1904
JOHNSON NEWS AGENCY SAYS: Fred Root retired from the American Insurance Cos., April '41, after thirty years with them. Fred now lives at 245 So. Oakland Ave., Beverly Hills, and still devotes some of his time to insurance in an agency in Los Angeles. He could make no report on Beck's news service chart, yet his daughter is making her contribution to the war effort With the Douglas Aircraft Cos. in their plant at Santa Monica, Cal. She has an important position on the "swing shift" —3.30 P.M.—12.30 A.M.; knows all about the big bombers which are turned out at the rate of (censored) a day. The plant has about 30,000 employees. We expect to see you in Hanover, Fred, when we celebrate the end of the war at our fortieth in 1944.
Louis Leverone retired from his long time active business career to go to work; and among the many Community, State and Federal chores to which his energies are given, he is the Chicago representative of the office of War Information securing excellent results in a campaign for nurses.
Charlie Tubb's daughter, Barbara, is in war work, as private secretary to the head of the hull drawing room of Bath Iron Works. She was married in September, 1940, to Frederick A. Lovell Jr., Bow doin '40, now in or just graduated from a Midshipmen's School in New York City.
Charlie has a nephew who, after six years in architecture at Harvard, has been with the engineers in England building airdromes, and it is surmised he is now in North Africa; another nephew is in the Navy at Norfolk. Charlie's church has fifty young people in the service including a Naval nurse who survived the Pearl Harbor attack. The church keeps in touch with these youngsters sending them gifts twice a year.
Ira Willard's sons are not directly in the armed forces but the older one, Bernard, is employed in war contracts at the Kingsbury Machine Tool Cos. in Keene, N. H. An accident, resulting in the complete loss of sight in one eye, will probably keep him from active service; Robert, an engine mechanic in the employ of the Pan-American Airways has been refused a release for direct war work. Hazel, his oldest daughter, is married and the mother of a three year old son, Gordon Fuller, so Ira joins the grandfathers club. Elizabeth, his younger daughter, is a junior in Keene High School and a top flight member of the basketball team. Now a word about Ira who has spent his life in U. S. Postal Service with three years to go before scheduled retirement. He is New Hampshire representative of the National Federation of Post Office Clerks and has been editor-in-chief of the Quarterly publication of the New Hampshire and Vermont Federations for the past four years.
The older son of Harry Morse, who, incidentally, groomed his dad for the "piano dance," famous in our reunion annals, is now production manager for the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation in Fort Worth, Texas. His younger son, H. B. M. Jr., is a Senior Flight Commander with the 511 Bombardment Squadron stationed at Biggs Field, near El Paso, Texas. He is a captain flying a B-17 Flying Fortress.
Chick Weston's son-in-law, First Lieut. Douglas McSwift, was graduated from Annapolis in '34; married Elizabeth Weston in 1937. Lieut. Swift is second in command of a U. S. destroyer and the father of Charles Swift who elected Chick to the grandfathers' group.
The son of Harry Ham, after training at the New London Coast Guard Academy, and the Fleet Sound School, Key West, Fla., is now on active duty off the Atlantic Coast with the rank of ensign in the Coast Guard.
Bascom Brayton has been in Boston recently, says Ike Charron, whose daughter Lucille graduated from Smith in '43, is one of two civilians in a meteorology course at in a class consisting of some 400 Cadets and 48 WAVES. She intends to complete the course for her Master's degree and then may join the WAVES. Ike's brother, Roy, who spent his honeymoon with us many years ago, now Lt. Col. Charron, is liaison officer between Gen. Hershey and the different officers in the New England States in charge of deferments under the selective service.
Secretary, Canaan Street Lodge, Canaan St., N. H. Class Agent. 201 Devonshire St., Boston, Mass.
