1940*

1940's SUMMER: A COMPILATION OF MEMORIES:

Sitting of a summer's evening in a downtown restaurant with Rebore Rogers, Bob Williams, and Don Fox. Rogers had brought his girl east. She is very pretty. She argued about the Aluminum Company of America with Fox and me. We thought she took the side of reaction

Jim Young facing up the smoky stairs of downtown Cafe Society stopping to shake hands and talk about Ellsworth. .. .helping Rourke move his baggage from his hotel retreat to a new apartment and adding the anticipated tag line to Rourke's "What have you heard from Henry Bannen Coleman?": "It's strange, not so much as a word.". .. .

Talking to the silent easy eyed Mel Wax in a Hanover room strewn with the Class of '4l's leavings, and trying to find out whether he meant he was married when he said so Bumping an elbow into a big guy next to me at a downtown bar and turning to find Scotty Freeman looking like a magazine cover in his air corps uniform and talking to him unintelligently about what it was like to ferry planes to Panama Bob Dingwall on week-ends in Westchester, each time with a new and just as pretty girl sunning himself on a beach as a rest from advertising

Hearing Tom George praise the army when he left for camp and curse it when they sent him back again having discovered flat feet, and previous operations beyond his control. Long and earnest summer day conversations with Jack Preiss about men and wars and beliefs, and sitting on the dock of his summer cottage watching Rourke in the water, clad only in a Panama hat, imitate a German invasion by sea

Sitting over a table filled with rum glasses talking to Doc and Betty Aulman about plans for a South American trip and the home they are building in Des Moines. ... .Two long and never to be quite remembered days and nights with the man who drank and came back: Corporal Tuffy Reeves.

These are no class notes but they are just about all I can remember about the Class of 1940's summer of 1941.

OLD NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS:

I except what I read in the newspapers. There were twenty-seven of us married up to June 1. There are now thirty-eight.

William Chapin to Eleanor O'Hara (McGill) on June 18; Lee Barrett to Eleanor Hasleton (Smith) on August 9th; Larry Durgin to Miss Eunice King (North Carolina) on June 17th. They will live in New Haven where Larry goes to Yale Divinity School.

Ronald Woodberry and Hazel Hartwell (Radcliffe) were married on August 10th with Sam Williams as an usher. Ted Brecht and Margaret Bartlett were married June 29th with Norb Hamilton as best man. Jud Lyon and Margaret Miller (Smith) were married June 21 with Bob Kinsman as one of the ushers. Jud plans to return to Yale and continue his graduate course in English.

Lieut. Don Lytle Tenney and Shirley Stevenson were married June 2. Kim Flint and Wanda Hawk were married on June 21. Harry Howard and Lenore Tingle were married last month. So were Charles Whitney Miller and Marty Flagg.

There were also some engagements. Harry Hillman and Suzanne Woodfin took a nice picture together on June 22 at Rutland; Harry Midgeley, who is working in a bank while he waits a call from the Navy was engaged to Francis Cutting (Stoneleigh) over the summer. Bob Wetzler and Audrey Mayforth (Skidmore) announced their engagement on June 21. Rick Collins and Mary Kavanagh on June 27; Jay Weinberg and Marian Schaap (Smith) on June 18; and Fran Miller and Jo Hammond (Colby) on June 28.

The clippings also prove that Buford M. Hayden has enrolled in M. I. T.'s course for aeronautical engineering. The NewYork Times reports that New York Yankee Coach Jack Mcßride will build his team this season around the former Dartmouth bombshell, Bill Hutchinson. The Baltimore Sun featured one day this summer a sports page spread on Page Smith, corporal and machine gunner who is instituting a wrestling team in his regiment, and poses, growling, behind his gun.

LETTERS OUT OF A DRAWER:

Jim Carpenter is taking a course in welding and waiting for the draft. Les Nichols is now in the 2nd Armored Division at Fort Benning, Georgia. Dick Mather is in the Naval Air Corps at Pensacola. Fran L'Engle is an ensign on the U.S.S. Eberle. Bill Shelton, called to active naval duty, is stationed in Washington with the Administration of Export Control. Smock Thompson is also an ensign, also stationed in Washington. The Class of 1940 writes few letters in a summer time.

A STORY ROGERS TOLD ME:

Indicative of the Dartmouth man's calm detachment in this time of national crisis and rising hysteria is the following story concerning Eben H. Cockley, which was related by eyewitness Scott Rogers.

It happened one minute before Cockley was married. The organist was full blast into Lohengrin; moist eyes were fixed on Eben and his bride as he stood there, waiting to receive her from her father. Just as she prepared to take his arm, Cockley stepped aside for an instant. While the bride hesitated, he fumbled in his pocket, produced his spectacle case, snapped it open, and donned his glasses.

Calmly, he studied her for a moment, then put his glasses back and offered her his arm.

AND A NOTE IN PASSING:

It is probably true that college education for women is no great aid to the popula- tion, and I believe it was Henry L. Mencken who first pointed out that Vassar graduates have only 34 of a child. Never- theless, considering the fact that we are by reputation and tradition a strong and virile group, uninhibited by four years in Hanover, and educated to the necessity of race survival, it is an astounding fact that there are as yet no candidates in the Class of 1940 for the title, "Class Boy."

Just for the sake of the record, let me recite the rules. They are contained in a sentence on page 52 of the "Manual for Dartmouth Secretaries": "....The Class Boy (preferred to Class Baby) shall be the first boy born to a member of the class married after graduation."

Look that sentence over carefully and reflect for a moment. It's been more than a year since we left Hanover. People are be- ginning to talk.

That's about all I know this month. Rourke says to Keep In Touch. And so do I.

Secretary, 6407 RCA Bldg., Rockefeller Center New York, N. Y. Treasurer, Chase B-11 Harvard Business School, Boston, Mass.