Nonagenarian

On April 24, The Rev. Omar W. Folsom '69, pastor emeritus of the Winter Street Congregational Church, Bath, Me., and second oldest living Dartmouth alumnus, will celebrate his 97 th birthday. The chances are, however, that he will find scant time to spend in celebrating.

"I like to keep up with the times," he says and his days are fully occupied with newspapers, periodicals, and the radio and walking his milea-day. He has also been a frequent contributor to local newspapers in recent years. With the world in a tailspin, following world affairs is a fulltime job but the Rev. Mr. Folsom insists on getting his exercise, even though Maine's winter weather forces him to lay his mile through three rooms and a hall. In the summer, he sometimes does it pushing a lawnmower and on Sundays, in good weather, he walks to church, a generous mile.

Only occasionally can he be persuaded to dip into his store of memories and ladle out such tidbits as that his gentle Quaker father taught him to make his own shoes and gave him a proficiency in the use of his hands that enabled him to make two violins; his reactions on first hearing of the death of his hero Lincoln when a student atGilmanton (N. H.) Academy; his absent-minded Greek professor at Dartmouth; a meeting with the Quaker poet Whittier; and incidents of a trip made around the world when almost seventy years old.