Long before she landed parts on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Curb Your Enthusiasm, award-winning actress Caroline Aaron, CAS/BA ’74, nearly lost the role of AU student. 

In summer 1970, her acceptance was rescinded due to an “academic downward spiral” during her senior year of high school. Intent on appealing the decision, Aaron and her mother drove from Richmond, Virginia, to meet with AU’s director of admissions.

“I am sitting opposite Mr. Wakefield in his office, holding a shoebox with all the accolades I had collected in my short life,” Aaron, the CAS commencement speaker, told the Class of 2024 on May 11. “I was determined to be dignified and impressive. Instead, I burst into tears and said, ‘You have to let me come to college.’”

Wakefield replied that “an education is a privilege, not a right.” He told Aaron about his daughter, Jo, who was about the same age and born with a disability. “She did more with her high school education in a wheelchair than you ever did,” he said. Still, he readmitted Aaron, who took the chastisement as a challenge—one that she rose to over the next four years.

Wakefield was “an angel—one of many who changed my life,” Aaron said.

Shortly after graduating with a degree in performing arts, Aaron landed an agent. She quickly bonded with the woman, who “was always on the lookout for me, rooting around for opportunities that might be right.” One day, while reviewing a script, she glanced at the agent’s name on the cover sheet—Jo Wakefield—and it clicked.

“Jo was in a wheelchair. I never knew why and would never have asked. But I did ask if her father was director of admissions at AU. Indeed, he was,” she said. 

“So, my first agent was the daughter of the man who gave me a second chance—the angel in my life that started my journey that brings me full-circle to speak to you today. Find your angels,” she advised the graduating Eagles, “they are all around.”