1919*
As the Hanover Inn's advertisements picture fur-coated holidayers setting off in pungs and skiers schussing down the north country hillside, we have been scuttling about to meetings of your Reunion Committee, listening to it plan big times for the pleasant summer days next June. Golf tournaments, picnics, esoteric costumes designed for warm weather seem strangely incongruous at this time, but now is when plans must be made—and now they are being made.
The program of class activities remains essentially the same as in other years, although experience shows that whatever similarity one program may have to another the party is always different in every way. Things start off with an informal gathering at the D. O. C. House by Occom Pond, and the committee has an idea which will make this something to remember for a whole lifetime. Breakfast and other restoratives will probably be served in a tent outside the dormitory Saturday morning. Just before noon, the alumni meeting will be held, followed by a buffet luncheon outside. At this time the ladies will have their own party at the D. O. C. House, followed by bridge for those who do not wish to attend the ball game Saturday afternoon. Saturday evening the class dinner in Stell Hall, while the ladies eat about, as they will, and attend the performance of the Players in Webster Hall. Sunday morning you might squeeze in another round of golf before offing to Bonnie Oaks for the picnic, if you want to get up that early. The picnic will occupy your time pretty thoroughly until Sunday is fairly well over, and if anyone has the urge to go places and do things Sunday evening Jeavons will probably be about trying to get something started. Monday morning is devoted to sightseeing in Hanover, athletics, and general speeding of the parting guest.
This all sounds just the same, but I warn you your Committee has taken steps to see that things are even more enjoyable than you remember last time. The costume will be announced soon. It will be highly colorful, cool, and comfortable, different from anything anyone else ever had and useful after the party is over. Also it will be easy to fit whether you are Fat Jackson, Ken Huntington, Squirt Paisley, or Shorty Gray. The ladies will be ga-ga over theirs. Another new refinement is the serving of some of the meals at the dormitory, eliminating the necessity of fighting through mobs down town in order to get nothing more than a cold frankfurter. Also, there will be at the dormitory a shop equipped with six kinds of ginger ale and white rock, and large blocks of the February Connecticut, thereby eliminating the necessity of carrying thousands of pounds of ice from down town. And a ladies' room with a thousand full-length mirrors, hair curlers, and an attendant will please the dears who have tried to become their most effective in a small cracked mirror in room 206.
While most o£ the publicity for the Reunion is going to appear in these columns, there is a mailing piece in the works now which will give you the whole picture in greater detail—so enough of this for now. It is difficult to write a piece to urge a '19er to come back to reunion. To begin with, you can't quite visualize the bird who doesn't want to come for all he's worth already. Nothing you can say will make him want to come any more. All you can do is to point out that he can afford it. If he stays home his wife's second cousin will probably drop in for the week-end, and by the time he gets through wining and dining him and paying his greens fees and caddies he'll have spent just as much any way, and what has he got for it? The cost will be very little anyway, for the committee is keeping everything down to a figure where the class tax for Reunion need keep no one away. Whether your hands are calloused from leaning on a WPA rake, or your feet calloused from pounding the pavements looking for business, or you're calloused elsewhere from sitting in a desk chair damning the Administration, the change will be good for you—and you're going to come.
Jack Ross (God bless him) writes me concerning the Stanford game to which he and Doris took themselves. He says in part: "Only a few '19ers showed up Bill McCarter of course was present, and Fred McCrea as class host, and Carl Baldwin of Berkeley. Murray Hawkins was in from Los Angeles, but needed to hurry back there after the game, as he had charge of the reception to the team for the following day at that city. I do not recall any other members of our class being present except Bill Cunningham, and he was half the show with his description of the football season to date as the feature of the Pow-Wow banquet the night before." And while we're in San Francisco, I wish to report that a note on McCrea's Christmas card states that he plans to be East this spring, but can't make reunion because the canning business is not set up that way. What I want to know is what has McCrea been doing these twenty years in the canning business if he hasn't got it fixed so he can come to reunions. If he's so helpless, we're not, and a special committee is being appointed to change the growing habits of the spinach so that it can be picked and canned at some other season of the year.
And Martin says, if you haven't paid your bill for the ALUMNI MAGAZINE do so at once—and just why shouldn't you?
Secretary, Framingham Center, Mass.
* 100% subscribers to the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, on class group plan.
