1940
By the time this is in print and stacked away on your bedside table you should have completed most of your travel plans for reunion. Don't look now but it's only a matter of weeks away so you'd better make sure the boy next door knows where you keep the fish food and your boss at the office knows not to schedule any sales meetings for the middle of June and your wife's golf foursome realizes they'll be a threesome for a week and the kids have gotten replacements for their paper routes and baby-sitting jobs, and you've written your roommate final plans for joining forces with his family for a post-reunion reunion. Tom Braden, who came last weekend for the spring Trustees' meetings in Hanover, has made final plans for the panel discussion which is his charge for the weekend. I won't preempt his announcement of the topic or talent he has gathered together except to hint that this will be one of the stimulating memories you will savor for months afterwards.
The large Cleveland delegation held a cocktail party before their club's annual dinner late in March, which attracted eleven out of the nineteen classmates from the area, and if Cockley and Rogers hadn't been vacationing in sunnier places they would no doubt have made it a baker's dozen. This is a good indication of the enthusiasm for the reunion as everyone there was planning to come back to the Hanover Plain June 17 for three days of living it up. Keith Benson had just gotten back to Cleveland from a business fact-finding trip to Australia and Tasmania; Herb Foster was also sporting a beautiful tan acquired on the beaches of Antigua. Ginny and Karl Bruch, Zelda andDick Goulder, Marty and Lee Bassett, Sueand John Knutsen and« Jane and Bill Huffman were all getting the word about reunion plans along with their breast of chicken and word of the College from President Dickey. Dave Davenport, John Moore, and Bob Williams were stagging it for the evening and Walt Kelley, who coordinated it all in his capacity as area chairman for the 25-year giving program, had to go on to a speaking engagement instead of staying for dinner.
Most of the news stemming from Milwaukee in recent weeks concerns our own Johnny Willetts. He was recently elected a director of the North Shore Savings and Loan Association, about the same time he was appointed to the executive committee of an advisory board to the Juvenile Court Center. When his time isn't being thus involved he is president of the National Clerical and Executive Bureau and also of Artcraft-Milwaukee. Besides being a tireless worker for his alma mater he serves on numerous community and church organizations. He and Betty will be at reunion in June and you can check to which brand of vitamin pills he owes his energy.
Kim Atkins, too long out of this column's news items, makes it this month for his recent appointment to be business administrator for the State Department of Mental Health of Delaware. Kim's work the past two years has been directing a mental health planning project in Topeka, Kan., which should give him the necessary experience to coordinate Delaware's long-range planning, handle their budget, provide policy direction and generally administer the business side of the department. Kim had gotten his master's degree in hospital administration in 1947 at the University of Chicago and since then has served hospitals in a variety of locations from Rhode Island to Kansas. Ann and Kim have four sons ages 18 down to 6.
Another friend heard from after years of silence is Howie Wriggins who has been in on some of the most fascinating spots of our government in Washington. Starting late February he has taken a year's leave of absence from the Policy Planning Council of the State Department to work on a book for the Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research. He claims the subject matter of his daily job is much the same as before - political change and crisis in undeveloped countries - but instead of working on cables and dispatches and bureaucratic diplomacy he is currently reading widely and shaping his own project - a slim volume of essays. He expects his writing to be begun by June so does not expect to be able to make reunion. Too bad, Howie, because that would be just the change of pace you would need about that time. His job on the Policy Planning Council has involved several trips to South Asia and such storied places as the Khyber Pass, Ladakh, Leh, Kashmir, Assam, Ceylon and over the Himalayas by air.
He and Sally have been active participants in the formation of a new Quaker boarding-day school named Sandy Spring Friends School near Washington. As well, Sally has been deeply engaged in conducting a series of Asian-American seminars for women in Washington. Their two girls and a boy, Diana 15, Christopher 13, and Jennifer 7, keep them busy on the home front.
Several address changes have come to light which portend vast geographic shifts that might reflect vast vacational shifts as well. I hope each of the following will write in soon to explain the whys and wherefores behind the bare facts on the cards. For instance, Bob Armstrong has left Michigan and is now cutting the grass at 1916 Sharon Lane, Charlotte, N. C. And Victor Bloede is back in the Hawaiian Islands, having shaken the red dust of Maryland from his heels, and is at 3349 Pakanu Street in Honolulu, to be exact. Dick Kenney, who moved from Los Angeles to New York City not too long ago, is now back on the coast, farther north this time, at 550 Battery Street, San Francisco.
Hal Sommer was very kind to send along some news about Bob Niss whom the Sommers ran into at a Wisconsin ski resort. Bob is a consultant to industry, teaching in the general field of communications, in Milwaukee. He has combined his interest in skiing and his regard for children into a worthwhile avocation by organizing a ski club for youngsters known as the Blizzards. When Sally and Hal saw him he had several hundred young fry under his tutelage - and to think of the trouble I have getting myself down the hill! Incidentally, the Sommers will start off their summer with that big, beautiful 25th Reunion you've heard about.
The lead-off speaker in the Lincoln Centennial Lecture Series at Holy Cross College in February was Charlie Pinderhughes, speaking on the "Psychological Effects of Discrimination and Segregation upon Whites and Negroes." As chief of psychiatry at a Boston VA hospital, and a member of the advisory council of the Massachusetts Commission against Discrimination, Charlie is well qualified for that assignment. His time and talents are also used by Tufts Medical School where he is associate clinical professor of psychiatry, by Harvard and Boston University Medical Schools where he is a psychiatry lecturer and by the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. Charlie will be a good one to have around on the Sunday morning of reunion to straighten us out before we leave the Never-Never Land of 25 Years After to return to the Work-A-Day World.
I hope you've had a chance to see and buy the new book "The College on the Hill" edited by Ralph Hill, 1939. It is a wonderfully readable history of Dartmouth which no home should be without. You ought to stockpile a few for anniversaries or birthdays because anyone who has ever heard of Dartmouth will be enlightened and fascinated by this volume.
A recent note from Al Gutman, who works both the Philadelphia and New York City scene, reported a luncheon with HowieZagor a few weeks back, but no mention of his occupation or how he looked. Al is head of the annual giving fund at Germantown Friends School where supposedly he is learning techniques to bring to bear on our class fund as we work toward our $600,000 goal.
John McMahon has been elected president of the Family Counseling Service of Ridgewood, N. J. John is director of public relations of the New York State Charities Aid Association and has been in several important positions in public relations work in the social welfare field.
Also down in New Jersey, Charlie Berry is expending efforts to "professionalize" his field of real estate. He serves on the Ethics and Arbitration Committee of the Union, N. J., real estate board and has put self-regulatory bills before the state legislature to improve and standardize practices of real estate brokers. Charlie helped to rewrite the constitution of his local county Board of Realtors recently and has an arm's-length of extracurricular credits after his name - auditor of the Union Bay Scouts, Boy's Club, Officer of the Lions Club, seven-time president of the Orchard Park Civic Association, church elder, and member of the Elks and the Masons.
That's it for this month. Keep in touch and see you soon!
Secretary, : 5 North Balch St. Hanover, N. H.
Class Agent, Procter and Gamble Mfg. Co. 17 Battery Place, New York 4, N. Y.
