1932

FOR WHOM THE WEDDING-BELL TOLLS DEPARTMENT. This department, after a month or two in which one might have suspected that Dan Cupid was in roughly the position of Milton's "Fair Infant Dying of a Cough," is looking up once more, and i am happy to start the October column with accounts of three new marital starters, to wit, Mai Metcalf, Steve Ward, and Bill Lieson, in order of date. The Orange (Calif.) News carried a twocolumn story, with abundant biographical and sartorial detail, about how Lt. Metcalf of the U. S. Navy, took as his bride Miss Marie Fritschen of Orange, in a four-o'clock ceremony at St. John's Church. Marie is a musician of ability and has been a teacher. Before entering the Navy, Mai taught at Pomona Junior College, but was commissioned early in the summer at a Naval physical instructor's school in Bainbridge, Md. After indoctrination at Chapel Hill, N. C., Mai got a leave, nipped out to California, and married Marie. Date, July 11. After a check-up with an old calendar, I discover that Steve "Ward beat Mai Metcalf to the gun by one day, for it was on July 10, a Sunday, that Steve wed Miss Margaret Heslin of New York at the Church of the Incarnation, same city. Steve and Margaret are both graduates of the New York Law School, where they presumably met, but I suspect that their minds were untroubled by legalistic matters during the wedding reception which followed the ceremony. Place: Hotel McAlpin. After a short trip, Staff Sergeant Ward went to Camp Lee, Va., for OCS, and by this time is probably Lt. Ward (AUS). Trailing his classmates by roughly a fortnight was Lt. (j.g.) Bill Lieson, who married Dorothy Nichols of Westfield, Mass., in a highnoon ceremony at the old family homestead, West Willington, Conn. The wedding trip was to New Hampshire (editor's guess: they remembered a small town called Hanover as a pleasant spot), after which Bill and Dot whipped down to Camp Perry, Va., where Bill was then stationed. Heartiest congratulations to the whole bunch of newly-weds. POTENTIAL GENERALS DEPARTMENT. The latest list of address changes and notices of new appointments include reference to newly commissioned Maj. George M. Hubbard, on whose husky shoulders the maple leaf fits well, and contains the new addresses of four of our Army captains:

Capt. Johnny Brett, 925 West Main Street, Kent, Ohio Capt. Orrin Crankshaw, 93 Vreeland Ave., Midland Park, N. J. Capt. Sonny Foley, Box 50, Circuit Ave., Worcester, Mass. Capt. Dick Statham, Old Mill Road, Greenwich, Conn.

CLASS AFFAIRS DEPARTMENT. To Big Bill Morton, class agent for this year's Alumni Fund drive, the thanks of the class for a splendid job of shekel gathering; and to all those sterling lieutenants of his who helped out bravely in a tough year despite manifold other duties, the same. Theirs is the Order of Merit, bristling with laurel-leaf clusters. To Verbalist Joe Carleton, redoubtable syllableslinger who has edited the class newsletter with more eclat, elan, and verve than it has lately seen, the thanks of the class for a bang-up job.

More good news. Howdy Pierpont has agreed to serve as class treasurer and is about to undertake the job of the collection of class dues for the coming year. Prompt payment when the bills are sent out will be much appreciated, and will assist Howdy in seeing that the ALUMNI MAGAZINE reaches those members of the class who are serving far afield. By action of the' executive committee before Bo Wentworth's departure, a provisional nest-egg of $500 in the form of a war bond was handed to the College in the name of the class of 1932, to be retained as the nucleus of our Twenty- fifth Reunion Gift. As circumstances make it possible, we shall add to this sum, which by 1957 should be of pretty fair size.

A brief note from Lt. Harold Drake: "I was commissioned a second lieutenant, CAC, at Camp Davis, N. C. on July 15, 1943. On September 1 I was assigned to the Planning and Control Branch, New York Port of Embarkation, in Brooklyn. My residence is 10 Montague Terrace, Brooklyn, N. Y. I am interested in all the doings of the Dartmouth Club in New York and meetings of the class of '32, there."

THANKS TO LT. ODEGAARD DEPARTMENT: The following fine letter from Chuck, mentioned above as the class's newest father, is transcribed in full for its pews value and the light it throws on how these Thirty-Twomeq, get around:

"Having been a medieval historian before being commissioned, I was somewhat at a loss to know what the Navy could do that had any connection, but I wanted to get into the thing, so I applied. To my surprise my commission came one day, and the orders came the next. I went on active duty April 14 for training in Armed Guard duties. It turned out that I was in the guinea-pig class. None of us knew for three days after our arrival what our duty was to be. The popular theory was the unpopular one that we were to be flat-feet, guarding Navy defense plants. It was a pleasant shock to learn that we were going to be sea-going sailors. Sea-going in short order, too. At that moment there was little time for indoctrination. Four weeks in Boston, a little less than four weeks in Chicago, and we were 'ready' for sea, as duck-shooting gunnery officers, in charge of naval gun crews on merchant ships. "In the course of thirteen months of sea duty in the Armed Guard, I have seen, as I think back over it now, a revolution in the conditions confronting our merchant fleet. In those thirteen months I have served on three different ships, no one of which, fortunately, went down under me; though I have seen others sink. The first one was a small undistinguished rust pot. The second was a larger, faster cargo ship; and the last was as beautiful a ship as I have ever seen, a transport only four years old. Working with a Navy crew was always a great source of pleasure to me. I found that a lot of the tricks of the trade which one learns in handling university students work with the sailors, and I have decided that the BuPers knew what it was doing when it put a lot of instructors in the Armed Guard.

"I have now been detached . from the Armed Guard. At the moment (August 10th—Ed.) I am enjoying a fifteen-day leave with my wife and Mary Ann (see above-^-Ed.). I first learned of the results of the anticipated event when she was one month old. I was out of touch with the home front for three months, with the result that I walked the deck for some days instead of the floor for some hours. Even so, this absentee method of becoming a father is probably not the real thing. I am learning a few of the homely arts that go with paternity, so life will probably never be quite the same again. (Chuck is 100 per cent correct—Ed.)

"I can report on two members of our class who are overseas. I walked into a Naval Liaison office in a British port to make my report to no less a person than Lt. Sam Allen, who presides in his best juristic manner over Armed Guard Affairs. Sam is the kind of liaison officer you really like to meet, affable and helpful, and eager to make the stay of visiting firemen as pleasant as possible. He talked me into two of the pleasantest expeditions I have made in my travels. The other classmate was Art Allen, also a lieutenant in the Navy, and captain of an SC. Very much thinner than he was in college, he was hard to recognize, as I am, for the same reason. We exchanged visits aboard our respective ships. His SC was as neat and clean as I have ever seen. The refinements in the painting of the wheelhouse and the engine room made the ship look like an interior decorator's job. After a number of months of convoy work, Art is now "somewhere" in the Mediterranean where he is still preserving the tan he acquired in the Caribbean."

This is the kind of letter that other classmates can match if they will take the trouble. Classmates in the Pacific contingent please note: Chuck proceeded to San Francisco August 23, and is anxious to get in touch with any '32s around that area. There are some other letters on tap from Ed Marks, Johnny Clark, Johnny Zimmerman and Don Simpson—all cracker jack, news-filled communiques, but space limitations compel me to defer them until next issue.

Time to harvest pumpkins and to dispose of cornstalks and old hunks of swiss chard that may be lying around your Vgarden plots. As Italy goes so goes the Axis. And what about that rumor that we are going to have Turkey for Thanksgiving—on our side, if Mike Cardozo, hard at work in Ankara, has anything to say about it.

Secretary, 178 Prospect Ave., Princeton, N. J. Treasurer, 7 North St., Old Greenwich, Conn.