she said.

A personal visit to New Orleans coincided with Tulane’s commencement, but beyond that, “Whenever I get a chance to speak after presidents, I say, ‘Get me in there,’ ” she quipped.

DeGeneres told the students that as they go out into the world, it’s important to remember that “my show is on different times in different cities.”