Class of 1934
Back from summer's lap, and plunging into fall's business and scholastic activity, the New York contingent of 1934 paused long enough last night to drink a small beer and break bread at the Dartmouth Club's first dinner of the season. One of '34's most successful conclaves, it drew nigh on to 30 loyalists, officially opened a year of /srsi-Wednesday-in-the-month meetings, served as indication that 1934, more than any other class, to our knowledge, has preserved an amazing amount and quality of camaraderie among its members. We suspected it all along.
Before I get any further, may I put in a plea for contributions. Some time, come next doomsday or Cogswell's revolutionsometime, the Class Secretary will reciprocate and write you some letters, but right now, filled with an uncompromising desire to get along on as little work as possible, your scribe issues by means of this general letter a hearty invitation for more mail.
Around the table at this aforementioned gathering on September 9 was passed a mysterious, blank piece of paper. To the wondering group of diners it soon became clear that the 1934 columnist was fishing for news material in what he considered an unusually fertile field. (Some people like split infinitives—l happen to be that way about mixed metaphors.) Worked upon between courses of the Club's delectable fare, and between the guffaws and splutterings brought on by Hulsart's badinage, the paper finally came back. The many exotic scribblings on it, properly edited for spelling and maledictions, run like this:
Hank Werner, after a swell summer vacation spent in a cottage along with J. Danzig, goes back to law school at N. Y. U. Jerry Denzig— in New York this summer, with a little time spent in Bermuda, Detroit, and Chicago. "Chicago was just astop-over, so couldn't visit. N.B. I am stilldoing Special Features (arranging spotnews, sports broadcasts, etc.) at WOR; Iam not an announcer. Radio listenersamong '34 will agree." Len Harrison—in Hanover this summer, then at camp in New Hampshire with Sy Lewis, who is going back to Yale Law after a year at Harvard Business. Dave Hedges—Trying to hold down Wall St. and the lower end of Fifth Ave., so that the uptown escapades of Hulsart at al. will not trip us up. Few drinks in the Palmer House in Chicago with Tom Hicks, who takes nothing but champagne cocktails now.
Van Thome says that Mac Collins is in town working for the A. T. & T., that he ran into him two hours after Mac came to town. "I am going to Hanover the end ofSeptember, will report then—otherwisehave just been seeing the horses run inSaratoga." Dick Gruen is back from a couple of weeks in Bermuda, ready for second year law school at night. "Ran into Jerryand Hank going down to the Coral Isle.Reports say that they finally got back."Bill Rench was "honorably removed from Harvard Business in June. Degree on scrap paper and in English, hardly worth the trouble. One week in St. Louis and back to New York, tramping the streets for Penn. Mutual Life Insurance Co.
Rollie Morton—Working downtown with the rest of the boys, trying to get a foot into Wall St., and out deep-sea fishing off Montauk Point for a vacation. Al Jacobson— Selling woolens for J. P. Stevens and traveling to Boston to sell the cloak and suiters up there. Correspondence with Russ Ireland reveals that he is to be a poppa this fall. This is probably as good a time as any to mention that Al was married on May 2 to Miss Lucile LeMaitre. And incidentally, the other night Al reported (for our own self-protection we've got to quote someone on this yarn, and it might as well be Jake—he did tell it to us) .... that Willy Leveen, who, it will be remembered, joyfully proclaimed last winter that he was going to be married in the spring with flowers and rice and old shoes and half the class as ushers .... he who had said all these things attended a house party in Virginia with his fiancee, and quite of a sudden bundled her into a roadster and sped to Elkton, Md. More than one member of the class would like to have been there.
Bob Ford—"Trying to beat down theJapanese competition on incandescentlamps (light bulbs to you) in the exportfield with Westinghouse 'quality' lamps(adv.). Dick Houck, graduated from Harvard Business, is now with Mohawk CarpetMills. Jack (Z Psi) Gilbert is just in froma ringer job with the Barbary Coast toSouth America, and back to the grind inBoston. Hank Rigby returns for his lastyear to Yale Law to hand them the knockout blow."
Here is part of a letter from Jim Dunn, who is now with the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Biological Survey, Orange, Texas ". . . . Perhaps the imposing letterhead will explain my desertion of my native New England— I'm satisfying that urge for wandering that I've kept pent up inside of me these many years. Ten months on a drafting stool in the N. H. Highway Department did a very efficient job of crystallizing my desires, and I grabbed at a chance to rove a bit. Took the civil service exam for this with my tongue in my cheek, and no one was more surprised than I at this result. In this land of patronage and graft I got a job without enlisting one iota of political drag—maybe all's right with part of the world after all!
"Officially I am an under engineering aide with this outfit, and actually my duties are to assist in the surveying of various game refuges throughout the country. This one is a large preserve for migratory waterfowl in the marshland of the Gulf of Mexico. Such things as snakes and 'gators and nigger cooks continue to amaze me, and I revel in the novelty of my surroundings. The Cajuns are very interesting. They are the direct descendants of the Arcadians of Evangeline fame, and steadfastly refuse to leave their ancestral acres despite their apparent poverty. The combination of Louisiana corn and a Cajun dance is a wicked one, but I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Brawls and knifefights are the order of the evening, and the Cajun lass who isn't the inspiration for at least one scrap is humiliated as thoroughly as any wallflower.
"Here's news of some of the Thayer School gang: Jerry Hall has his nose to the ground with International Casement Corp. in Jamestown, N. Y. Ike Besse is in a mill in Worcester, Mass Ed Brown is with Metcalf & Eddy in Boston. . . . . George Collins is with Zimmerman Mills in Philly .... can you tell me what in blazes Mahoney is doing and where?"
A recently acquired post card from Link Daniels showed the summit of the Zugspitze and someone who might have been Link standing on it. At any rate he reached the top, but paid the price, he said, for sampling too much of that superb Munich brew. "Coming back for a job next month."
And also a card from Ozzie Ruebhausen in England, where he is taking a little vacation before his last year at Yale Law. He adds a teaser about a lot of good stories he's been hearing on the lives of the great, which Time magazine might love to hear. Ozzie hopes to hop down from New Haven for a few class dinners.
Dick Hardt, having gone through a couple of years of experimentation—a pillarto-post sort of existence as camp counselor and forest fighter, gas welder on a car assembly line, and door-to-door gadget salesman (all this between not infrequent trips to Hanover)—finally got himself nicely fixed up in the real estate business.
Late in June came an announcement through the mails of the marriage June 27 of Miss Elfrieda Boy to Flamen Ball Jr., in Cleveland Then, too, an announcement received of the April 18 marriage of Mrs. Janet Wrigley Eddy and Robert Mayer Bennett, at New Cumberland, W. Va A May clipping from the Boston Herald proclaimed the engagement of Jim Benson to Miss Louise P. Bennett, of Brookline, and mentioned that the couple planned to be married in August. Here it is September.
Herm Spitzer reports that Stan Silverman is recuperating from his severe illness and expects to be back in New York in a few weeks with high hopes and many promises Bob Kolbe reports Bob Balgley working for Filene's in Boston.
Secretary, 126 Beaufort PL, New Rochelle, N. Y.
