1929
Johnny Quebman walked across the lobby of the Statler in Cleveland. It was early afternoon of the last Thursday in January and he was on his way from a luncheon meeting to a conference somewhere across the city. The last time I had seen him was at the Class Supper picnic at Prescott Randlett's place last June. Later this afternoon, Percy Russell arrived in Cleveland for the meetings of the Alumni Council, the climax of which was the Annual Dinner of the Cleveland Alumni Association where John Dickey spoke to seven '29ers and a host of men from other classes. In addition to Percy Russell there were: Wally Bergstrom, Jack Martin, Morry Hartman, Bill Irwin, Ed Howe and Bill Andres.George Case was out of town, and other Clevelanders who unfortunately couldn't be there were: Bill Strangward, Red Flynn, Bob Jones,Ed Reading, Bill Christman, Elmer Fricek,Howard Kramer, Bill Mooney and SterlingCannon. Cleveland seems to agree with the boys. They all looked well, seemed relaxed and happy—Wally with his Machine Tool Company; Jack Martin, his practice as a heart specialist; Morry his big banking; and Bill with his building supply business and his new venture in the field of prefabricated greenhouses. Ed Howe, by the way, was a blow-in, like Russell and Andres. He is a big G. E. sales executive out of the Baltimore plant.
The reports continue to be good:Ed Canby (1/3/52): "Within the next three or four weeks I hope to have my wife, daughter Judy, aged 10, and twin boys Tommy and Dickie, age 8, all piled in the car with me, heading West for our new home in Palm Springs, Calif. I am now in the process of selling my home and my photography business here in Dayton, and the minute these transactions are completed, it will be 'California Here We Come.' A commercial photographer friend of mine from Toledo is going into business with me, and we expect to do all types of photography.
"I am not going out there because I think we can make a fortune, but I feel satisfied that we can make a comfortable living—with the added benefits of being in a beautiful spot, with a very healthful climate, leading a much slower, easiergoing, more sensible life than the one I have been putting up with here for the past several years. Working at a tension for 80 hours a week has not been conducive to eliminating the ulcers which I have now had for six years. To improve my health is really the basic reason I am making this change."
Al Fisher (1/2/52): "I'll limit the 'Commercial' to a few brief sentences. I can't imagine any of the classmates being interested in telephone communications unless they fail to get dial tone or 'number please' in one second fiat, or unless they have been waiting for a telephone for months at their new home in the suburbs. Both these problems stare me in the face daily and have, more or less, for the whole span of my 22% years with the New York Telephone Co. My Tuck School training has stood me in good stead and helped to lessen a few headaches. Occasionally an engineering problem is tossed into my lap just to confound me. The nice part about being in the Traffic Department is the fact that I am surrounded by a bevy of some 650 girls of all sizes and descriptions. When I leave the office I head for the wide open spaces of Roslyn where, in summer, I keep my waistline slim by working in the garden and, in the winter, by chopping wood. Thrown in between seasons are opportunities for sailing, fishing, swimming, square dancing and tennis. Both my youngsters, Jimmy, 20, and Sally Ann, 17, give some rough competition in all these activities. Both love the outdoors. That's one reason why Jim headed for Dartmouth. The other reason was the fact that he was thoroughly indoctrinated from the cradle by his mother who, even though a Smith graduate, got a lot of her education at Hanover during Carnival and Spring Houseparties at the Zeta Psi House. Jim is now a Sophomore and devotes what time he can to drawing cartoons for the Jack o'hantern and rowing with the crew. Sally Ann is headed for college next fall and, at the moment, is hoping it will be the University of Vermont where she can get her fill of winter sports. We all enjoy trips to the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. When we were there in June we just missed Bob Monahan on one of his inspection trips.
"You'll be interested to know that there are 23 '29 classmates here on Long Island, Bill Bunn being the latest addition to suburban territory. Some I see occasionally and all of them I contact every spring when the Alumni Fund rolls around. I'll stack their loyalty to Dartmouth against any group in the country, as evidenced by their 100% participation in the Fund. They surely deserve a pat on the back for this fine performance.
"I am constantly being kidded by my daughter about some of my idiosyncrasies. One of my habits is to read the New York Times from cover to cover starting from back to front. Another habit is to mention frequently that someone appearing in the news went to Dartmouth. Today Sally Ann was looking over my shoulder as I was reading the editorial page (a section to which she is usually allergic). In the 'Letters to the Editor' column, on the subject of Railroad Freight Rates, there appeared a long letter signed by John Alden Bliss, East Greenbush, N. Y. I remarked half jokingly that this name sounded like one of my classmates. She was more than sceptical and insisted on proof. I reached for my Dartmouth Directory in the bookcase and, under the class of 1929, found one John Alden Bliss, East Greenbush, N. Y. After this, I wish all classmates would sign '29 after their names and thus avoid the need for further research. One final bit of news via the Christmas card route is the fact that Jim Stewart has moved from Phoenix, Ariz., and is now living at 231 E. Poplar Ave., San Mateo, Calif., where he is the principal of the high school."
Joe O'Leary (1/14/52): "On or about February 1, I will report at Michigan State College at East Lansing, Mich., to teach hotel and restaurant accounting and to assume accounting duties in connection with the operation of the Kellogg Center for Continuing Education. The proposition sounds very interesting and will be a combination result of my 18 years of hotel operation work and my five years of teaching accounting. I hope this time I will settle down for a comparatively long stay; perhaps I am beginning to feel my age or perhaps variety and continued wandering can get monotonous. Some of my friends seem to think that teaching is in the nature of easy semi-retirement because of the number of holidays and vacations. I would like to know something about that, but as yet have not had the opportunity. In the past 18 months, in addition to my full-time teaching duties at Loyola, I have been on the staffs of three different public accounting firms and the Washington and Chicago offices of the Office of Price Stabilization. My last two 'summer vacations' were spent on prolonged assignments (leaving the wife at home) in Mississippi, Indiana, Minnesota and Washington, D. C., and permitting me a total of about 12 nights at home during those five months. Perhaps I should become a traveling salesman, no? And now, with 17 days remaining before I report at East Lansing, I have a house to sell here, one to buy there (I hope) the semester's work to complete at Loyola, and the job of packing and moving (not yet started). So I must get to work."
Archie Crowley (1/10/52): "Have been here in this parish (St. James' Church, Grosse lie, Mich.) almost three years now and am just beginning to do the work it needs. It takes that long to get to know the people and get the feel of the community. This is very much like some of the suburbs in Boston—it is real country but most of the people work in industry in Greater Detroit. It is growing quite rapidly and the parish grows with it, especiallv in child population because of so many young families constantly arriving. All the other '29ers live north of Detroit and I see them very seldom. Come spring I hope a long-discussed family picnic can be held here so that the Browns, Eber lines, Br abbs and Crowleys can get together. Jack Brabb still checks in one weekend a month, I believe at the Grosse lie Naval Air Station, as a member of the N.A.R. Jack Gunther's suggestions as to varied plans of looking towards the 25th gift to the College were very timely. Teachers and clergy have a distinct problem with their limited salaries. We will do our best and would appreciate any suggestions from the financial wizards like Hy Liss on how to do it the easy way. Give my best to John when you are in Hanover. He is doing a marvelous job."
Don Dudley (1/14/52): "I left the Marshard Music outfit in '47, and have been in the entertainment business for myself since then, doing pretty well. Presently we're furnishing the music at the 1280 Club, Brookline; Coral Gables, Weymouth; Nuttings, Waltham; The Moors, Shrewsbury; Moseley's, Dedham; The Darbury Room, Boston. We're also doing many private parties with my original Sheraton Hotel band. At one of these affairs, the Christmas party of J. L. Hammett & Co., I bumped into DickSanders and had a nice chat. I also see Dick Johnson and Johnny Bryant when my band plays at the Weston Golf Club. Johnny and Dick are looking and doing well, and, as you know, are married to two wonderful girls, twins Gloria and Liz, two Southern belles. My family consists of my wife May and my two girls, Joyce and Charlyn. I think my older daughter Charlyn, who was married in June, 1950, presently Mrs. Henry L. Burton, Jr., is our class baby. She was born October 27, 1929. Is this correct? Charlyn had a baby girl Pamela Joyce Burton July 4, 1951, and I wouldn't be surprised if Pam is the class grand-baby . . . any challengers? So you see there's progress somewhere, the family has grown from four to six . . . adding a son-in-law and a grand-daughter. Needless to say, Pam is the star of our show, and a delight to her grandparents."
Ed Coddington (1/10/52): "I am on a year's leave of absence (Lafayette, Easton, Pa.) as a result of a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies to permit me to study in certain fields related to history. My colleagues enviously claim that I'm on a vacation and in a sense I am—a vacation from the trials and tribulations of academic life. No committee meetings day after day, no belly-aches from the students, no calls to address The Sons and Daughters of I Will Arise—it's wonderful. If teaching constituted the bulk of academic life, we would really be the 'happy, happy faculty.' Our pay checks would then loom up larger in our eyes. To get away from the 'madding crowd' we are spending most of the year at our summer place at West Hill Road, New Hartford, Conn. Beth, our oldest daughter, is, of all places for a Dartmouth family, at Radcliffe. More sinister is her tendency to like Harvard men. Weezie is in prep school, but fortunately has been dating a young fellow who has the noblest and purest of intentions; he hopes to go to Dartmouth. Caroline, my fair spouse, still endures patiently the vagaries of a professor who still dreams of his days at Dartmouth. I must say that for a Bryn Mawr gal she stands the strain very well. As for me, other than a tendency to notice that my arms are getting shorter, the stairs are becoming steeper, and the incoming freshmen are growing more juvenile, I'm just as young as ever. Did I say something about the waistline? Did you ask for my political views? I'm an Eisenhower man to the core. Now that he has cleared the air I predict a knockdown, drag-out pre-convention fight with no holds barred. As for the convention, it will be the most important and entertaining show in the whole campaign. I received a good letter from Mori Jaquith. Characteristically he writes: 'Your humble servant is still trying to absorb all the law, and half the profits, making fish ends meat. 'Tain't easy these days!' Punning at middle age is positively indecent I'd say."
Chuck Darling (12/29/51): "For the last six years your correspondent has been filling a position indulgently known as promotion director of The Beacon Press, Boston. That house publishes nonfiction intended to be in the public interest: guys like Whitehead, Dewey, Gandhi, Schweitzer, Russell, Toynbee, MacLeish, Blanshard, Moehlman, Jefferson. A 1930 chap, Bob Whittlesey, is production manager, if anybody in 1929 gives a damn. Certain Dartmouth authors are scheduled for the future. Sh—not me! Sh—can't tell yet. Sounds as if the tide's coming in. ... Jingoes, mebbe it is, at that.
"Probably nobody cares about the personal stuff; but if you want a record, I have a daughter, sir, at Radcliffe ('54), in this respect following her mother's steps. She appears in Idler plays from time to time, and perpetually challenges everything her old man learned at Dartmouth. Why didn't I keep my notes? I'm sure I knew the answers once. Can you remember Plato and them guys? Cheez! . . . The ball and chain is up to her ears in pottery and silk-screening and sterling silver jewelry—I'm looking forward to a life of ease. Anybody wanna buy any hand-fashioned, unique, one-of-a-kind tie-clips, earrings, chamber- pots or pendants? Anybody got any old furniture you wanna sell? Anybody wanna go to Florida for the winter? Wait—that's wrong: I'm not selling Florida!"
BEAUTY AND THE JUDGE: The pleasant assignment of Photographer Bob Keene '30 (lower right) at this year's Winter Carnival was to serve as one of the judges picking the Queen (the winner second from left).
Secretary, 75 Federal St., Boston 10, Mass. Treasurer, 1728 Beechwood Blvd., Pittsburgh 17, Pa. Memorial Fund Chairman, Air Reduction Co., Inc., 60 E. 42nd St., New York 17, N. Y.
