Class of 1908
As an interested alumnus, and also with the idea of obtaining something with which to augment the sparse offerings of the classmates for the February issue of this magazine, your correspondent witnessed the presentation, in a Batavia, N. Y„ theater, of the much-heralded M. G. M., short entitled "Dartmouth Days." It is our opinion that, if a movie were constructed of the important Hanover scenes omitted from this first offering, quite a good production would be the result. The film bore the easily identified stamp of the professional, especially in the final tableau, where the Hanover Winter Song is rendered by a group reminiscent of those somewhat awkward stereopticon days. Perhaps the best way to handle the subject, and make certain it will not be elided from our well-intentioned efforts of this blustery New Year morning, would be to enumerate some of the features of Hanover we would like to see in the next Dartmouth photoplay classic. So here goes:
Well, Dartmouth Row would fit nicely in the picture we have in mind. A glimpse along the mall extending from the library westward wouldn't be so bad. Just an idea regarding the Alumni Gym would be impressive. The campus when classes are shifting.
We may be all wet in our failure to enthuse over "Dartmouth Days" as depicted by Hollywood emissaries. Just to check, we queried the boy who sells candy in the theater loges: "It was a good break forDart-mouth (the last syllable pronounced as the one in your face). Such a pichuremakes a nice ad."
That the young man of the current Dartmouth is keen-eyed is reflected by the incident, it is hoped, about to be related. One day the past autumn, a member of 1908 .was sitting on the Hanover Inn porch, gazing idly northward toward the Eleazar Wheelock weather vane atop Baker Library. This particular, greying alumnus hadn't been in Hanover for several months. So, when a smiling undergraduate greeted him with confidence, he was somewhat, as the sailors used to say, taken aback. He couldn't remember the kid's name. He even made a bluff at the old guessing game; the necessary words failed him. But the kid wasn't shaken in his identification. Naturally, as he explained: "Why Mr. Blank,I'd never forget that necktie. It's a honey.You wore it the morning we had breakfast,last spring, at the Inn."
One of the 1908 members writes in to say he interviewed a Yale undergraduate during the holidays, and that, after all, it may be just as well the jinx wasn't chased from the Bowl during the 1934 clash between the Dartmouths and the Yales. "They allbrought green paint," our correspondent quotes the Yale undergraduate as saying, "and it would have been just too bad forsome of our nice buildings, if Dartmouthhad won."
We hadn't heard of the proposed cleanup and paint-up campaign idea as transmuted by the current undergraduate mind of Hanover & Norwich station, but we have reason to believe the Yale people were somewhat distraught before and during the game. It is learned on good authority that, the night before the game, some of the baggage of Dartmouth guests in Yale College buildings was gone over with the idea of retrieving any cans of green paint which might be hidden therein.
Holiday time is a good time to get in touch with undergraduates, see what they think of this, that, and the other thing. During the recent recess, a member of the class of 1937 was asked why he had subscribed for the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE to be sent as a present to his father. "Well," the youngster replied, "that'swhere we get the real dope in college and Iwanted my father to keep in touch withthings. I read things in the magazine thecampus doesn't catch up with until quitea while after the magazine comes out."
That old reliable Warren F. (String) Hale gives an up-to-date account of his activities bearing on Dartmouth in a letter which reads as follows: "At a meeting ofstate foresters held in Knoxville, Tenn., Ihad the pleasure of spending some littletime with Arthur Hopkins of the New YorkForestry Commission, who was an earlymember of our class. Hoppy is very busylooking after CCC camps and taking overforest lands for the state of New York.
"In New Haven, in November, I metArthur Sides shortly after the Yale gameand had just a word with him. I have recently had two meetings with Crosby A.Hoar, who is the inspector for the northernstates for the forest service. He recentlycame from the West, and only one of histrips has taken him through Hanover. Lastweek saw Harry Rogers of the NewHampshire Forestry Commission, whoquite often visits my office."
William Boylston Rotch, father of our classmate, Arthur 8., died at his home in Milford, N. H., on December 17, 1934, following a year's illness. Mr. Rotch, who was 75 years of age, had been engaged in newspaper work for nearly sixty years. All of those years he worked for the Milford Cabinet, and for the past 43 years he had been editor and owner of the publication. Mr. Rotch's father and grandfather were editors of the Milford Cabinet, which his great-grandfather purchased 125 years ago. Arthur Rotch had been associated with his father in the conduct of the Cabinet for 25 years.
Art Lewis, who, it is learned from an outside source, was a recent judge at a horse show (indoor) at Darien, Conn., took time out to check up on the Boston boys, and the result of this sacrifice for the good of 1908 reads as follows: "Joe Donahue ismaking history as a member of the BostonFinance Commission; and, very recently,this commission has had much in print dueto making three reports on graft attendingthe building of the East Boston tunnel. Joeapparently knows how to call a spade aspade. All classmates realize, of course, heknows the whole deck. Percy Gleason ishaving more and more business hi his NewYork office, and has to be away from Bostoncowpaths more and more because of this.We miss him, but we are glad to know thatNew York recognizes a good legal and accounting mind. Jack Corcorati has recentlymoved into a beautiful new home at 30Chestnut Hill Road, Brookline. This homesimply exudes atmosphere, as several cantestify following the Dartmouth-Harvardgame last fall. Jack has a boy, John Jr., whois going to be able to rip up whole acretracts of big growth timber up at the Dartmouth Grant, if he keeps on developing theway he has started. Even now, Jack is reluctant to start an argument with his threeyear-old son."
In Boston at the Parker House, every day except Sunday, luncheon is served in a private suite for the Dartmouth boys. Quite a number of 1908 members have availed themselves of the hotel's largess, it being possible to obtain luncheon, dessert included, for sixty cents.
Old Fox Frothingham, the bird who, in undergraduate days, maintained a card index on which one of the items was "Saturday, send laundry," is in Washington doing something in connection with the governmental ramifications. Don, who has been a Wall Streeter for years, apparently realizes Washington has Wall St. skinned a mile when it comes to the speculative angle.
Wedding bells rang in the United States Naval Academy chapel, on November 28, 1934, belated intelligence advises, for none other than Caroline, daughter of Br'er Art Lewis of Watertown Station, Boston, Mass., (J. S. A. Miss Lewis was married to Lieutenant Robert C. Bell Jr., U. S. N., who graduated from the Academy in 1923, then went on to M. I. T„ where he obtained a master's degree. While at Annapolis, this late addition to the list of 1908 sons-in-law played on the football team which won three out of four of the games with West Point. He played on the baseball and la crosse middy outfits, and now he is a con struction officer with the New York Ship building Cos., Camden, N. J.
Your reporter slipped down to the depot in Batavia on January 7 to see the Dartmouth special train, Hanover-bound, go through. As two Batavia youths got aboard, it was estimated there were 14 cars on the special and over 300 students. The train, it was learned by talking with a member of the class of 1937, carried library, observation, and all the other refinements of a Twentieth Century Limited. No townies, from any town, rode thereon, since the train was not rated on any of the timetables. It stopped only for Dartmouths. The train schedule called for arrival at the Norwich & Hanover station around 4 A.M. The cars were to be shunted to a side track and the boys allowed to sleep until 7:30 or thereabouts. Our informant assured us quite the reverse of the racket and high jinks one would expect upon a college train are the rule, on the Hanover-bound train. "You see they're pretty well tired out bythen, so they play cards, read, maybe, sitaround, and do a whole lot of sleeping." The locomotive number was 5241, and it pulled the lads from Chicago to Albany without taking time out.
Mort Hull, the classmate who kept the guitar alive all through the years until Rudy Vallee, Guy Lombardo, and so on, dis- covered it was the best means for tinkling vocal accompaniments on the radio, set a record during the autumn last consigned to the discard by Old Man Time. Mort attended the Virginia game at Hanover, and followed it up by watching the Green, in person, at Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and Princeton. This is believed to be a better 1934 score than any Dartmouth alumnus hung up. We attended the Yale game but, willingly confess, lacked the intrepid spirit necessary to carry on to the Ithaca denouement.
Mort, it is learned, is the current president of the Holyoke, Mass., Rotary Club, has selected for his 1935 slogan "Let's Go Places!" He has a nephew who is a junior at Yale and another at Andover. The latter will enter Dartmouth next fall.
Lauris G. Treadway, the hotel manager who does an interstate business with the facility with which an ordinary hostelry maestro pushes the button for ice water, was a recent witness in an investigation conducted at Greenfield as a result of the mysterious murder of Elliott Speer, headmaster at Mt. Hermon School. The New York Sun is the source of this Treadwayana. It says Larry had been quoted as overhearing a conversation of an incriminating nature in which a Speer murder-suspect took part.
John Thompson, New York lawyer with artistic tendencies, was among those present at the recent soiree of the Salamagundi Club, New York. He told Jack Clark, New Canaan water-color artist and patron of the camel's hair brush stores, a recent visit to the Larry Symmes at Scarsdale had found them all happy and flourishing.
Jack Everett of the State of Maine with an address at No. 39 Summer St., Hallowell, submits a Dartmouth believe-it-or-not which runs like this: "I was in Hanover onthe day of the Cornell game and found theboys in the tap room at the Commonshooked up with the broadcast of the YalePrinceton. And that was that."
New addresses, as reported by the Alumni Records Office in Hanover, are these: Charles M. Hall, Stone Gables, R. I.; Stanley G. Balcom, 6 Jacques Ave., Worcester, Mass.; Harry B. Kennedy, 1629 Stanley Ave., Hollywood, Calif. Imagine Harry (Old Spoke) going Hollywood!
Bob Marsden writes: "Met Clinton Dowin Laconia a few weeks ago all dressed up ina snappy forester's uniform. He is chiefpurchasing agent for the CCC in Maine,New Hampshire, and Vermont, and has hisoffice in Laconia."
Efforts are being made to keep this column alive the remainder of 1935, that is to and including June. A few of the boys responded to the correspondence pulmotor as operated by Jack Clark, Rosie Hinman and Art Lewis. To those who answered, many thanks. To the rest, a snappy news letter between now and February would be much appreciated.
Sydney Beaumont Whipple 1910, L'enfantterrible of Richardson Hall when 1908 were juniors, is none other than the Sydney B. Whipple, star reporter, who wrote the main stories, daily, for the United Press during the Lindbergh kidnap trial at Flemington, N. J.
Editor, L.W.GRISWOLD Batavia, N. Y.
