“We were not just a team he enjoyed watching, but rather we were a bunch of individuals that he knew, admitted, and watched grow over a four-year period,” said Bobby Hackett ’81, an Olympic silver medalist in swimming.

Jewett’s concern for students extended far beyond the playing field.

“At one dinner in his honor, one student recounted how Dean Jewett’s strength was in his small gestures,” recalled Dean of Freshmen Thomas A. Dingman ’67. “If one student was wavering in his commitment to Harvard, he would take the student out for a burger at Bartley’s.”

Longtime friend and Harvard Alumni Association leader John P. Reardon Jr. ’60 said that even when Jewett was working in the admissions office, apart from the daily life of the College, he made a point of interacting with undergraduates.

“I doubt that in his time that anybody knew as many college kids as he did,” Reardon said. “In admissions, he’d remember everything. If he met a student for the first time in the Yard, he’d tell them everything they wanted to know about themselves.”

—Staff writer Justin C. Worland can be reached at jworland@college.harvard.edu.