Class of 1934
Given a few more days of grace on this offering, your correspondent might really be able to turn out something to warm your toilworn hearts, for this Friday will see me turn my back upon the wolfish city and make with all possible dispatch for White River Jet. and points north. This coming week-end I get back at all you armchair readers for making me write this monthly fright for your alleged entertainment, and the College takes me and its other alumni secretaries into its greengrassed bosom for a two-day spell. The annual Secretaries Convention is indeed the annual shot in the arm.
Another thing that comes once a year is this department's grumbling submission to the invasion into its holy premises of one sacrilegious W. H. Scherman, who in editing '34's Alumni Fund newsletter, manages to steal most of the available thunder and make off with it. Only possible excuse for his tabloid is that it brings in money, and I won't even mention that Bill's extra postcard responses keep my own grist mill running for months afterward. Like a true ingrate, I'll merely remark that when the Class Secretary and the Newsletter Editor work within a dozen blocks and see each other several times a week, somebody gets milked for news and, boy, do I feel dry right now. If Scherman could only answer this with his own poison pen, we could have a local Benny-Allen fiasco, but unfortunately for Scherman this hits the newsstands too late for his press-run.
In the absence of more dignified things to talk about, I will now tell in some detail of a cocktail party which I attended last night. It seems that Tom and Jean Hicks . . . . er, I mean Jean and Tom Hicks, who were recently joined in h. wedlock in Chicago, were stopping in New York on the way to Europe. This rather commendable but comparatively sane event was taken by the Callaways (a mad couple) as a signal to gather under their hospitable roof from 6 to 9 of an evening all the ragtag and bobtail element of the class of You Know What. People were there whom we thought had given up such sporting events years ago and had retired to a corner of the library to gather dust. .... Mac Carter, for instance, who tried to make people believe he had just returned from closing up Miami's season, and who said he ran into Dave Bradley down there managing an orchestra at the Royal Palms Hotel Vin Cerow, who claimed that he has all this time been in New York working actively in the Guaranty Trust Company, and who reported that Karl Maas is probably making more money selling for the Heil Truck Company than any two other contemporaries you could name.
Hicks, when called upon for a speech, said, if we heard him correctly, and I for one didn't hear a word, "Don't I haveenough trouble already, but Wilmot'sgotta come to Chicago."
Last time I saw Carl Hess, and in fact the first time I had seen him since Commencement, was two months ago, when he came East for Sweeney's cocktail party. Now what does he do but leave Chicago again when he hears glasses clinking in the Callaway cupboard.
It is determinedly rumored that Wilmot will never again ride in a trolley car, for in the particular ride I refer to, between Callaway's and some dining establishment up in New York City's South Albany section, his good wife Connie, whom they say is usually good to him, knocked his hat off, out the window, and beneath the grinding wheels of the next train. The two of them even deserted the mob and looked for it, but they gave up the search when they got down to 14th St.
Stop me if you've heard all these things before.
Among the other guests were such rabble-rousers as Lila and Bill Knibbs, Beth and Bill Scherman, Tom Clark and a charming Miss Coogan, Steve Meigher, Dave Hedges, Jerry Danzig, Harry Gilmore_who went about the terribly upsetting business of pulling chairs out from under other people's dates-, 1935's able and volatile emissary Bud Fraser, who was tapering off from a week-end of wedding receptions, Henry Werner, Mary and Mac Collins, Ray Hulsart-who is trying to get even with me for the many stories he claims I've spread about him, and whose eyes are searchingly riveted on me from whatever corner of the room he has settled in—, Dick Gruen, who was the maitre d'hotel and who performed the invaluable job of translating the waiter's mumbles into fine clear-cut English.
There were countless other people walking up and down along the sofas, coming out of the icebox, and turning the gas stove off and on, but I never met them, and I think they can go for the moment.
Of course, all this unseemly levity is just embarrassed persiflage to lead up to the bare fact that this issue will not contain the "summing up" so glibly promised last month. However, one of these fine days, come next fall perhaps, when the writer feels in a more thoroughly statistical mood, such facts on endless facts will be offered. Then too, the class records will have been efficiently revised by the College, there will have been more June marriages to include, and God willing there will not be any cocktail parties so fresh in the mind to turn the thoughts away from solemn and avowed duty.
Withal, there are many good deeds to report, so once more hold on to those chapeaux, gentlemen.
For instance, there was the marriage of Dorothy Virginia Dever and David Loring Murphy on the seventh of May, in Roxbury.
And then there was the marriage of Barbara Phillips Price and Arthur Hunt Willis on the seventh of May, in New York. At home now at 10 Park Ave.
And the marriage of Nancy Andrews and Andrew Donaldson Jr. on the fifteenth of May, in Fort Thomas, Ky. At home at 1038 Delta Ave., Cincinnati.
Josephine Frances Sands and William Lynn Wilson were married in Attica, N. Y-, on the sixteenth of April. At home at 1825 Mount Hope Ave., Rochester.
Grace Wallace Means and Walter Arthur Arnold were married in Glen Ridge, N- J-, on the twenty-seventh of May.
It should be recorded at this time that the New York '34 dinner group (which, incidentally, is on the constant increase-and which will hold its last pre-summer meeting on Wednesday, June 1) through the well-guided efforts of your scribe, tendered a very friendly dinner invitation to Richards Vidmer of the Herald Tribune sports department. The particular occasion was brought about by the several knockabout phrases Mr. Vidmer has recently uttered in his column about Dartmouth, caused by the sophomoric outporings of some hysterical undergraduates who took rather ridiculous exception to some innocuous stories he told in perfectly good faith. Our purpose was to have Vidmer the man meet a few young Dartmouth men, who, as I so aptly and expertly expressed it, may still be a trifle wet around the ears and may thus be able to explain, although with more balance, the outbursts of the yearling mind. I think the chances were good that he would have accepted, but he had a previous engagement with a few three-year-olds at the Kentucky Derby.
Ed Hilton announces from Chicago that while continuing to occupy offices in association with Henry G. Hulbert, he has opened his own office for the general practice of law. . . . . Ted Germann sails June 7 for a summer in France Wendy Williams is listed as editor, continuity acceptance department of N B C, in Hollywood.
A rather arresting little bit of information was supplied the other night by Bill Gilmore. The plane in which young Whitfield, Andrew Carnegie's nephew, recently disappeared—possibly lost himself at sea in—was, up to a few months ago, Gilmore's plane. Bill now owns the ship previously owned by Whitfield.
Gilmore used to oblige by writing long letters, but his enthusiasm for that sort of thing has grown cold, and he has been • content of late to give me disjointed scraps of news during the pie course at the Club. It appears, if I have this right, that Bill a couple of months ago started out on his vacation by heading his flying boat in the general direction of Pittsburgh. But it was bad weather,—he had a low ceiling or whatever it is that annoys aviators, and was forced down near Pittsburgh. But there he had a change of heart altogether, and boarded the Clipper for Bermuda, where he basked for days instead of having to worry about flat tires and windshield wipers 2000 feet in the air, a sane decision for any man to make. However, on May 19 he will be awarded a special commission as air mail pilot for running the mail on the route between Floyd Bennett Field and Farmingdale, thereby delivering Babylon's mail. This hop would correspond to a quick jog from Topliff to South Fayer.
The questionable honor of concluding the class notes for the year is hereby awarded to Frank Lepreau, who writes on what he himself admits is the imposing letterhead of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Mental Diseases. He is in the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, but says he has a key and can get out whenever there is adequate need. His letter is subtitled "news from the medicoshoping to get out of Harvard in June."
"Bob Smith has taken unto himself a wife, and is to begin at the Faulkner Hospital, Boston, this coming summer.
"Alfred Yankauer, who is one day to be one of the country's great bulwarks against diseases of infancy and childhood, has been starting early by holding down a job at the Framingham Reformatory for Women, where he doles out Dextri-Maltose, Karo syrup, and gallons of other formulae to the children of those in said institutions. This summer he begins an intern appointment at the Albany Hospital in Albany, N. Y.
"Emerson Day, much domesticized and rightly so with the charming Ruthie, is to be one of the men in white in the glistening medical wards of the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, beginning in October after spending the summer in the pathology labs of the Dartmouth Medical School and Mary Hitchcock Hospital. Last year as president of the Student Council he made a willing but futile attempt to make Vanderbilt Hall even more of a country club than it is already.
"Bub McAllister, who has been away at the University of Maryland for the past year, has now returned. He is now the Great Scientist, poring away in the physiology labs until the middle of the night with ferrifying many-colored lights, switches, and wires. This summer he is going to be doing the same sort of thing at Columbia. We hated to see him leave a year ago, but the tempting offer of a lucrative fellowship to the U. of Maryland was too much for him, especially since he was allowed to do practically as his scientific brain dictated, and some excellent work was the result.
"Gardner Bassett has just recently announced his engagement to one whom he has been seeing for many a year in Wellesley, Mass. Gard begins at St. Luke's Hospital in Cleveland during the summer as the first step to a surgical career.
"Junie Kneisel, who thought he would steal a march On the boys, left Dartmouth, as we know, at the end of the third year, refusing to graduate with the rabble. He came down to medical school here, and really burned up the books, being one of the top men in his class. Unfortunately at the beginning of his second year a severe attack of pneumonia prevented him from finishing, so he landed back with us and finishes this June. After a dash about Europe dodging Nazis and Fascists this summer, he begins as intern at the Mass. General Hospital. He says that he is going to visit some of the greater European clinics.
"As for me, after finishing my three years within the walls of this gentle institution, I am going to Hanover for the next two years, beginning in the pathology department this summer and then continuing to intern at Mary Hitchcock, where are also Johnny Lyle and Walt Crandall at the moment.
"Yankauer, Day, and Bassett have distinguished themselves most nobly in the scholastic field. All have been made members of Alpha Omega Alpha, which is comparable to Phi Beta Kappa at College.
"Bill Winchester, who left our class in the third year at Hanover, is returning this fall to the Dartmouth Medical School. .... Bill Clough, now finishing an intern service at the Newton, Mass., Hospital, is going to be on the Boston City Hospital surgical service next fall, after he has had a crack at general practice this summer up in New Hampshire.
"Paul Magnuson should be finishing soon at the Beverly, Mass., Hospital. I suppose he will soon have the old shingle out Henry Kraszewski is finishing at Tufts Medical School, and it is rumored that he is to be in New Britain In the bowels of Boston City Hospital yesterday—somewhere in those long rows of tunnels far underground, I met Irv Silverman, soon to wind up at Boston University Medical School and to begin there as intern on the pediatric service."
To you, Frank, all thanks for this magnificent opus—and to you, my literary victims and audience, another farewell till fall.
Secretary, 126 Beaufort PL, New Rochelle, N. Y.
