Menino emphasized that Boston’s summers programs for youths of different economic backgrounds were among the very strongest in the country.

Shortly after Summers presented the grant to Menino, each Tenacity student received a paperback copy of Louis Sachar’s Newbery Medal-winning Holes as a gift from Harvard. The students broke into three groups and moved from the tennis court to the shade of nearby trees as it began to drizzle.

Sitting in two folding chairs near the edge of a baseball diamond, Menino and Summers took turns reading the beginning of the book to a group of seated children. Soon they forfeited their seats to student readers.

Then Summers took to the tennis court once more. He and his daughter Ruth volleyed with Yamira Lacey, who is enrolled in Tenacity, and Roland Abichaken, a past participant who now works for the program.

“I think there’s always been a good relationship between Harvard and the city and this reflects a continued strengthening of that relationship,” McCluskey said of the day’s events.

Still, Menino suggested that the relationship between Mass. Hall and City Hall is not yet pristine as he joked with the assembled crowd at the end of his address.

“I thank Larry Summers and Harvard for being part of our city,” he said. “And they are part of the city—they own more land in Boston than they do in Cambridge.”

—Staff writer Nathan J. Heller can be reached at heller@fas.harvard.edu.