1900

The last two months of 1943 were not good ones for the class of 1900. Three deaths occurred in that period—Hutchins and Firth, obituary notices for whom have already been published, and last, on December 8, Victor Salinger. As a result, the majority of the class has now gone from us. Of the 165 men, graduates and nongraduates, included in the 1941 report, 82 are known to be dead, 80 are still alive, and the fate of 3 is unknown, but in all probability they are also dead. This mortality rate seems unduly high, in comparison with other classes of our time.

The death of Victor Salinger, noted in another column, comes to us with particular poignancy. As an undergraduate Vic was especially busy in a great variety of activities in which the class participated. No one of us was better known or better liked. Subsequent to graduation his life was passed in California, where for many years he was highly successful in business, only to be hard hit. without ever losing his courage, in the depression of 1929. Perhaps no one of us felt more the loss of companionship with the group on account of the demands of geography than did Vic. To the last he was intensely interested in all class and college activities. Occasionally he made his way East for a reunion. No one of us will forget the attendance of the Salinger family at our Twentieth, at which time the star of the occasion was Vic's golden-haired daughter, then perhaps three or four years of age. Pictures reaching the secretary recently show that daughter now to be the possessor of a daughter of her own, much resembling her mother, of 1920, in her charm. Vic's departure, despite the fact that we have seen but little of him since graduation, leaves a much regretted gap in our depleted ranks.

There seems to be little class news for the past month. Everyone who has communicated with the secretary seems to be in one of these positions: (1) about to come down with the flu; (2) struggling with an attack of the flu; (3) trying to recover from the flu. The secretary and his wife are in the third of these positions, now about ready to enroll again in the ranks of Number 1.

D. B. Rich writes that his son Arnold (D. C., '31), now lieutenant in the USNR, has been assigned to the staff of Donald Nelson, chairman of the War Production Board, and has replaced the work of selling toys, toothpicks, etc., which formerly occupied him as manager for Montgomery, Ward, with that of the purchase of tanks, powder, food, clothing, jeeps, guns and bullets for the Armed Forces.

Robert, son of Ned Brown, after a course at Massachusetts State and at Nashville, Tenn., is now at Maxwell, Ala., for preflight training as an Army pilot.

Secretary, Hanover, N. H. Treasurer, 212 Mill St., Newtonville, Mass.