Class of 1902
Here we are again, this time with hopes that you have been hibernating successfully but with occasional inner urges to get out and circulate more freely. Well, it won't be long now, and some of us will need to get limbered up to be ready for the trek to Hanover in June.
What's the news? A few sparkling items which arrived other than by mail. For example, a lunch with Shorty Sanborn and his wife in town for a change. They got it all right, New Year's Eve in Times Square. So many people around they almost forgot to notice the litde doctor from Providence. The Sanborns are certainly planning for that June party, too.
Tom Hubbard's oldest boy was out to dinner the other night. I tried to make him look like Tom, but most of the time it didn't work. Occasionally, however, a trick of pose or a glance reminded me that I had seen its like before. Funny about those things, isn't it?
A little envelope from D. Lyons indicated that he is much better and we all hope to see him, shall I say, as rotund as ever, or would it be better to put it, his old self again? Anyway, Dennis, here's to your health.
To go on now with my letters, you know I have to be careful with them, because after all that is my chief source of supply, and the number is not too large. But you shouldn't miss this from Fitzgerald, whose modesty is his own. (Fitzy, we all think you are a corker, and in spite of your retiring disposition write you on the honor list.)
"One of the pleasant experiences of the past two years has been the renewal of contacts with other members of the class through my activities as class agent. While this as a job I did not seek or welcome, when called upon I was willing to do my bit and 'accepted the nomination' with some trepidation, but with the intention of doing my best to justify the confidence placed in one who after all has been an obscure member of the class. And I was surprised and gratified to find that there are compensations for the time and labor involved.
"Reminiscing, I wondered how many in the class remembered me. Perhaps a few recalled me as one of the monitors whose duty it was to report cuts from church, chapel, and class. Possibly some remembered me as the chap who collected their laundry, had it done and delivered it, all for the immense price of 25 cents a week. But my proudest distinction was as a member of the college band, whether any one remembers it or not.
"A second clarinetist was needed. They knew I was somewhat musically inclined, because Hub Adams and I were the proud possessors of a piano. (Cost, $25.00!) Could I play the clarinet? I said no, I knew nothing about it. But it was easy, and they would borrow one for me. So I learned to play the scale, and, to fill the ranks, proudly marched with the band giving an imitation of a clarinet player.
"I'll never forget the football game with Brown at Providence on a Thanksgiving Day. A collection had been taken to send the band to the game. The temperature was at or near zero. Can you imagine even an expert playing the clarinet with gloves on? But gloves didn't handicap me. Oh, no! My imitation was just as good, or bad, as ever. Yet we beat Brown, and I like to imagine that the college band, of which I was so insignificant a member, gave some little inspiration to our team on that frigid November day. And when in the fall" of 1935 I was so fortunate as to see Dartmouth lick Yale for the first time, while it was thrilling, for me it did not match the thrill of that victory at Providence some 35 years before.
"The Dartmouth Alumni Fund is a great institution. It preserves, during life- time, the college ties. It gives us an opportunity, to whatever extent we find it possible, to show our appreciation of the education and the experiences the College afforded us. It makes all of us feel and proudly realize that we are still a living part of the College. Long may it wave!"
Amen. Some of this "inside stuff" is beginning to come out. I lived in Wentworth Hall for four years, as did Fitzy, and while I had not rated him as a Paderewski, or whoever it is, I had credited him with being a clarinet player. Now I find that it was only an imitation. Next thing I know somebody will say that the band was only an imitation, and that will not go. It is on record that in senior year General Stone was manager of the band. I roomed with the General, and if there were no records and only faint recollections of the past, I would still know for at least a million of little incidents that he was manager of the band. Ergo, there was a band, and likewise ergo under subhead clarinet, read Fitzgerald.
Jim Huntington's oldest son is now a third-year student at Harvard Medical School, and his youngest entered Harvard last fall, having graduated at Exeter in June.
Billy Merrill reminds me that he is one of the men of the class who at the present time have sons in college. And again I say that it is a pity we can't have a reunion at a time when we can get all those sons together. Billy's daughter graduated last June from Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Conn.
Arthur V. Ruggles expected to finish work with which he has been engaged since 1928, relating to specifications for cast-iron pipe. This task, a part of Arthur s work, was assigned to a sectional committee for the American Standards Association. Arthur was in Hanover in June, played golf, saw Bill Murray starting around in a match, and now wishes he had hung around "to learn if Bill was on the winning side. Bill's golf is not at its best in June, I understand; you see the students have a habit of using the course, so that mere professors are rather in the way. If that match had been about the middle of September, then the outcome could not have been in doubt.
Watch your calendar!
Secretary, 130 Woodridge Place, Leonia, N. J
