Class of 1935
Today is New Year's Day, and the old year is being left behind with no particular regret. It was a period of short turns and encores, wars, crises, and misunderstandings. Much will not be understood until men have died, documents and memoirs have come to light, and the gum has loosened on the lips of a few prominent English statesmen. But this is not a political column. The most I can say is hang on to the Edward VIII stamp that came on the class letter a few months ago. It will be interesting some day—and if you want some more, I'll stick 'em on letters as long as they last.
The other day I received a light blue envelope from Jackson Heights, L. 1., containing the following:
"Dear Mr. Fitzhugh: It seems to me thatit's about time someone reported the birthof our daughter, Carolyn Jean, on April21, 1936. Reading your appeals for newsjust broke my heart, (!) so I decided thatif the men of '35 won't respond properly,it's time the gals took a hand in this business I'm glad to have done my bit!" It's signed Betty A. Montgomery (Mrs. Richard K. Montgomery).
Like the League of Nations, action by the Class Committee proceeds with great deliberation, but the class baby has to be a boy, and so it looks as if the last obstacle for Douglas Eugene Saunders, born September 21, 1936, at Westbrook, Maine, had been removed. There is hereby issued a decree nisi to that effect. It will be made absolute next month.
In a flood of Christmas cards which have deluged the Porter's Lodge there have been some remarkably good letters. Al Sherwood writes from the Harvard Business School . . . helluva lot of work.It's being Harvard detracts from the place ..." but he likes it even so. Bob Collins, Steve Dorsey, Paul Van Antwerpen, Doc Richardson, Neil Roberts, Moorehouse, Guy Briggs, Joe Waters, Fred Axelrod, Bill Lingley, and Bob Richter are also surviving.
"Sy Millstein is working with his Father'splace—the N. Y. Merchandising Company,or something; Freddie Mebel is going toMed School, Wyn Garth is down in Alabama managing his Aunt's or his Grandmother's estate. Jim West was. up to theroom after the Harvard game (and beforeit too)—he's now a combined collectorsalesman for Metropolitan Life in Bostonand doing fairly well at it from all indications. Bill George is now over on your sideof the water—he got himself married aboutSeptember 10 or thereabouts and sailed fora year of study in France a week or so later.A crowd of us including Macmullen,Frost and Keenan saw them off—more orless—at least, we had a party the night before. Mac is with the Brooklyn SavingsBank as a general all-arounder, Frost isstill with Seaboard Surety, while the Redis in a Brooklyn Law Office. All three goto Brooklyn Law at night.
"Oran Waterman passed his bar examinations in N. Y. a while ago—the firstone of the bunch to get that far I guess." Just what good is this college education?
Here's a bright red Christmas card from Charlie Drackett, with a steaming plum pudding on the front. He was over this side last summer after a siege at Ohio State "Ag" school and is now settling down to real farming near Cincinnati. (Cincinnapolis has always been the term referring to Charlie's home town.) Which reminds me that Dick Howell is becoming an authority on farm machinery for his father's company, J. I. Case, in Racine. Boyd Rogers says that Dick knows more about tractors than the author of the Earthworm Tractor stories. "He's even figured out how to make money farming." Have you heard about this, Charlie?
Boyd himself is still with the International Shoe Company. "The work is interesting but as yet I can't consider retiringon all the money I've made. It seems International is like a large funnel, with30,000 employees at one end and a jewbig-shots at the other, and I still find myself in democratic company."
The best story is about Danny Kerwin. He wrote: "I had planned to rent a housealong with a few other guys for, of course,immoral and licentious purposes, butfinally decided to save both money andmorals, and so moved in with the Christiansat the Evanston Y. M. C. A." Latest reports, says Boyd, reveal Kerwin and the Christians still on speaking terms. "And as forhis job, it seems second only to BillKempf's. (Beer-beER-BEER!) It seemsDan's company has a lot to do with varioustrade associations, and the heads of thecompany, being shrewd men, put Kerwinto work on the National Maltsters or somesuch outfit. Anyway, half the job is drinking beer and liking it. Net Result: Kerwinnow has 160 lbs. packed on his not toorangy frame." Net scarcely seems the word for it!
Boyd gives some more news of the Grassand Blanket Club, subsidiary of the St. Louis Dartmouth Alumni Club. At all sessions H. Clay Deckert figures prominently. "We found out on the sly the other dayfrom an attractive and most conscientiousfeminine shyster in Harry's class (Washington U. Law School) that H. C. D. getsthe best results on the least work of anyone there. Habits acquired while majoringin Socy, no doubt!" Thanks for the card, Harry.
Frank Cornwell, like Hagerman, deserted the Telephone Company and is now "back in town (St. Louis) with a nicejob in the advertising department of theBrown Shoe Co.—a second-rate outfit upthe street that also sells pretty many shoes."
As I remember Frank's card from last year, it had a top hat and a cane on it. This year Harry Marchmont-Robinson has stolen a march and uses the same some- what sophisticated symbols. Harry is still at Penn Med School. Boyd closes, pining that contrary to the general trend, "noneof the local contingent seem to be gettingmarried or engaged. We're getting a bitsuspicious of one or tico .... there's justa lack of heiresses to support the boys inthe style to which they're not accustomed."
Ben Harriman chemiking away down in the U. of P., is also pining, still pinene, I mean. It seems that his contract—anyway, he's still a bachelor. But the pinene wasn't so bad. "Dame Fortune smiled on my molecules " The Master's degree fol- lowed, and now it's what ho for optically active halides, the polychlorides of neopentane, and a P haich D.! Ben and a couple of other fellows got them so excited about skiing at Penn State that there is now a new ski run, "a big white ribbon drapedin folds down the mountainside," a 35 meter jump, a ski club and a ski team.
Something to think about: "Chemistry, skiing, and women are thethree most fascinating pursuits in life.Don't ask which ranks first, for I couldn'tsay."
A long, and very interesting letter from Ed Offutt still a "fixture at the Rice Institute in Houston and liking it," still in zoo and leaning towards medical zoology, and hopefully "one degree wiser when June arrives." His contract in a co-ed institution, does specify bachelorhood. "A good point,eh?" says Ed.
Last summer in a Memphis hotel he ran into Bob Hage, who is apparently trying to compete with Danny Kerwin for the corpulence prize—"looked all the worldlike old Johnnie Nutter (who played basssax in the band years and years ago) andwas a miniature for Stan Laurel in onlyone direction." Occupation: Vicks Vaporub traveling, and now in NY office. Typical crack: "Hell, the South's easy for anortherner to go great guns in."
After a visit to the Bankart's (Mr. and Mrs.) with Mac MacLellan who on the side talked with a Swift man for New England Mutual's benefit, Ed went back to Hanover for a couple of days, spying Will Kempton, Dan King in the Sayre regime at the Inn and now at Princeton. By the way, Ed wants to know if Mink Hawley, way back on August 4, was crowded by a dastardly driver on the bridge in Goffstown Center, N. H. If so, 'twas Eddie thinking about encephalitis or something. Then out to Michigan where Johnnie Glavis was discovered to be recuperating from a strenuous year and summer session by a holiday in the trackless forest. The D. O. C. spirit gets 'em after a while!
Cameron Duncan was spied going into a football game in Houston and rumor has it that he is engaged.
ODDS BODKINS: Al Brush is with General Motors; Riv Jordan missed Review at Harvard Law by one place; Bill Chapman's with Price Waterman in New York; Jim Alfring is with the Aeolian people in St. Louis. Charlie Evans was with Robert Gair (paper goods, etc.) in Piermont, N. Y., grabbed the first plane to St. Louis to take a job with the Alton Box and Board outfit. He lives with a Princeton man and argues about that 13-13. Stan Benson, who is finishing up at Springfield College in psychology, is reputed to "behitting the tops in everything."
Christmas Cards from: Corlett, Parachini, Haas, Cummings, Harbaugh (who's better), Deckert, Berkey, Clark, Irish, Huck, Arthurs, Hulett, Gilchrist, Croninger, Marchmont-Robinson, Drackett Jewett, and Brooks. Steve's card is photographic, appropriately enough, and shows him beaming coyly out of a mass of Santa Claus whiskers and flanked by two demure youngsters who I suspect know it's Steve all the time.
Parting thought: "It certainly doesn't develop a fellow'ssense of modesty to be talking about himself so, but since it's news for the ALUMNIMAGAZINE we need, then to hell with modesty." Good point.
Secretary, Trinity College, Cambridge, England
