1928*
A Wah-Hoo-Wah for Bud Ranney, who is playing an important part in mopping up the ambulance-chasing racket in Cleveland! Having been tipped off by Al Fowler that Bud was breaking some big stories in the Cleveland Press, we asked Bud to tell us about it. Here is Bud's letter: "About a year ago, The Cleveland Press and the Cleveland Bar Association decided to join forces in cleaning up a bad situation having to do with the ambulance-chasing racket and fraudulent accident liability claims. The Press 'loaned' me to the bar association; we set up a secret office, and started an undercover investigation. We struck plenty of 'pay dirt,' investigating the activities of approximately 150 attorneys and the doctors, policemen, hospital employees, undertakers, and others who were working with them in the racket. We ran into quite a lot of fraud, perjury, subornation of perjury, and jury tampering.
"The upshot of it was that a couple of weeks ago the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court appointed a down-state judge to come in here and conduct a court investigation, hearing the evidence that we have uncovered. This is now really just getting under way, and probably will last at least a year. We expect to get quite a number of disbarments, indictments, and resignations. We're going after everyone connected with the racket, including die doctors who give perjured testimony in accident suits.
"This, of course, is what I was working on when I saw you in New York last spring. At that time, we had to do everything we possibly could to keep it quiet, and in that respect we were almost unbelievably successful. The word didn't leak out until several days before the out-of- town judge came in, which has given us a big advantage. Needless to say, the Press now has the inside on a big story that will be breaking periodically for the next year."
Congratulations, Bud, and thanks for the letter.
Another example of courage and determination we would like to call to your attention is Ace Anthony, who is fighting to regain his health. For the past six months he has been in bed in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Maryland, and a letter from you would help a lot. While he is laid up, his wife, Grace, is running their tea-room, "The Country Gentleman," and gas station at Street, Md., 9 miles north of Belair. Whenever you are driving on Route 1, make it a point to stop at the Anthonys' place. Grace writes that Mai Halliday and wife and son have been there twice recently. We sent Grace the reunion movies, and she says that Ace enjoyed them tremendously.
These two 400-foot reels of 16mm movies of our Tremendous Tenth have been edited and titled and are now available to members of the class, on application to the Secretary. The film, part of it in color, was enthusiastically received at the '28 dinner in New York on September 29 and was shown again at the dinner on October 26. It was shown at the '28 dinner in Boston the night before the Harvard game, and will be the feature of a '28 gathering in San Francisco before the Stanford game.
Speaking of football reminds us that the Princeton-Dartmouth game yielded some news for these columns. Treasurer Bruce Lewis and Ernestina had as their guests in Nutley, N. J., over that week-end, Pinkie and Edna Dixon, of Piedmont, W. Va., Virgil and Virginia McNeil of New Haven, and your Secretary. We had a chance to at least say "hello" to Bill and Gertrude Heep, Bud Weser, Jack McGrath, Chuck Bruder, Wally and Natalie Carr, Phil and Helen Orsi, Charles and Becky Lamson, Hammie and Gracia Hammesfahr, Paul and Sonia Ahlers, John and Vera Flanagan, Bill and Beatrice Marx, Walt and Ethel Simpson, Ernie Wright and a Miss Wheeler We learned that the Marxes have a daughter, Peggy Ann, 10 months old Dick and Margaret Frame have a boy, Richard Jr., now two months old, we learned from John Flanagan.
Al Fowler, who is with the Ohio Bell Telephone Co. in Cleveland, says there is plenty of enthusiasm there over the Cornell game at Ithaca; he and Edna are going on the Dartmouth-Cornell special train. We're also indebted to Al for information on other Cleveland '28ers whom he sees: Clint Goodwin is still helping liquidate the defunct Union Trust Bank; Joe Goodwillie is with Robert Heller & Associates (efficiency experts) and travels a lot; Maury Cogan has a son, Maurice Jr Art Kneerim is an account executive with the Merrill Anderson Co., 51 East 42 St., New York Jim Newton has moved to 855 Great Plain Ave., Needham, Mass Dr. Charles T. Hazzard has moved to 2 Park Lane, Mt. Vernon, N. Y Dr. Gordon Meade is now located at the Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N. Y Walter Molina has moved from St. Louis to Boston, still in the insurance business, and is living at 71 Hastings St., West Roxbury Lloyd Sammis, with the U. S. Rubber Products Co. in Naugatuck, has moved to 45 Walnut St. in that town The only librarian in the class is Dick Sullivan, of the Lawrence (Mass.) Public Library.
There was considerable shhhing by internes and florists on October 6 at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children when Millicent and Edmund Heyn advised a pediatrically inclined populace that their first child, Sarah Warfield, was now a thing of rare beauty and delight to proud parents, frightened friends and the local laundry-man Makie and Ann Makepeace moved last month to Scarsdale, where they are close neighbors of the Heyns and the Millikens Bill Monaco is teaching American history at the Washington Irving High School in New York City Tavey Taylor traveled the greatest distance to our Tenth Reunion, coming from Oakland, Calif Hank and Jean Leach were second and also win a green derby; we can't remember announcing their marriage in these columns, but it's never too late, so here goes: On October 9, 1937, at River Forest, Ill., Henry Leach 111 and Miss Jean Louis Chapman were married; they now live at 909 Michigan Ave., Evanston, Ill.... Phil MacKown is now with the Kalamazoo Stove Co., 131 Water St., Binghamton, N. Y., as a supervisor.
Dick Brooks, formerly manager of the Sears, Roebuck store at Amsterdam, N. Y., has been promoted to manager of their store at Schenectady Fred Davis is hard at work on a novel at his apartment at 405 East 54 St., New York Ed Collins has moved to 118 Marblehead St., North Andover, Mass Wes Smith is a securities salesman, with an office in the American Casualty Building, Reading, Pa. ....Jim Sullivan is now in Jamestown, N. Y., representing the Commercial Credit Corp., and living at 143 Wilton Ave.... Steward Wright has left Philadelphia to take a position in Minneapolis, where he is living at 2719 Park Ave One of the new lecturers at the New York Stock Exchange Institute this winter will be Wayne Van Orman, chief of De Coppet & Doremus' order room.
A card from Joe Smith "announces the arrival of a charming little model named Marcia Cole on September 21; now on display at 401 Lawrence St., Ann Arbor, Mich." .... In the July issue of the '28Campaigner we told of the death of Ben Swisher in an accident in his home town of Waterloo, lowa. We are grateful to his father for sending us a copy of Black Hawk County Bar Association memorial services for Ben on September 13, at which he was highly eulogized by a number of members of the bar.
Send in some news items about your family, yourself, or some other '28er The supply is low and we need your help .... you can always find our address at the top of the class column. Another call for help! Recent snapshots of '28ers in modest and characteristic poses solicited for the class album.
Secretary, Tucker, Anthony & Co. 120 Broadway, New York
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