1925
We are indebted to Doug Archibald for the following story of the 1925 dinner in New York:
On February 20th about 24 members of the class gathered in the bar of the Dartmouth Club in New York and after what is generally referred to as a decent interval approximately the same number had dinner together and heard a most interesting and informative talk by Frank Shea, who had been kind enough to come up from Washington for the occasion.
Frank has been in Washington most of the time since 1933. Either conditions there are vastly different from the impression held by most of us outsiders, or else Frank has succeeded where Ponce de Leon failed, because he has retained his youthful looks and schoolgirl complexion to an extent that was the envy of all others present. Just so you won't feel too bad, we can truthfully add that the slim Shea figure of the middle Twenties has expanded as much as the average.
During most of the past year Frank, who is on the staff of Attorney General Jackson, has been working on the preparations for and also participating in the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. In this he was associated some of the time with another '2ser, Lt. Col. Frank Wallis.
Frank Shea described to those present at the New York gathering the tremendous difficulties encountered by the participants in trying to work out a mutual program for the war criminal trials in three different languages- English,Russian and French. He also told about some of his experiences in working with our allies in London, Berlin and Nuremberg and recommended for the consideration of this country the advisability of educating and training more high-grade men than ever in the past in the field of international relationships and negotiations.
Milt Emerson arranged and ran the party with help from Jack Perlee and Jack Davis. The latter was unfortunately kept absent from the gathering by an attack of flu, and Secretary Bill Griffin was also among those missing, due to either a more glamorous engagement or sheer laziness. (Bill was really the victim of illness, but why give him a break when there is a chance to get even for all the things he can .write about others in his columns?)
After a short business meeting and some discussion of the best ways to get money out of each other on behalf of the College, all still present enjoyed immensely the excellent movies of our last three reunions as presented by Deke Blodgett. Especially good were the color films of the 1940 gathering in Hanover, with some memorable shots of Prexy Hopkins.
Dick Nye stayed to the finish. Like everyone else, he had had to fight his way through the heavy snow to get to town that day, but perhaps had the hardest time of anyone to get home to his new place in Connecticut, which he says is uncomfortably close to the choice land coveted by the UNO.
Bill Simms came in from New Jersey which was quite an effort on his part, as he both lives and works on the same side of the Hudson and seems to get along quite happily without commuting to New York.
Jibber Gutterman represented Scarsdale, and Fred Reed, working in New York for the Chicago Daily News, managed to get all the way to 39th Street from his 48th Street apartment. Frank Brick, back from a long tour in the Navy, has again resumed his legal work as a partner in the firm of Donovan, Leisure, Newton and Lumbard.
Junie Bryant dropped in on his way through New York from Springfield, Vt., where he had left a cold winter and the machine tool business to head for Nassau. Junie had had a cruise in those waters all planned in 1941, just before Pearl Harbor, and while it was called off then the boat was waiting for him to start on a real postwar vacation and make up for lost time.
A number of others who had not been at a New York gathering for some time were welcomed back from Uncle Sam's service, including Curt Abel, Hank Bjorkman, Charlie Graydon, Ross Pearl and Brice Disque.
From Curt Abel, now living at 1 Garrett Place, Bronxville 8, N. Y., comes another welcome dispatch:
Lt. Col. Ross Pearl, after 21 months in London with USSTAF's A2 (that's Strategic Air Force, Intelligence—to you) is now back in tweeds—devoting numerous hours per week to McGraw Hill Book Cos. at their plushy West 42nd Street headquarters where he is Editorial Director of the School Department. Ross is rapidly becoming an habitue on the 8:33 from Bronxville where he and Louisa are living at the Brooklands.
Connie Kurtz is reported to be president of a recently organized Buffalo insurance outfit named "Retirement Plans, Inc." We think the company name packs plenty of sales appeal! Connie and Louise are very well, thank you—and their daughter Brenda is president of the freshman class at her Seminary.
Carl Smith is enjoying life way down in Maine. His general store at Cutler, near the end of U. s. Highway No. 1, has doubled its volume since Carl took over _ from his father after giving up his Brooklyn insurance business three years ago. In his spare time Carl keeps a crew busy cutting pulp wood, runs a 200-acre blueberry "patch" and is considerably interested in the sardine fishing industry. With wife Barbara and daughters Valerie 16 and Sandra 10, Carl is dreaming of a new Cadillac for a trip to Quebec, Hanover and New York this summer—in fact it's rumored that his dreams are getting better all the time.
Here's a brief flash from Ken Hill:
On April 26, at the Parker House in Boston, we will have another Class Dinner featuring Frank Wallis who we expect will give us the lowdown as a result of his part in the Nuremberg Trials. I will appreciate your mentioning this in the class notes for the coming issue as certain classmates who make periodic trips to the East might wish to remember this date so as to be in Boston at that time, in which case they could drop me a line. (80 Federal St., Boston 10, Mass.)
New Class officials are: Frank Wallis, Reunion Chairman for our July reunion; Llew White, Class Agent for the Alumni Fund; and Eddie Pease, Boston Class Agent.
The '25ers who have been recent guests at the Hanover Inn include: Mr. and Mrs. Ed Dodez, of Fort Wayne, Ind.; Mr. and Mrs. Lionel Mosher, of Waltham Mass.; Ford Whelden of Grosse Point Farms, Mich.; and John Tagney of Beverly, Mass.
Russ Fox is now Production Engineering for R. & R. Arms Co., in Worcester, Mass.
From Horton Conrad of Chicago, new Class Chairman of 1925, comes a 20-year resume:
It was my plan during College to go into some phase of advertising upon graduation. Upon my return to Chicago, after I had a trip to Europe during the summer after graduation, I started with the Illinois Journal of Commerce. One of my space accounts was the largest coal company in Chicago and they sold me on the idea of the great fuftire for college men in that industry. I took them at their word and for 20 years did my best to make the buyers of heat in Chicago coal conscious ending, finally, with my own coal company.
When the war came along we lost most of our common labor because of our low wage scale. It was necessary for us to have some mechanical equipment that wasn't on the market. What we particularly needed was a light weight portable conveyor to take coal from the trucks into the customers' bins. We tried to have companies established in the business build some for us, without success. In desperation, we built a conveyor of our own that turned out to fill the bill.
By the process of evolution the thing grew to the point that other industries are using the machine so that a year ago last October it became necessary for me to spend all of my time in that business and I subsequently liquidated my coal interests. Under wartime conditions it hasn't been pleasant traveling all over the country, keeping in touch without distributors, but this has been made up greatly by the opportunity of contacting '25ers whom, I have not seen since graduation.
I enjoyed the several years I acted as class agent, and was president of the Chicago Dartmouth Alumni Association back in 1937.
In 1932 I was married to Betty Knode, Wellesley '31, and we have one boy, 12, who, particularly after a visit to Hanover last fall, is looking forward greatly to getting to Hanover in 1955 if all goes well.
NEW CLASS CHAIRMAN of 1925, Horton Conrad, and his son "Cricket-."
Secretary, Room 1100
420 Lexington Ave., New York 17, N. Y.
Treasurer, 49 Federal St., Boston, Mass.
