"What I saw in Clifton thereafter is what I'd already seen in his family," Ellis says.
Wharton says his most valuable experiences at Harvard were found within the walls of Adams House and at The Harvard Crimson Network (the University radio station that later split from the campus newspaper and became WHRB), where Wharton served as a director and announcer.
Wharton was elected to represent Harvard at the founding convention of the National Student Association, where he was elected first class secretary in 1947.
He also ran as a member of the track team--"I was fairly good at it," he recalls.
Wharton's memories of Cambridge stretch beyond extracurricular activities. He stresses the importance of "the interaction with individuals [with whom], over the years,...[I] maintained relations and contacts in a variety of different fields."
A history concentrator, Wharton named two history professors, Frederick Merk and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. '38, as among the most memorable figures he encountered at Harvard. "They were just superb teachers," he says.
On the star-studded list of his classmates and colleagues Wharton cites Jack Lemmon '47, the actor; Arthur A. Hartman '47, former ambassador to France and to the Soviet Union; S. Douglass Cater Jr. '46-'47, former Crimson business manager and later head of the Bloomingdale's department store chain; and the late John Knowles, who served as president of the Rockefeller Foundation while Wharton was a trustee there.
Michigan State established the Wharton Center for Performing Arts in 1982 in honor of Wharton and his wife, Dolores, who is president of the Fund for Initiatives, which helps women and minorities in business. Dolores Wharton also is a director of the Gannett Co., which owns USA Today.
Wharton served as the first black chair and chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 company, TIAA-CREF, from 1987 to 1993. In his six years leading the third-larges U.S. insurance company and the world's largest pension fund, Wharton was lauded as being "phenomenally successful at redirecting TIAA-CREF," Marcus Alexis, a Northwestern University professor of economics and management, told USA Today.
A plethora of directorships also have graced Wharton's career, including terms at Equitable Life Insurance Co., the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Council on Foreign Relations and the New York Stock Exchange. Wharton also has served as chair and trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and as a fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association.
His honors include the Boston Latin School's Man of the Year Award and the University of Chicago's alumni medal.
Wharton's current ambition is an autobiography; its publication date has not yet been announced.