![]() Speaking more seriously, the president noted that this year's 3,923 graduates are now part of more than 200,000 living UC alumni. "The transformation of this campus has given our graduates a great foundation for dealing with change." And you've made your last detour around UC construction," she quipped over laughter. "You've procrastinated on a class assignment for the last time by watching 'American Idol.' You’ve dropped off that long overdue library book you discovered under your bed. "You have pulled your last all-nighter and hopefully eaten your last slice of cold pizza for breakfast," she said. In her first address to a UC graduating class, Zimpher joked about the obstacles they had to overcome on the way to earning a degree. ![]() It was difficult to tell who was having the most fun at UC's 185th commencement - the Class of 2004, their proud families or UC's newly installed president Nancy Zimpher. Well, Kavanagh did fall off the stage in Barcelona and got stitches in his head, but the show was on time. Nevertheless, Kavanagh says the entire staff found it "pretty amazing that we went through 27 countries without a hitch and exactly on time." ![]() Kavanagh was also production manager for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics Torch Relay, which remained in the United States and attracted much smaller crowds than the 250,000 people in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which had never before hosted the relay.Ĭrowds that large often became impassible, creating a logistics nightmare for Kavanagh, who eventually had to keep 3,000 torchbearers on schedule. His cries for help fell on deaf sand until he emptied the cash from his pockets and the men let him off. In Cairo, the language barrier created the biggest problem when two Egyptians, whom he couldn't understand, put him on a camel and led him into the desert before he realized they weren't crew members. Of course, he could rarely read a word of it, and local interpreters could seldom translate technical production terms vital to Kavanagh. Consequently, one of the first things he needed on site was the script for the event the local community had planned. In 27 countries, his ultimate responsibility involved getting the final torchbearer of the day to arrive at an impressive sunset ceremony at a specific time. On the flip side, Kavanagh changed time zones 37 times, had to communicate in 19 different languages and averaged only three or four hours of sleep a night, usually on one of two 747s where, at least, he had his own private row in which to stretch out. ("You couldn’t see the cable she looked like Tinker Bell flying in," he says.) torchbearers and gold medal gymnast Nadia Comaneci, who slid down a cable onto Times Square from a skyscraper. On one hand, the Los Angeles resident got to work with stars like Rod Stewart and Ozzy Osbourne, who gave a concert in London Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone and Ellen Degeneres, who were L.A. And it was, says relay production manager Bill Kavanagh, DAAP ’78. Yet managing a different ceremony every night for 34 straight days, often with a crew who spoke only their native language, sounds a bit nightmarish. Traveling around the world to manage ceremonies for the Olympic Torch’s first "global" relay sounds like a dream come true. Grad guides Olympic Torch around the world in 35 days
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