Two years later, in 1893, he entered Princeton and here, in the middle of the Golden Nineties, discovered interests and developed tastes that he cultivated all his life: good food and drink, friendships, athletics, music, history, and politics -- the last enlivened by Woodrow Wilson's brilliant lectures.
After graduating from Princeton in 1897 and from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1900, Bedford returned to Wilkes-Barre and joined his father in the practice of law. He became a leader in his profession and in civic affairs, president of the trustees of Dr. Hodge's old church, an active Wilsonian Democrat, and -- in the opinion of many -- the first citizen of the community.
Bedford was elected an alumni trustee in 1930, a charter trustee in 1934, and, after his retirement in 1946, served as trustee emeritus until his death in 1967, at the age of ninety-two. He was chairman of the trustee committee that raised funds for the building of Firestone Library and founder of the Friends of Music at Princeton, its honorary chairman and one of its most faithful and generous supporters. A devoted follower of football and baseball, he was for many years one of the two trustee representatives on the University Council on Athletics; in 1934 he donated the funds for Bedford Field, which is used for intramural athletics.
Bedford was chairman of the commencement committee from 1941 through 1967. Every spring he entertained the committee at a dinner at the Princeton Inn which he took delight in planning and which, in its sumptuous detail, was reminiscent of the Golden Nineties: cocktails and caviar; fresh fruit; terrapin soup laced with sherry; shad with roe; and new asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, accompanied by Bedford's favorite wine, a choice Moselle called Bernkasteler Doktor und-graben; salad; ices and cakes with champagne; coffee; liqueur; and cigars.
During the twenty-seven years that Bedford was chairman, his was the most sought-after committee in the University; its membership increased from five to twenty and no one ever resigned.
His annual report on commencement was a highlight of the October meeting of the Board of Trustees. He expatiated eloquently on such topics as the ``degustation of food and beverages,'' the skill of the faculty marshals in getting the procession to move ``with celerity uncontempered by cunctation,'' and the vagaries of the weather. After the 1959 commencement he was able to report an unbroken record of twenty-five successive outdoor commencements, an achievement he thought only fitting for a university with the motto Dei sub numine siget, though he always credited any favorable weather to the committee's efforts.
In his reports, Bedford always had a kind word for alumni reunions -- those times of jubilation that ``the spinster lady of Victorian virtue'' had first called to his attention years before. He considered them ``the core and kernel of Princeton's widespread loyalty,'' from which stems ``active alumni support for every Princeton cause.'' Bedford himself was able to celebrate his seventieth reunion with one other classmate.
At the Commencement exercises in 1965, nine days before Bedford's ninetieth birthday, President Goheen read this tribute:
``As gay at heart, as young in spirit today as he was at his own Commencement in 1897, he has graced the meetings of the Board of Trustees for thirty-five years, delighting them with his humor, impressing them with his wisdom. Like Falstaff, he is not only witty in himself, but the cause of wit in other men. To the city of his birth, Wilkes-Barre, he has devoted his professional life and his noble instincts for charity and social work; to his alma mater he has given decades of cheerful service and leadership, and each loyalty has served to enrich the other. . . . The past six presidents of Princeton have been entertained at his hospitable family home in Wilkes-Barre, and the last three have been richer for his sympathetic friendship extended over his own gourmet board. He is a man who, as Dr. Johnson said, keeps his friendships in repair. As chairman of the committee for raising the funds for Firestone Library, and as perennial godfather of the Department of Music, he has unwittingly reared his own best tributes from this University. Today we honor in affection and gratitude the Chairman of the Commencement Committee for the past twenty-five years, that Prince of Princetonians, Paul Bedford of the Class of 1897.''