Massachusetts School of Law Press Release
CONTACT: Kirby F. Smith at (978) 681-0800, x-25 (voice); (978) 681-6330 (fax);
smith@mslaw.edu (e-mail); www.mslaw.edu (Website)
MARIAN FONTANA, PRESIDENT OF SEPTEMBER 11TH FAMILIES
ASSOCIATION, GIVES COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS AND RECEIVES
HONORARY DEGREE AT MASSACHUSETTS SCHOOL OF LAW ON JUNE 2
ANDOVER, MA --- Marian Fontana, political activist, writer, and performer,
will deliver the Commencement Remarks at the Seventeenth Annual
Commencement of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover (MSL) on
Friday, June 2.
The ceremony will begin at 5 p.m. at the Collins Center for the Performing
Arts, 100 Shawsheen Road, Andover, where 143 students will receive their Juris
Doctor degree.
“Many colleges and universities choose to honor politicians, actors or
other such famous people with their honorary degrees,” said MSL Associate
Dean Michael L. Coyne. “The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover chooses
instead to honor those of us more ordinary people who make a difference in this
world through their extraordinary actions. Marian Fontana is the founding
president of the September 11th Families Association. Her husband, like many
other New York City public safety employees, lost his life trying to help others.
So while today we honor Marian Fontana we also honor all of our public servants
who protect us. Among this year’s graduating class are police officers,
firefighters and other public safety officers. MSL’s graduating class also has
many veterans of our military service, family members who lost loved ones in
Iraq or Afghanistan and some who will leave here for service in those distant and
unsafe lands. We thank them all for their service to their country.”
Marian Fontana has been a writer and performer for the past 20 years,
and has created five one-woman shows, two plays, and four screenplays.
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A freelance writer, her articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity
Fair, Elle, Parenting, and Martha Stewart magazine. Her most recent book, A
Widow’s Walk, was on the New York Times best-selling memoir list and was
chosen as the Top Ten Great Reads of 2005 by People magazine and the
Washington Post’s Book Raves of 2005. The Kirkus Book Review called it “an
engrossing and inspiring 9/11 memoir,” Vanity Fair described it as an
“astonishing new memoir,” and Newsweek said it was the “debut of a gifted
writer.”
Fontana is a political activist, and is president of the September 11th
Families Association, which has advocated for firefighters and the 9/11 victims’
families in Washington, D.C. and New York City. Her work has been written
about in The New York Times, The Daily News (New York City), and the Los
Angeles Times, and she has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, “Dateline,” and
“Charlie Rose,” among many others.
Her organization is expected to open the Tribute Center next month. The
center is a visitor and learning resource located at 120 Liberty Street in New
York, across the street from the World Trade Center site. Tribute is a place
where visitors can learn about the events of February 26, 1993, and September
11, 2001. In addition, the Tribute Center launched the Volunteer Guide Program
to provide tours of the World Trade Center site by specially-trained guides who
were directly impacted by the attacks on September 11th, including survivors,
family members who lost loved ones, local residents and business owners,
employees of former World Trade Center companies, firefighters, police and
recovery workers. Fontana currently serves as the president of the board for the
center, and also serves on the board of the LMDC Family Advisory Board, the
FDNY Family Advisory committee, the Ebbets Field Foundation, and the Twin
Towers Fund.
“This year’s class is to be applauded as it is as strong academically as
we’ve had graduate from MSL in recent years,” said Associate Dean Coyne.
“Their commitment to the serious study of law is exemplary. Many of these
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graduates were able to sit for the Massachusetts bar examination given at the
end of February and helped to contribute to MSL’s admirable first-time bar
passage rate. Their accomplishments, however, go well beyond academic
excellence. Their deep commitment to improving the lives of those they
represent means that they follow in the footsteps of those who represent the best
that the legal profession can offer.”
Two members of the class of 2006 will also speak at the ceremony –
Leslie M. Gill, magna cum laude, and Arlene Parquette, magna cum laude.
The Massachusetts School of Law (MSL) is located in Andover,
Massachusetts, and is the most affordable law school of all those located in New
England. MSL’s mission is to make practical, affordable, high quality legal
education, and resulting social and economic mobility, available to capable but
less privileged persons who have been traditionally excluded from the legal
profession.
-30May 10, 2006
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