New York
PROBABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT event of the past month was the meeting, in December, of the Finance Committee of the Trustees of the College. President Hopkins, Halsey Edgerton and Donald Barr represented the College. Vic Cutter and John McLane came down from the hills, Ned French rode his own iron horse from Boston, C. B. Little came all the way from the Dakotas, and Bill Minsch represented the home guard. It was the first meeting that this all-important committee ever held in New York, and the Club should be and is honored that the session took place within its walls.
During the holidays the Club was busy as usual with alumni committees interviewing prospective freshmen. The crop looked hopeful as normal, and there should be the ordinary crowding and shoving for places within Bob Strong's magic circle of 700. We may be doing the cause of culture a grave injustice, but we suspected, in the attitudes of the interviewers, at least as profound interest in the aspirants athletic abilities as in their intellectual prowess! We do not subscribe to the opinion of the right-wingers that the administration looks upon swivel-hipped halfbacks with the same suspicion that a New Dealer gazes upon a peanut stand doing business on its own capital, but we do admit a wish that among the mental behemoths of 1943 there may be found a baker's dozen or so who can transport their 6 foot, 195 pound frames, agiley, deftly withal imperiously in the general direction of someone else's goal posts.
The annual New Year's Eve party had just a trace of the anti-climatical in the fact that it was held on Saturday night, the 30th, rather than upon the next night when, after all, the gauds and blandishments of paper hats, tin whistles and other prankish impedimenta may be worn by otherwise conventional citizens with less fear of exhibitionism. Nevertheless, the sixty-odd attendants at the festivities dined exceedingly well, kept more than a modicum of their equilibrium, danced when the spirit and the feet moved, and went home at a respectable hour.
The testimonial dinner to Nate Lenfestey was a most pleasant affair, enlivened by some words of wit and wisdom from past and present Club officials. Nate was the recipient of a very gorgeous fountain of youth, thoroughly equipped to drive away any trace of ennui.
The rest of December found a stream of graduates and undergrads making good use of the facilities. Among the transient guests were Nat Burleigh, L. B. Schell, and Duke Dunning '11, W. E. Howe and P. S. Goss '23, T. N. Goddard '24, R. W. Tucker '36, D. W. Griffin Jr., and Walter Ross '37, John Little '39, J. J. Duncan Jr. '40, and H. L. Peterson and Leo Caproni '42. The regulars now living at the Club include Lou Stone '19, (oldest living graduate!) L. K. McElwain '18, C. W. Moore '21, J. J. Healy '15, R. I. Booth '30, Dr. Hugh Neely '31, Kenneth Todd, Howard Pierpont and Morgan Hobart '32, Michael Joseph '34, A. R. Conklin and Howard Ritter '35, E. G. Kirby Jr., E. J. Dearman, Wm. Bennett, Robert Carson and Robert Southworth '38, R. H. Bender '40 and Erik Sand '42.
The Club's bridge team laid Yale away the other night and is still fighting for -the lead in the league. The January calendar of events looks promising with many class dinners and other functions.
