1941
Back in the spring of our senior year, Frank Dressner wanted badly to get into the Marine Corps. At first they were going to turn him down because of his eyes. But Frank, if you remember, didn't give up easily. He argued with the examining officers and he took special exercises at the Eye Institute. Finally they accepted him, and he waited pretty impatiently until he was called to active duty last February.
On Armistice Day, 1942, Lt. Frank Dressner was killed in action in the bitter jungles of Guadalcanal Island. He had been in the heaviest of the Solomons fighting for two months, and he died still fighting, at the head of his men, bravely.
He was the first member of the class of 1941 to be killed in action.
It was a proud death, where pride is scant consolation; an honorable one, where honor's harvest can never be enjoyed by he who earns it; a brave one, where bravery was only sacrifice.
The poor best that those of us who will someday enjoy the rewards of his honor and pride and bravery can offer in return is to see to it that those rewards are used for the purposes Frank thought it worthwhile to risk death for.
This is written about Frank Dressner because he was the first to go on the battlefield. There have been others in uniform who went before him. .. .Phil Sleadd and Bert Mauro, for instance, and there may be more we do not know of yet. There will be others. Boys we knew, intimately or casually, whose absence will never be completely realized because the memory of them is built on familiar, cheerful and living things.
Nor is it only those who die that we think of now. It is also of Cam Farmer, wounded and in a South Pacific hospital, of Dusty Rhodes and Chuck Bolte, who, with others, paid less heavily but as Purely. It is also of the hearts, as well as the bodies, that must be broken.
Whatever comes to any individual one of us, God grant that the rest will think back to these not with boasts of glory but with grim and sacred pledges that no power, no ideology, no private or public selfishness shall ever again be allowed to force such tribute as the price of decency.
ADDENDA A letter from Landon Martin (and also his father) announcing his engagement to Mary Louise Nolker, Smith '39 and St. Louis. He's an ensign in Navy aviation, now taking pre-operation training at Miami. He also mentions: Dick Oughton is in Jacksonville, training as an aviation cadet. Downey Gray is with Naval Operations in Cuba. Ensign Bob Nissen is somewhere in the Pacific. Ensign Bill Sleepeck is a classmate at Miami, expecting to be sent to San Diego for fleet duty. Art Spoeneman is working for the McDonald Aircraft Corp. in St. Louis. Red Powers is with Hercules Powder in Radford, Va. Bill Broer is a lieutenant at Navy H.Q. in Miami. EnsignChuck Carleton is in Washington with the Engineering Corps.
A letter from Everett Stevens' dad says that Everett is taking Marine Corps basic training at Parris Island, preparatory to entering photographic specialist school. For the past three years he'd been a photographer for G. E. at Schenectady.
Dick Jachens was in the other night. He's a second lieutenant in the Signal Corps, now stationed at Washington's Funhouse, the Pentagon Building.
George Thompson is a first lieutenant in the infantry at Camp Howze, Texas.
A long and argumentative epistle from Johnny Beaumont, pvt., USAAF. Completed radio school and basic training and is waiting to be shipped. Also got married October 2g to Susanne Beecher. Reports that "brother Evans seems quite happy in the Pacific... .even to the extent of polishing up his Gilbert and Sullivan."
Engaged: Cort Drake and Lorane Sherwood, of Corning, N. Y. Married: Wilson Cornwall and Edna Oed, of Great Neck, N. Y., Dec. go; Ted Hinson, It. USAAF, and Margery Hilton, of La Grange, 111., on August 24; Lt. Don Salisbury and Joan Riste, of Battle Creek, Mich., December 28.
PLOTTING THE WAY Arthur R. Moffatt '41, right, and companion study a sun compass to help findtheir way in the Western Desert. Both menare volunteer ambulance drivers with theAFS at present serving with the BritishForces routing Rommel's armies from theMiddle East.
Secretary, City Room, Washington Post Washington, D. C.
