1917*
As the backs went tearing by, each Saturday in October witnessed a turnout of '17 rooters, their families and friends, thriving on excitement and imbibing the satisfaction of a few moments or hours together, if nothing else.
For a first experiment of its kind, New York's dinner the night before the Princeton game was a success. There was less of football fever which has accompanied Princeton games later in the season, but twelve men and several guests gathered for cocktails and dinner at the Dartmouth Club, joining the other classes afterward in the football smoker. Don Brooks, Mike Donehue, Summy Emerson, Major Fowler, Trott King, Ed McGowan, Len Shea, Art Stout, Len Reade, Ev Robie, Ralph Sanborn, and your scribe had a real time. Additional men reported at Princeton on Saturday the Bth were Duey Duhamel, Karl Koeniger, and Jim Rariden of New York, Major Charles Wolff of Tennessee, Bruce Ludgate, Art Jopson, and Heinie Wright of Philadelphia, and Bill Eaton of Pittsburgh. After the game we sat around the terrace at the Princeton Inn a long while, then Brooks, Emerson, McGowan, Len Reade, Stout, Towler, and Wolff, with wives, daughters, and friends motored to Blue Hills Plantation for dinner and dancing.
The following Saturday the Brown game at Hanover was enjoyed by Mott Brown, Ev Carroll, Will Fitch, Arch Gile, Roy Halloran, Dick Holbrook, Bunny Holden, Frank Huntress, Don Litchard, Spique Maclntyre, Sunny Sanborn, Butch Sherman, Walt Sisson, Charlie Stone, and Hal
Tobin, and rumor has it, there were a number of informal meetings around Hanover that evening.
As usual, no other gathering has quite the same tradition or emotional significance as the Harvard-Dartmouth game and all the surrounding social activities. The class dinner, October 14, at Wheelock's own Boston University Club was tops in attendance and fervor. Too bad you men in the West and South could not join with the 29 men seated at our long table: Don Allen, Andy Anderson, Asty Bartlett, Mott Brown, Gawge Currier, Sumner Emerson, Phil Evans, Will Fitch, Jim Fox, Roy Halloran, Ken Holden, Spique Maclntyre, Sam MacKillop, Edwin The McGowan, Connie Murphy, Sunny Sanborn, Ray Sault, Len Shea, Butch Sherman, Howie Stockwell, Bill Spearin, Rog Stone, Perc Streeter, Errol Thompson and his two boys, Linn '41 and Junior '43, Gene Towler, John Wheelock, and Heinie Wright. Additional men seen at the victory over the Crimson the next day were Slatz Baxter, Curly Carr, Nick Carter, Arthur Duhamel, Barney Gerrish, and Arch Gile. After the game a number of Seventeeners were able to continue cheering at Spique and Ruby Maclntyre's open house to the class, out at Belmont. Our informant said while he was still remembering to count he made note of the following men who had arrived with wives and friends: Currier, Evans, Halloran, Holden, Sanborn, Sault, Shea, Sherman, and Stockwell. Judging by the anecdotes drifting in it was a rousing party like last year's and those who could accept the Maclntyres' invitation represented adequately all the rest of the class.
And then came Yale, and that first (and second!) half Big Green Team, on the 29th. Gone are the times when the trek to New Haven and back was a cold and inhospitable, traditionless affair, at least for 1917, with our Bob and Anita Scott throwing open their doors so near the Bowl. This year there were plenty (22) to celebrate, and there was plenty to celebrate (24 to 6), and there was plenty celebratingl Dartmouth songs emanating from Bob's side porch are still echoing from East Rock and rolling down the Sound. Here's the gang: Asty Bartlett, Hal Bidwell, George Currier, Duey Duhamel, Willis Fitch, Doc Halloran, the Holden and Maclntyre team, Trott King, Palmer Kiser, Ed McGowan, Rudie Miller, Mill Palin, Bud Robie, Ray Sault, Bob Scott, Butch Sherman, Chan Steiger, Hunk Stillman, Gene Towler, Gordon Tracy, and Heinie Wright, not to forget many, many wives, four daughters, two sons, and numerous friends—85 in all.
It's too bad that many others have to rush straight from the game to special trains and miss the Scott hospitality. Reported at the game were Tom Cotton, Barney Gerrish, Karl Koeniger, Dick Morenus, Don O'Leary, Cliff O'Neill, Jack Saladine, Len Shea, and Charlie Wolff. And you'll all be delighted to hear that Hal and Mrs. Weeks came down from Exeter with some Dartmouth neighbors and Hal attended his first Dartmouth game in many a year.
Chuck Gilmore, laid up with lumbago, missed his first Yale game in fifteen years, and wired a salute to the Scotts and everyone there.
It is easy to think of quite a number of men who must have attended these October games but who were not reported. But 66 men listed above attended one or more of these four games, nearly 20 per cent of the class. This number will be augmented considerably when reports from the Cornell and Stanford games come in. The prospectus on the Stanford Pow-Wow discloses important committee work being assigned to Jack Baer, Ray Collerd, Al Whitaker, and Nase Young of San Francisco.
These fall gatherings set the stage for some lively dinners this winter in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, whose groups of Seventeeners challenge Chicago and Washington, D. C., to match them.
For the next two years Alumni Councillor Emerson will be chairman of the Alumni Fund campaign. '17 Up! .... Don Allen's first class reunion was the Boston dinner, and he swears he'll never miss another. After resigning his second lieutenancy in infantry with the A. E. F. in 1919, he traveled all over this country for a manufacturing concern in Fitchburg, his native heath, until 1923. Then ten years in the tropics with United Fruit, and what experiences! Since 1933 he has been auditor for several concerns and is now with Advertising Management, Inc., 143 Newbury St., Boston. He looks just as he did in college, and still belongs in the exclusive bachelor circle with Leonards Reade and Shea Jim Fox, with us for the first time in years, looked most youthful, healthy, and prosperous Palmer Riser's first sight of a class group since campus days was at New Haven. He has spent recent years in Minneapolis, and recently went through three months of operations and convalescence, but looks fine, expects to stay in New York and be with us often. Hunk Stillman had never attended a Scott party in all these years, and wanted to bet he'd match Bob on continuous attendance hereafter.
Since announcing Willis Fitch's book "Wings In the Night" in our November notes, your Sec. has had a chance to read it. Want a fast moving story that will grip you from start to finish? Want to get back that spring 1917 campus war psychology, that American idealism, that 1918 sensation of combat, will-to-win, and—well, read it, it's a great book. We ran across Fitch and the manager of the book department of Jordan Marsh Cos., Boston, at dinner in the University Club. Arrangements were made so that Bill will autograph a copy for you, if you will mail two bucks to this company, identify your connection with the author and request his personal autograph. That evening Willis was master of ceremonies at the Club's big beer party and song fest.
Bill Sewall writes from 194 Aurora St., Hudson, Ohio: "The Sewall family has been reunited at the above address—after six months of commuting between Akron and New York and a vacation in Vermont and Connecticut We were very fortunate to find a comfortable place in this little academy town. Cynthia is a senior in the local high school, and we are expecting to enjoy living in what is the closest approach to a New England village I have yet seen in Ohio Johnny graduated from New Hampton last June and is probably installed in 203 New Hampshire by now, although no reports received to date. We stopped there briefly in June and almost collided with a large and imposing Packard containing Walt and Irma Barrows, which resulted in an impromptu reunion in front of the gym. Same old Barrows, looking no different than he did twenty years ago You might warn the boys that I'm liable to pop up most anywhere, now that my ramblings take in all 48 states You might as well keep my mailing address as 500 South Main St., Akron."
In addition to John Sewall, Seventeeners have the following sons in the freshman class: Philip J. Blood, James G. Fowler, and John W. Hill Jr.
For lack of space, we're holding out grand letters from Mose Hutchins and Miss Jeanne Loudon, and Sam MacKillop's inside story on Nemo Streeter, golf miracle performer. Will let the cat out, in the January issue.
PHOTO OF ARTISTRalph "Sunny" Sanborn '17 has an evergrowing collection of Dartmouth photographs. It's his hobby, not his business,which is life insurance.
Secretary-Chairman, 18 Madison Ave., Cranford, N. J.
* 100% subscribers to the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, on class group plan.
