Honorary Degree Surprise for 101st Birthday Brings Wildcats From Two Generations Together

Dan Carr ’85 and Dr. Julian Silverblatt at Silverblatt's 101st birthday celebration.

When you have as much time for comparison under your belt as Dr. Julian Silverblatt does, certain proclamations can carry a little more weight.

Silverblatt recently declared his 101st birthday – celebrated this summer in his hometown of Houston, Texas – his best one yet. Given the catalog of calendar flips he had to choose from, such a stance felt particularly momentous.

Then again, given the circumstances, it also didn’t seem all that far-fetched.

It’s not every day that you turn 101 years old in a room full of friends and family wearing a borrowed cap and gown while receiving an honorary degree from a beloved institution, a degree presented by someone who went from perfect stranger to future family Christmas card recipient in a matter of hours.

Silverblatt was surprised on his 101st birthday with an honorary degree from UNH, a special delivery cooked up by his daughters to honor their father’s cherished time as a student while he was in the military. Circumstances of his arrangement ultimately prevented him from graduating, but he always looked back on his Durham days fondly.

The family wanted the degree presented by someone with UNH connections, and that person wound up being Dan Carr ’85, a fellow Houston resident who had never even heard of the Silverblatt family when Julian’s daughters cold-called him at work one afternoon to make a pitch for his assistance.

Carr was happy to oblige, the honorary degree was presented, and by the end of the celebration, Silverblatt was the proud owner of both a treasured UNH memento and a meaningful friendship forged with a fellow Wildcat more than 40 years his junior.

“He said, ‘This is the best birthday I’ve ever had.’ It really meant a lot to him,” Terri Brown, the oldest of Julian’s three daughters, says. “He was totally surprised. Someone asked me if he cried, and he’s not a crier, but the smile on his face said it all.”

Putting the pieces in place

It was a whirlwind experience for all involved. The family had to pass on UNH’s invitation for Silverblatt to attend commencement to receive the degree – even though her father “walks faster than me, still drives and takes himself to get his haircut whenever he needs to,” Terri quips. 

In the end Silverblatt’s daughters – Terri and sisters Pamela and Cindy – wound up with less than a week to find a UNH representative who could be on hand for the celebration in Houston.

And Carr, for his part, was working in his office on an otherwise normal Wednesday when he received a phone call from the office receptionist.

“I got a call from reception and she said, ‘I’ve got three daughters on the line that want to talk to you.’ It was Cindy who spoke, and she said, ‘Are you Dan Carr? Are you a grad of UNH? Because I’ve got a really strange request to ask of you,’” Carr says.

So how did the family come to choose Carr as the potential UNH representative? A quick Google search and an alphabetical list.

It was Cindy who did the sleuthing, finding a guest list from a UNH alumni reception held at the Houston Space Center in 2020 (only days before the start of the COVID shutdown). She decided to start alphabetically at the top of the list and begin making cold calls. 

It only took one. Though Carr, the first name on the list, had never met a member of the family prior to the phone call, his involvement was a pretty easy sell. Beyond the endearingly quirky nature of the story, the situation prompted him to think of his own father, who at 96 years old had just entered home hospice care.

“I’m really happy they reached out to me, because my dad had not been doing so well, so it feels really good to be able to help out another family who wanted to come together for their father,” says Carr.

For the celebration, Terri and her sisters secured a cap and gown from Silverblatt’s daughter-in-law, Shelley Silverblatt, asked their father to don it, and had Carr surprise him with the honorary degree. But that was only the beginning of the connection. The pair spent the rest of the brunch becoming fast friends.

“What’s really cool is that the thing we had in common is that we walked the same campus about 40 years apart,” Carr says. “It was really neat to share stories with him and his family about that, to learn about his experience at UNH and beyond. His daughters said, ‘Dan, please give us your address because we want to make sure you are part of our Christmas card circulation.’” 

That wasn’t hyperbole, either.

“He could have been a long-lost member of the family. It was just incredible to pick a stranger out of the clear blue sky and have him be so personable and just fit so seamlessly with our family,” says Terri. “That to me was overwhelming, just how wonderful Dan was. I can’t sing his praises enough. He just made the day that much more special.”

Two distinct UNH histories

Silverblatt’s UNH story is a unique one very much of his time. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Silverblatt was assigned to UNH through the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) during World War II. The program, created in 1942, identified academically talented enlisted men and sent them to college campuses for accelerated training in engineering, foreign languages, medicine, and other specialized technical fields.

Silverblatt completed pre-medical coursework at UNH from 1943 to 1944. Although he didn’t graduate, his academic work at UNH was a key piece in enabling him to enroll in medical school without first earning an undergraduate degree.

Silverblatt went on to earn his medical degree from the University of Cincinnati and served for more than 50 years as a practicing physician in the Houston area.

“He was taking almost exclusively science classes” at UNH, Terri says, and before he left, he had “completed all the science requirements for going to medical school, so the Army just sent him on to medical school at the University of Cincinnati. He was 19 years old when he started there and didn’t have a bachelor’s degree.”

Carr arrived on UNH’s campus about four decades later, and met his wife, Kari Kaalstad, while they were both students (the couple celebrated their 37th wedding anniversary in June). He looks back fondly on his days as a student and member of the rowing team at UNH and also participated for three years in helping to lead orientation for first-year students.

“I have some friends for life from those years, that’s for sure,” Carr says.

He may have made another in Silverblatt. The two talked about a lot more than just their individual times as UNH students, connecting over each other’s family histories and baseball rooting interests (Carr’s father grew up rooting for the New York/San Francisco Giants, and Silverblatt supported the Cincinnati Reds).

They also talked hobbies, and although some of those overlap a little less, a future reconnection could still be in the cards.

“It was just really fun to connect with him. I’d love to see him again – even though I don’t play bridge,” Carr quips. “It was really fun, and it’s amazing that it was UNH that brought us together.”

A tough act to follow

Given all of the logistics involved, the celebration couldn’t have come together any better. Silverblatt’s daughters were able to honor their father and commemorate an important time in his life while also creating an unexpected connection across UNH generations.

Silverblatt and Carr had distinctly different experiences at UNH, but both have reason to draw on lasting memories as students that impacted them for decades beyond their time on campus. And the birthday celebration put them in the same room to do so together.

Which begs the question, what exactly does Silverblatt’s family have planned for an encore?

“I am all about doing whatever I can to make him happy, and it’s funny because people have asked me, ‘what are you going to do next year?’ I honestly don’t know, but it’s going to take me a little while to think of something that could top this one,” Terri says.