Class of 1917
Before these notes are published you will have received Don Brooks' letter, which again explains in detail the committee's ideas of dividing the class into Active and Inactive Groups, based upon a five-dollar annual tax. Recently I have heard from several men that they had no knowledge of what we meant by the Active Group, which seemed strange in view of the many times this has been explained in these columns in addition to the treasurer's individual letter. Last year only 25% of the class responded to this plan. In most cases this is certainly a matter of inertia and lack of interest, but if you realize that this includes an ALUMNI MAGAZINE subscription as well as the development of a sinking fund for our Twentieth Reunion, then you must appreciate that it is worthy of your interest and immediate response.
From the College by way of the VermontJournal we received notice of the death of Harold L. Ruggles on December 18, 1933, at Hampton, Va. Further details are lacking.
Last fall I saw By Brown, the Mahogany King of Honduras, on several occasions at the Dartmouth Club before he returned to his tropical habitat in December. I was much surprised to learn that By had been married over a year and in so doing had acquired a fine family including a boy and a girl both in their teens. By said the mahogany business was at a standstill at present, and he planned to do some gold mining on his plantation to keep things moving until mahogany came back
From Eddie McGowan we heard that he has established his residence at 139 Abbott Road, Wellesley Hills, Mass., from which center he is able to visit his four mills located in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. What an ambitious program Eddie must follow, having to visit each of them weekly. He told me also that quite by chance Walt Barrows was building a house right next door to him Chan Steiger, writing on the stationery of the Steiger Realty, Springfield, Mass., states that he is engaged in the dry goods business in Holyoke, Springfield, Hartford, and Fall River, Mass., from which we can judge that Chan is as busy coverning New England as Eddie McGowan must be. He heard also that Frank Huntress was managing a Sears Roebuck store in Keene, N. H., and that Wayne Palmer had given up the steel business and had moved from Holyoke to Clarendon, Va., where he is writing for several magazines on naval matters Hank Wells and Ted Lonnquest are also at Clarendon, but no details are available.
A letter from our first alumni secretary, Bill Sewall, is presented as the perfect example of the way you should all keep your secretary posted. What a help if you were all ex-secretaries! Unfortunately there is not space here to give all of his letter:
"I'll be glad of course to send Don acheck for Active Group dues, also to kickin to the best of my ability for the AlumniFund. With things generally better thanthey have been, this would be a good yearfor more of us to come to the aid of ourhard-working class agent and see whatcould be done to help him make the classshowing respectable.
"Answering your question for news dating back to the Fifteenth, I am still taking pot-luck with the bedevilled tire industry and hoping against hope that someof the bigger nit-wits will either get religion or kick the bucket—and I don't carewhich. There are some hopeful signs, notthe least of which is the NRA, but I won'tbore you with a lot of rubber industrygossip. Personally, I can't complain much.Shortly after returning to Akron from theFifteenth, my job was changed from that ofadvertising manager for Hood and Millertires to sales promotion manager for allfour of Goodrich's associated tire lines,which in addition to the two foregoing alsoinclude Diamond and Brunswick. I clippeda newspaper notice of the change andmeant to send it to you just as a matter ofrecord, but waited for three or four months(just to be sure the job stuck), and endedup by losing the clipping.
"That continued until December, 1933,when I was transferred into the Goodrichtire division as a member of the PetroleumSales Department. Since then I have beentrying to find out what the new job is allabout and getting ready to move down tothe New York office of the company, whereI am due to be located. It's a little uncertainjust when I will complete the transplantingprocess, and in this business there's alwaysa chance that something will come alongto change the whole picture. But barringthe unexpected I hope to be dropping inwith reasonable regularity on your Monday luncheons (if that's when you havethem), and I'm looking forward to thatwith a lot of pleasure. Harvard's new prexyis a little rough on Ohio as a place tolive—assuming, of course, that Time reported him correctly,—but it certainly is along way from the center of Seventeenpopulation, and in that respect my moveto New York will be like returning frothexile.
"No changes to report in my family, except that the younger two-thirds of it in-creases steadily in stature. (No increase innumbers.) John goes into high school nextyear and Cynthia is a year behind him.They will be 14 and 11 respectively withinthe next sixty days. The lady of the houseretains her girlish figure without dieting, asdo I with the aid of handball in the winterand golf the rest of the year. We have hada lot of snow here this winter, but Ihaven't yet ventured out on skis, and nowthat I have been reading 'Life Begins AtForty' guess I'll have to save them for theyoung ones.
"I haven't seen as many Seventeeners inmy rambles around the country as I shouldhave, mostly because I am never long in anyone town. Went up to the dinner in Cleveland last week for Craven and chattedbriefly with Vin Smith, but his duties asvice-president of the Cleveland Club andalso the varied and difficult character partshe was called on to play in the rapid-fireribaldry that was offered as a curtainraiser to the Dean's talk kept Vin too busyfor more than a brief exchange of conversation. There was a big turnout, and theevening was very much a success, climaxedby a splendid talk from the Dean.
"The only other Seventeener I have seenrecently is Bill Eaton, who is holding downa big job with the Gulf Refining Co. Billis one of our preferred prospects for tires.Imagine having to be respectful to thatguy! He has a most impressive office on thetwenty-ninth floor of the new Gulf Building in Pittsburgh, but in spite of his responsibilities he is the same affable gentas always. We visited for a couple of hoursall business-but I am hoping to make mynext trip the excuse for a real old-fashionedbull-league—tires or no tires."
Before we get too far into the spring I want to give you some of Sam White's impressions of Alaska. As these were written last fall, they unfortunately do not include the details of this past winter, which must have been a corker up there:
"Chuck asked me to tell something whatlife in Alaska was like, but as I've onlylived in Fairbanks, I can't tell the wholestory. You see you might live on the Arcticcoast, where it's winter most of the time;you might live in one of the many miningcamps like Wiseman (Bob Marshall's 'Arctic Village'), where living conditions arerather crude, although all-year-round airplane service brings in fresh food andluxuries if you are bringing in high-gradedirt or rock to pay for them; you might livein one of the southeast coast cities, whereyou might have all the comforts of outside,an even temperate climate (if you don'tmind lots of rain), and several boats a weekfrom Seattle; or you might live in this interior city, where we also have all the comforts of outside, but do experience coldwinters with a month without much sun,and conversely a month in the summerwhen there is no darkness at all.
"Although life in town here is much thesame as anywhere, you can take a car in thesummer and go over the 370 miles of roadsouth to the coast city of Valdez, whichtakes you through as wild and spectacularmountain scenery as you can find anywhere. If it's in the fishing season there areplenty of trout streams, and if in the fall,innumerable grouse and caribou, andplenty of chances to pick up a moose, bear,or mountain sheep. You can on the nextweek-end drive northeast over the 165 milesleading to Circle on the Yukon river, whichtakes you through an entirely different typeof country, rolling green hills, with somebare peaks, more like the country gettingup into the White Mountains.
"There has been for several years a proposal to build the final connecting links ofhighway between our roads here and thosein British Columbia, so you can drive rightthrough from 42d St. to Fairbanks. Youcan count on that road's being finished inthe not very distant future; and you canalso count on a growth of large scale mining, which will bring more and more peopleout here at the same time.
"In the meantime it's a very comfortablesort of place to live, damn fine neighbors,and many less rules and regulations governing every step of your daily life, such asseem to become more and more necessaryto make existence possible in the crowdedcenters of population.
"We aren't so far away either, as in thesummer you can leave here on a Sundaymorning, fly to Juneau and catch a boatthere which will land you in SeattleWedyiesday night. Add another 24 hours toNew York, and there you are in. five days.And that's just utilizing regularly availabletransportation services.
"If the above line sounds a bit enthusiastic about the country, just think whatyou would have to listen to if Swett orTowler or some other high-pressure realtoror advertising man was turning it out."
SUPPORT THE ALUMNI FUND JOIN THE ACTIVE CLASS GROUP
Secretary, Craig House, Beacon, N. Y.
