Class of 1899
Bill Colbert has given up his chicken business. His health has been poor, and he spent last summer in the Togus Soldiers' Home at Togus, Me. At present he is in a similar institution at Phoebus, Va. His address is P. O. Box 398.
Jim Richardson was elected one of the delegates to the Republican National Convention at Kansas City to represent the Second Congressional District of New Hampshire.
Malcolm Beal, who graduates next June, is to sail on September first to take a position as teacher of English in the American University at Beirut, Syria. Malcolm is looking forward to the experience with great pleasure. Among the faculty there are already two other Dartmouth men, Arthur Bacon '97, who is K's cousin, and Julius Brown '02. Billy Beal, K's third son, is a freshman at the University of Maine, but the chances are that George, Number Four on the list, will follow Malcolm to Dartmouth.
The Secretary made a flying trip to Hanover on March 26. He talked to Professor Wright's class in education in the afternoon, and met the educational society in informal conference during the evening.
Joe Gannon has become one of the big men in the advertising department of the New YorkTimes. He writes that he is keenly interested in his new position.
Ninety-Nine has another grandfather. Patricia Mary Read arrived in New York on March 24. Her mother (Genevieve Gannon) and she are in excellent shape, but Grandfather Joe is hopeless. He refuses to speak to ordinary mortals. Little Patricia represents the tenth generation of direct descent from Captain Myles Standish of Plymouth fame.
Mun Folsom's nephew, Robert Perry, is moving right on up in New Hampshire school circles. He has just been elected principal of the big junior high school in Nashua, and is also the secretary and treasurer of the New Hampshire State Schoolmasters' Association.
Doc Norton sends a clipping from one of the San Antonio papers, telling of the big interscholastic track meet for girls, in which his daughter Elizabeth starred. She won the fifty-yard dash, and was placed in the baseball throw and also in the contest in throwing for accuracy.
A Dartmouth senior whom the Secretary recently met, and to whom the latter was boasting about his classmate Jim Richardson, volunteered the information that James' chief claim to fame at present in Hanover is his prowess as a bowler. It seems that he hung up a high record on the Hanover alleys recently, and left it there for future generations to shoot at.
One of the big reasons for Dartmouth's phenomenal growth between 1900 and 1912 was the activity of Dartmouth graduates who were teachers or principals in high schools and academies. Nearly half of the class of '99 were influenced to go to Dartmouth by other Dartmouth men who had taught them, and they have paid the debt by passing it on to subsequent classes. Twenty-one members of our class are teachers, principals, or superintendents, and the number of boys that we have sent to Dartmouth is unusually high. Among the group of seniors whom the Secretary met on his recent trip to Hanover were two who had been sent to Dartmouth by '99 men, one from Morris High School, New York city, by Frank Surrey, and the other one by K. Beal.
Some time ago the Secretary stated that from time to time he would fill out this column with occasional reminiscences from our past. Not long ago he enjoyed an evening's "fanning" with "Ted" Lewis, Williams '96, now president of the University of New Hampshire. The old-timers will recall Ted's wonderful pitching, the little jump on his fast ball that made batters pop it straight up into the air or fan under it, his great control and fast breaking curve. For years the Dartmouth sluggers had been helpless before Lewis, but his last game against us at Hanover resulted in a Dartmouth victory. Al fierce wind had caused several of these high hit balls to be blown into safe territory, while they should have been easily caught, and Dartmouth had a big lead in the first two innings, before Williams really went through. Lewis recalled the great ovation that he had received after the game as the Dartmouth students took leave of him, and said that it was the finest tribute that he had ever had, a testimonial to his fine, clean sportsmanship throughout his college course.
This brought back a flood of baseball recollections. Certain classes furnished more than their quota of athletes for certain sports. '97 and 1900, for example, between them had eighteen "D" men in football: McCornack, Hotchkiss, Lewis, Marshall, Kelley, Pillsbury, Hutchinson, Place, Jennings, Stickney, Proctor, Whelan, Putnam, Walker, Wentworth, Boyle, Corson, and Rogers; while our class had but five: Crolius, Cavanaugh, Edwards, Abbott, and Oakes. In baseball, on the other hand, '99 and 1901 furnished thirteen "D" men between them. It is no wonder that Dartmouth took the championship of the Triangular League during the two years that these two classes were in college together. Our "D" men were Crolius, Drew, Folsom, Hodgkins, Musgrove, and Rowe.
As we think of '99 in baseball, we remember Drew's heady direction of the team and his wonderful catching, Hodgkins' bunting and base-sliding, and Crolius' cracking three base drives with the sacks loaded. None of us will ever forget the first Vermont game, played on the campus because the alumni oval was still too wet, in the latter part of April, '97, when, with the count three and one, the great Dinsmore made the mistake of putting a straight one over the middle of the pan for Bobby Rowe. For the benefit of the later generations we will state that the home plate stood right in front of the College Church, and that Bobby's line hit struck the Hanover Inn (then called the Wheelock Hotel) on the first bounce. The class of 'BB have the story that the great Zach Chandler hit a similar wallop from the same spot, but that is hearsay, while we saw Bobby Rowe's home-run. And the very next day, in the second game, Bobby and Mun, finding it hard to solve the delivery of the jerky, kinky-haired Miner, dared each other to let him hit them, with the result that Bobby's arm was broken, and he was out of the game for the next six weeks.
But the memory which lingers longest when one speaks of '99 in baseball is that of the famous Brown game at Hanover, which went twelve innings. Dartmouth accumulated some runs in the twelfth, but Brown threatened in her half of the frame, and had the bases loaded with two out, when their last batter drove a screaming liner out into the right field, which seemed good for the circuit. Who can ever forget Mun's long run for it, nor the final leap into the air, perfectly timed, so that he came down with the ball stuck in the center of his gloved hand,—and the game was over! Those were the days!
Secretary, 88 Lowell St., Manchester, N. H.
