1902*

I was just getting together a few news items for March when I received word from Hanover of the sudden death of Bill Murray. As friends and classmates, I know you will all feel stunned at our great loss. To return to Hanover and not find that honest, kindly, friendly handshake, that quiet smile, and that question about your welfare that you knew was one of real personal interest; to not see Bill Murray will be like not seeing the Bema, the Tower or Dartmouth Hall, for Bill has been a part of our Hanover and our class since our freshman days in the fall of 1898.

I know I can say without let or hindrance that every member of the class of 1902 loved Bill Murray—and why? Because we knew he loved us. No furbelows about Bill, no palaver, just plain Bill with his quiet way and his friendly but intelligent grin. He'll always be with us.

No other item but just his shall appear in this month's notes, and I want him to speak for himself, so here follows the letter he wrote to me on last June 30th—could any Secretary receive a finer letter:

Dear Phil:

I received your initial class letter and I want to congratulate you on it. It is a class document with a breath of personality and human interest. I did not get the questionnaire, so I am in doubt as to what data I should give you.

My son Donald Alan Murray has just been inducted into the Army. He was graduated from Dartmouth in 1933, and after three years of Graduate Work at Harvard was teaching French and Spanish at Beloit College in Wisconsin. He wanted to get into some branch of the service where he could use his languages. He was offered deferment as a translator for the Navy Intelligence, but decided to enter the Army as a draftee and take his chances on Officer's Training after taking the regular basic training. He still hopes to keep up with his languages, but not as a civilian.

I am teaching this summer for the first time since the last war, but will take time out for a few games of golf with a loyal old Tri Kap and C & G, one Nelson P. Brown. I have played with him for twenty years, and while his game is slipping a little, he is the best company I know of and a credit to the two aforesaid organizations—as you will doubtless agree. Fritzie held me up for an additional gift for the Alumni Fund and got it. He lacks your fine surgical touch, but he is damned effective.

I enjoyed our last reunion more than any we've had, although I missed many of the fellows who attended other years, and especially Graham who was my closest friend in the class, perhaps because I had fished with him for years on the Dartmouth Grant and in the wilds of Quebec. He always carried his kit with him and treated the natives for everything from black fly bites to broken legs. When I think of doctors, two pictures stand out in my memory. One is of yourself folding up your new silk coat as a pillow for a nauseated old grad in the Gym, and the other of Graham ministering to ailing peasants in the back of beyond in Quebec. After all, Phil, there is something you get in your job that most of the rest of us miss.

Sorry, Phil, very little of this letter is about myself, but I am deeply interested in every member of the class, and am looking forward to reading anything you get from them.

Yours, Bill Murray.

Bill died on his way to class. He would prefer it that way if it had to be.

Indeed, in the past year our class and Dartmouth College have lost three men of outstanding quality and fineness—men who have left their mark in medicine, in business, and in education, and men who had peculiarly in common the ability to have won their way up solely on their own merits and have not let their success change them one iota from the friendly youthfulness of their college days. We are proud that Dr. George Graham, Arthur Tozzer, and Bill Murray were members of 1902 and Dartmouth, an Ivy College.

Secretary, 704 Congress St., Portland, Me.