Ann Curry gives graduation advice to the wrong student body

In her role as the co-host of "The Today Show" on NBC, Ann Curry is renowned for her grace and gravitas, reporting stoically on all sorts of calamities from far-flung places like the Congo, Iraq, and Darfur — in between the lighthearted palling around she often does on set with Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira and Al Roker.

Curry, in short, is a respected television journalist by just about any standard — which is why the gaffe she committed over the weekend while delivering the commencement address at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., is all the more shocking.

After taking the stage to launch into the school's 175th commencement address, she sought to drive home the inspirational content of her speech by ticking off the names of a few of the school's more illustrious alums. Among the entries on the Curry honor roll: "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl, evangelist Billy Graham, slasher-film director Wes Craven, and United Airlines Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer. There was just one problem: Apart from Stahl, everyone on that list actually graduated from another Wheaton College, the Christian liberal-arts college in Wheaton, Illinois.

You won't find video or a transcript of Curry's commencement gaffe anywhere on the Web at this point, because the school has graciously scrubbed all traces of it from the official video and transcript posted on its website. "We didn't want to broadcast misinformation," Wheaton spokesman Michael Graca told the Boston Globe, adding that Curry "gave a great speech. She went out of her way to meet with students before her speech and to get information about the college."

For her part, Curry penned an open letter to the Wheaton community expressing that she was "mortified" by her mistake. She wrote, in part:

So it is with a heavy heart that I ask you to forgive me for mistakenly naming graduates of the other Wheaton College in my address.

I now know I should have named National Medal of Science winner Dr. Mary Ellen Avery, former New Jersey Governor and former EPA Director Christie Todd Whitman, literary agent Esther Newberg, Oscar-nominated actress Catherine Keener and Ken Babby, the youngest senior officer in the history of the Washington Post, among others. Thank goodness I got Leslie Stahl right.

I am mortified by my mistake, and can only hope the purity of my motive, to find a way to connect with the graduates and to encourage them to a life of service, will allow you to forgive me.

Health Top Tips Nutrition Love Lifestyle Happiness Weight Loss

But to perhaps ad insult to injury, a Gawker.com commenter noticed that in her apology letter, Curry misspelled Lesley Stahl's first name.

Still, in the annals of commencement-speech embarrassments, Curry at least isn't alone. In 1999, for example, Curry's fellow journalist Cokie Roberts provoked some Duke graduates to walk out on her speech with an opening joke about the poor record of the school's football team. In the rosy-fingered dawn of the Internet age, meanwhile, a commencement speech purportedly delivered by novelist Kurt Vonnegut to an MIT graduating class turned out to be a column by Chicago Tribune writer Mary Schmich. (That online legend did produce one happy dividend for Schmich: "Everybody's Free (to wear sunscreen)," a 1999 hit single setting the column's advice to music, produced by — of all people — splashy Australian film director Baz Luhrmann.) More recently, former President Bill Clinton and actor James Franco both canceled their scheduled spring commencement addresses at UCLA at the last minute in 2008 and 2009, angering some students and alumni. (Clinton didn't want to step in the middle of a labor dispute; Franco had a pre-production scheduling conflict on a new film.)

Curry, meanwhile, does truly seem to have let the mortifying gaffe get to her, at least to judge by the uncharacteristic recent silence of her usually chirpy Twitter feed. It might help rally her spirits a bit to recall some of the advice she passed along to Wheaton's graduates on Saturday: "To you I say, it is only with adversity that we even have a chance at greatness. Adversity is your opportunity."