Thayer School
THE TEACHING SCHEDULE this semester reminds me a little of a six-day bicycle race: Ed Brown '35 has just dropped out after completing six-day-a-week courses in Mechanics and Sanitation, and I've climbed into the saddle with Strength of Materials and Foundations. In passing, I wonder if the whole wartime educational program isn't somewhat of a six-day bicycle race which the faculties are pretty sure to win because each student is his own one-man team racing without replacement.
Be that as it may, the rest period has given me a fresh start with plenty of ambition to teach better than before. It also gave me a good opportunity to do some committee work and prepare some mimeographed notes on Foundations and Strength which have long needed doing, and Margaret and I took a ten-day trip with Williamsburg, Virginia, at the other end. While we were there, Lt. Dan Drury '38 gave me a personally conducted tour of Camp Peary where the Seabee battalions are trained. Last September it was uninhabited, unprepared marsh and woodland Now there are over 25,000 men quartered there and before long it is expected to be brought up to its 60,000 capacity. There's plenty of engineering work called for there, and it was mighty interesting to see it all with such a capable guide.
Headline news this month is the election of John S. Macdo.nald '14 to the presidency of the Moles, the heavy construction men's organization of New York and one of the really high-powered engineering organizations in the country. More recently, the announcement has been received that Jack is general manager and vice-president of Walsh-Kaiser Cos., Inc. This company, organized between the Walsh Construction Company and the Kaiser interests, has taken over the Fields Point shipyard at Providence. Congratulations to Jack on these honors and the heavy responsibilities they put on him.
More letters have been received from the Lockheed branch of Thayer School, all of them full of interesting descriptions of the work being done there by the delegation which left Hanover in December to enter the engineering department of that corporation. Recent letters have come from Roger Simpter, Bill Knoff, Nate Ward and Paul Breck, all '43, and from George Beaton '44. If the class nomenclature is confusing, it might be explained that the class of '43 graduated last December and the class of '44 Thayer received their A.B. degrees from the College at that time.
A good letter from Ensign (CEC) Charlie Hitchcock '39 gives his address as "Navy 8150, c/o Fleet P. 0., New York, N. Y." Charlie is with a Seabee battalion and to reach his present whereabouts "traveled over water for a seemingly long period of time arriving here shortly before Christmas. And now we are on the job. Walking around with a forty-five is a good indication of what goes on at this construction job."
It is with regret that we record the death of Horace H. Sears '01 at Kingsford, Tenn., on February 6.
A letter received recently from Jim O'Mara '43 tells us that he and classmates Don Amy, Jim Skinner and Charlie Weinberg are all stationed on the U.S.S. Prairie State, New York City, where they are getting their basic training in the midshipmen's school of the Naval Reserve.
Another officer in a Seabee battalion is Lt. (jg) Will Pitz '4l who wrote from California recently. Will accomplished his transfer from AV-S to CEC last fall and almost immediately was put in charge of a company in a Naval Construction Battalion. His address is "c/o Fleet P. 0., San Francisco, California." During a brief stay at Camp Allen last fall, Will met Jim Rogers '42 who is in another Naval Construction Battalion. John Hands '42 reports that Jim has since been sent overseas, but we have no direct information from him. John, an ensign, is now stationed in Washington after spending four months at M.I.T. and five months at Lakehurst Naval Air Station learning all there is to know about structural maintenance of the Navy blimps.
