An immigrant triumph
This is one in a series of profiles showcasing some of Harvard’s stellar graduates. Eleven years ago, young Eric Westphal boarded a plane in his native Brazil and flew to Miami and then on to frozen Boston. Behind him was Tubarão, the subtropical city of his birth, where a narrow river of the same name eases its way through a low-rise downtown to the nearby ocean. Soon after his world-shifting flight, Westphal, 11, walked into a fifth-grade classroom in Somerville, Mass., unable to speak a word of English. After that hurdle came a cheerful boyhood in nearby Everett, where his father was a cable installer and his mother a housecleaner. Westphal became a strong student, athlete, and debater. Then came marriage at age 18, in the fall of his senior year at Everett High School. (“It forced me to mature extremely fast,” said Westphal.) Then came — improbably, he said — admission into Harvard...