Class of 1919
The long, leisurely days of summer are gone and we regret it. For three months we sit relaxed with never a worry about closing dates for Alumni Notes. The perfect calm of this summer was hardly broken at all. True, along the first of August, as we were struggling valiantly to get a cool drink inside of us, our daughter came in the front door with the announcement that President Roosevelt and Mr. Hoover had just arrived and wished to see me. She told me calmly enough, as if these two came fortnightly and together. It seemed to me to call for some investigation, however, and poking out on to the back porch I discovered Rock Hayes and Spen Dodd. It was exactly twenty minutes after twelve, but they stated firmly that nothing could keep them for lunch .... their wives were away and they were headed for some distant point to play golf. And sure enough, about three o'clock, after eating everything in the house, they left for somewhere.
Spider and Bea Martin arrived later that same day. They spent the afternoon and part of the evening with us, making our mouths water with the details of a trip they were about to set forth on. They planned to cross the continent, stopping off at all the parks and other points of interest .... coming back through the Canadian Rockies with a few days at Lake Louise. We got a post card from somewhere along the way, but have heard nothing since their return. Spider was planning his itinerary so that he would have some time with Jack Rose out there on the Coast.
Our boy whom we send to cover Commencement each year reports the following Nineteeners in evidence during that event: Bob Williams, Max Norton, Bill McCarter, Cottie Larmon, Hal Morse, John McMillan, Ray Adams, Pete Gray, Chet Gale, Earl Blaik, Bunny Collins, Spider Martin.
Spen Dodd's niece, who was visiting him just after a stay with Professor Longhurst's daughter in Hanover, told Spen about a very interesting Dartmouth boy she got to know coming back on the boat from Europe. Spen asked his name and was told it was Cottie Larmon, whereupon Spen, the illusion-breaker, told the young lady that Larmon was old enough to be her grandfather. To this she replied indignantly that he was not; he was very young indeed, and she firmly refused to believe that he had been in Spen's class until Spen produced the 1919 Aegis.
Post cards dispatched from the Maritime Alps would seem to indicate that Jane and San Treat had put in some time in Europe this summer The usual newspaper clippings seem to indicate that the great skipper Bill Picken is sailing madly all over the Great South Bay and Long Island waters in general. To us who confine our sailing to taking the New York boat about every other year, we find one of the headlines a little confusing. It says, "Picken'sHigh Seas Keeps Lead, Finishing Secondin Star Brush." Obviously this is different from potato racing and croquet, where keeping the lead means finishing firstbut in any event we know that Bill is king of the skippers year in and year out, so we guess it's all right.
And while we're on the subject of Picken, Paisley was in town for a few minutes last month, bursting from his skin with well-being and as round as a new picked blueberry. In spite of the fact that his larynx was completely out of commission, he managed to tell me in a hoarse whisper about a call he made on Bill a little earlier in the summer. He arrived at his house just at dusk and found Bill a little vague, as if his mind were elsewhere. He finally learned that the annual meeting of the yacht club had been the night before, and that Bill had just now been roused by a telephone call, telling him that even if he did not remember the circumstances clearly, that he had been elected commodore. When Bob left, Bill was still wearing that same puzzled expression, as he tried to reconstruct the scene of his triumph the night before.
We owe Paul Halloran our most abject apology. Last fall he sent us some very interesting data about himself playing golf with several of our most famous professionals and being mixed up in many other activities down at Quantico. Wishing to do the job in the right way, we saved it for a Nineteen News. The first couple of these were so crowded with dope about football parties, past and to come, that we couldn't get it in, and then we went back to the hospital, and never were able to use the material throughout the winter. This is a sad state of affairs, for the thing we need most in life is just such material and from every one .... to Paul, "We're sorry!" —to the rest of you fellows, send us some news. And while we're on the subject of Paul, who never stops doing the thing unusual, he has now gone off with his family to be public works officer at the U. S. Naval Station in Tutuila on the island of Samoa. I have been told that there are ten thousand natives on the island and about twelve white families. The Pacific airliners stop at the island, and Paul plans to get to know the pilots so well that he will be able to step aboard one a year from next June and land in Hanover for his Twentieth in about the same time it will take Buttenwieser to drive up from Manhattan.
According to the football schedules, which have just arrived with the application blanks from Bill McCarter, the Harvard game comes on October 23. Phil Bird called up just the other day to announce that we have reservations as usual for a class dinner the night before the game at the University Club. We will also have our luncheon in Cambridge the noon before the game for wives, families, and friends. This has become a regular affair by popular demand, and is something you should get to if you are in town for the game.
Secretary, Framingham Center, Mass.
