John O’Hurley ’76, the accomplished television and stage actor best known as the melodious-voiced catalog king “J. Peterman” on the popular Seinfeld television program, will be the honored speaker at the College’s Eighty-Eighth Commencement Exercises on Sunday, May 21, 2006, at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in downtown Providence.

Joining O’Hurley as recipients of honorary degrees that day will be:

• Edwin Forman, M.D. – the visionary former head of the pediatric hematology and oncology division at Rhode Island Hospital’s Hasbro Children’s Hospital who was instrumental in developing the hospital’s capabilities in pediatric cancer care;
• Rev. Robert J. Randall – the priest, educator, and author who served as a member of the PC faculty for more than 25 years and who established the College’s first endowed chair, the Randall Distinguished Professorship in Christian Culture.
• The Honorable Donald F. Shea ’50 – a highly respected justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court (retired) who has a distinguished record of public service as a state legislator and executive assistant to former Rhode Island Gov. Frank Licht, and who is a veteran of the Battle of Okinawa; and
• Carolyn Woo, Ph.D. – the widely published scholar who is the Martin J. Gillen Dean of the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame and the Ray and Milann Siegfried Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies there.

The commencement speaker, O’Hurley, is an award-winning stage and screen actor and a highly successful business entrepreneur. Profiled in a recent issue of Business Week, he said, “I consider myself a corporation with several divisions.”

Among his active “divisions” are: portraying J. Peterman as a pitchman for various products and corporations; serving as part-owner for the real J. Peterman Company; being the principal partner for two venture capital companies, Round One Investments, in Los Angeles, Calif., and Heritage Capital Investments, in Atlanta, GA; and successfully repositioning several struggling radio stations into profitable enterprises in the emerging Dixie Hispanic market in the South.

Also, starring in ABC’s hit show Dancing with the Stars (Summer 2005); recording a classical CD that debuted in the top 20 on the Billboard Classical charts; hosting the National Dog Show Presented by Purina; winning and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for a favorite charity, Golfers Against Cancer; and currently, starring in the role of Billy Flynn for a three-month run of Chicago on Broadway.

A theatre major at PC, O’Hurley has maintained close ties to his alma mater, including sponsoring a rehearsal room that is named in his honor in the Smith Center for the Arts. Looking back on his undergraduate days, he has noted, “What was most valuable at PC was the fact that I got to do major roles in about 13 shows. That’s unusual in the university setting where graduate students usually get the good roles, leaving only the small parts for undergraduates. PC gave me all the tools I needed to pursue acting.”