ABSTRACT
In the fall of 1998 I traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to watch Nelson Mandela honor Harvard University by accepting an honorary degree. In the presence of Nelson Mandela, I couldn’t help but think what an amazing story he represented, because this a person who at one time faced the death penalty; who was found guilty in court and sentenced to life in jail; who spent twenty-seven years in prison; and, at the end of that, walked out without much bitterness. He didn’t look back, because he had things to do; he had to free a nation from the burden of apartheid. He eventually took his place as the leader of a new South Africa, as the president of a free South Africa, a country that as part of its rebirth abolished the death penalty. The Harvard ceremony included a song in Mandela’s honor. The song was “Amazing Grace.” My youngest daughter’s name is Grace, and it happened that my wife Kristie Conrad and I had brought her there to see Mandela as a first birthday present.
