Class of 1902
While I pause to ask myself what is the proper salutation for the March visit to your home I realize that it makes very little difference what the salutation is, so long as the rest of the column contains news or other items of interest. Anyway, we all should feel that it is our column, not just a secretary's column.
The first item itself is certainly not news, since the fact was published two numbers since in a more official part of the MAGAZINE. Yet we ourselves have the effrontery to be a bit proud of the nomination of Doctor Art Ruggles as the candidate for alumni trustee of the College. Still it's hard to see why we should feel that way when we realize that it is in a sense an invitation to undertake further responsibility and hard work. And it can't be that we expand because 1902 has attained such ripe age that it can now provide suitable gray hairs for counsel. No, for many years other and later classes have given to the College worthy trustees. The real reason for our feeling is, I suspect, a very personal one, we know that the selection is an excellent one.
So here's a toast to Art, and a pledge to give him the best we have.
And while we are on the subject, let's press home one moot point. Art, if you should happen to get elected, do make it a part of your duty to take up the matter which Gus Parry placed before us. Anyway if you ever sign any diplomas use the blackest, never-fadingest ink made. Also perhaps you could do something about Gus and his washed-out sheepskin.
Of course you have all noticed that not only is Warren Chivers continuing his excellent work on skis, but now his brother Howard is coming along to continue the interest. And how these Hanover boys do show up when the skiing season is on!
The news from Arthur Pattrell, down at the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, Towson, Md., is no news, which Patt says is good news. However, there is plenty of work down there, and Patt is doing a mighty fine job. Actually he puts down as mere routine items which many of us would consider as matters of importance. But you know how it is with these doctor fellows, they write to me (that is, most of them), but they say that besides being busy they aren't doing anything.
A few days ago I mentioned to my wife a strange change of view which has come over me in the course of time. When I graduated from college the professors who had been graduated 20 or 25 years were practically has-beens with possibly a bright moment now and then. However I have now in my own classes members of the class of 1939 If Johnnie K. (of the class of 1868) seemed to men of 1902 to be of the elderly variety, how can I hope to convince men of a vintage 37 years after mine that I am practically a contemporary.
Such thoughts belong not in a sound philosophy. And just at this stage I receive, via the hand of Roy Hatch, a much saner view, originating under the once auburn thatch of a far wiser man than I—George S. Graham, M.D., Birmingham, Ala. "Backthere in the college days the man approaching his sixties was an antediluvian to us,but perspectives change, and now in mybetter moments I wonder whether actuallythe sixties may not be a period to look forward to as the season when we may hope tobegin to make use of our faculties, at anyrate of our mental faculties. I'll admit tosome doubts touching the physical side ofthe affair. My waist line, I note, has expanded several inches during the past fouror five years, and the eight or ten hairs stillextant upon my pate need careful nurtureagainst final extinction. But these areminor matters I tell myself and of littleconsequence as long as the motor can manage to function at somewhere near ratedhorse-power. If senility is in fact a derivative of mental outlook, then I'm going tokeep on disregarding the fact that my spectacle lenses are bifocals."
You know I think that's good, and here's hoping we can pass the resolution with a large majority, or even unanimously.
Harry MacKinnon, out in Springfield, Ohio, writes that his son, Harry Lachlan '34, is now in his second year at the University of Cincinnati Medical School. How these sons of ours are coming along! Here's good luck to this one, and to the many others.
STORIES BEING SHUFFLED
Some of you have perhaps realized by now that I have been shuffling the cards, because I haven't been telling you the stories of the men in the order I received them. Of course it's true, but I couldn't endure the monotony of having each year's tale of class letters exactly like the last, and the fellows who write first, well they are the fellows who write first, and do much to keep a secretary's hair from turning gray. In general I don't care when you write so long as you write, but some time I may have the nerve to paint for you a class secretary's picture of the hereafter, with reserved seats for those fellows who know what "by return mail" means. But I've gone far enough now.
The industrious vice president of the Fred F. French Management Corporation, Inc., one P. P. Edson, says that all four of his family are alive, in spite of the Democrats. The boys, Andrew '31, and Lefferts '34, are with the Trans-lux Movies. And since that letter arrived a card at Christmas proved the continued existence. Now, Eddy, don't be too hard on Democrats, you know we've got some fine men in the class whose political affiliations are in that direction, and we don't want them to think they aren't appreciated. On the other hand, I'd hate to have you believe that I didn't know what you were talking about.
Dyke Varney's present address is 525 Riverside Drive, North Tarrytown, N. Y.
Bert Munroe sends in his greetings on the stationery of E. T. Wright & Co., Rockland, Mass. That means shoes to some of you, and now to all of you.
Arba Irvin has moved from Tulsa to Chicago, where he is now with John B. Woodward, Inc., at 400 North Michigan Ave. Since this firm represents a considerable number of metropolitan newspapers, I take it that Arba still has the news business in mind most of the time. Anyway I'll bet Chicago is happy to have him back. Arba saw the Princeton and Columbia games, and then I suppose he went home wondering what the Yale game was like.
Now spring is here, and the earth is getting ready to smile again. Here's to all of you, and may you, too, on your various paths do likewise.
Secretary, 130 Woodridge Place, Leonia, N. J.
