1921
Back last summer, Lt. Comdr. H. George (Herm) McMillan USNR sent an interesting Air Mail note to Treasurer Bob Mac Donald from the New Hebrides area. With fingers crossed lest we run afoul the censor, these excerpts are dished up for your edification. "I am commanding officer of an air field as well as of this unit [a Carrier Aircraft Service Unit] so am kept quite busy. This is my sixteenth month out of the States and we must keep busy so that the time will flit by. Spent eleven months in Pearl Harbor, then went out to the Marshalls for that push. Was there for two rugged months, then to Bougainville and Green Island, which were also rugged This is the country club of the South Pacific and a welcome respite after watery foxholes in the middle of the night, and all the shooting, at al. I like the quiet life, and there is no kidding about that. A month at the Hanover Inn would be a lot of all right for me just now. I am going to make our 25th Reunion or bust." Switching suddenly to Hanover, we tune in on a rebroadcast by transcription of a talk by Joe Folger made on July 9:
Your letter came while I was away. I got back night before last, just in time for the new term. I was sorry to miss you when you were here [for the Alumni Council—Class Officers' meetings], Marion and the boys were about to leave for Nantucket when Bill Embree called. At that moment I was scrubbing the cellar floor. I shaved, took a bath, and came up to the Inn at nine and waited till ten. Since there was a lot of work still to be done and' the family was planning to leave early in the morning, I went home and helped pack.
As for the impact of the V-12 on my particular life, it is fairly easily told. There is little demand for languages, since the Government requires little except for pre-medics; a number of men in my field are makingthemselves useful in various ways. Some are teaching Math or Graphics and some are assisting in the Physics lab. I volunteered for the latter and have been helping in the lab since May of last year. This last term, I had only one small class in my own field. I was teaching Portuguese, a language that I became interested in because of the large number of Portuguese from the Azores in my home town, and in which field I had done some work in graduate school at Harvard. After the war there may be even greater interest in the subject. It has rather surprised our countrymen to learn that 46,000,000 South Americans do not speak Spanish. Portuguese is closely related and looks like Spanish on the written page, but its pronunciation is rather difficult and very interesting to the philologist. I never pretended to be a mathematician or a scientist, but I have always enjoyed working with mechanical gadgets and have had a lot of fun in the lab. I must say that I have to chuckle to see myself walking around with a slide rule in my pocket. I thought I had kissed my last logarithm goodbye in 1918. We assistants have quite surprised ourselves with our own versatility My older boy is 17 and is going to Choate this fall. The Army may get him in November, but I am planning for peace and hope he can get at least a term there. He is still doing some painting and I think he has some promise in that direction. My younger lad, going on 13, is a dynamo " One vote of confidence in the Folger family!
Other reports reaching Hdqrs. on the younger generation include one that Chuck Kerwin has a son at Kimball Union Academy. Malcolm (Mac) Johnson is the source of the item Speaking of Mac Johnson, he was elected president of the Dartmouth Club of Washington (D. C.), at its annual meeting on Dartmouth Night. The turnout of '21ers for the affair was scarcely something to write home about, comprising but Mac Johnson, Carleton McMackin, and your scribe, who was elected to the Club executive committee for a second year.
Swinging around the circle, we notice the boys in '21 are doing all right by the College when it comes to active participation in Alumni Association affairs. George Ferguson is heading up the ass'n in Tucson, Ariz., Hal Braman is Ist V. P. of the Connecticut Association, Art Duryea is both prexy and sec'y of the Dartmouth Club of Honolulu, Bob Elsasser is No. 1 man in the Louisiana club, Don Mix is perennial sec'y and wheelhorse of the Worcester group, and Ken Bean is president in Manchester, N. H. Also in the back of the new Dartmouth Alumni Officers list appear the names of Maj. Corey Ford (hon. '2l), on the advisory board of this MAGAZINE, and Doug Storer, alumni representative on the Dartmouth Radio Council.
Bill Codding, editor of your '2l Smoker, was in the Nation's Capital on October 20 and reached your Notes reporter by telephone. He has added the D. C. to his territory for Harper's high school textbook department and expects to return three or four times annually; promises to lay his plans more scientifically next trip so as to be able to break bread with this reporter.
For December we give you Ben Tenney's full-length photograph, following through on last month's promise; for the next issue there is a photographic tidbit in store for you It is reported Lt. R. N. (Ray) Murray USNR, having been placed on inactive duty, has returned to private business; we are trying to check on that report as this is written The deaths are recorded of Horace (Wat) Wortham on September 14 and Al Laffey on August 14; accounts of their lives will appear in this, or an early issue, under In Memoriam.
Treasurer Bob Mac Donald requests insertion of a suggestion for payment of class dues. His address appears at the head of this column; how about sending him $3.50 to cover 10 issues of this MAGAZINE and a year of 21 activities?
Secretary, 201 W. Montgomery Ave., Rockville, Md. Treasurer, 545 Hinman Ave., Evanston, Ill.
