Stub Pearson Lost

NOTED ATHLETE-SCHOLAR OF 1942 DOWNED WHILE BOMBING JAP CRUISER

WORD REACHED THE COLLEGE On April 18 that Lt. (jg) Charles M. (Stubbie) Pearson '42, football and basketball captain and Phi Beta Kappa scholar, had been reported missing in action following a dive-bombing attack on a Japanese cruiser off the Palau Islands on March 30. The pilot of another Navy bomber reported that the plane crashed into the sea at full speed and that neither Pearson nor the rear-seat gunner in the Hellcat bomber was seen to come up to the surface. Only an unopened liferaft appeared, and it is presumed that the famed Dartmouth athlete and class leader was killed, although the Navy has officially listed him as "missing in action."

Lieutenant Pearson, one of the most honored Dartmouth undergraduates of his generation, was company commander of the Dartmouth Squadron which started training at the Squantum naval air base in June, 1942, the month after the Class of 1942 had graduated as the first under the accelerated war program. He later trained at Jacksonville and at Lee Field, both in Florida, where he was commissioned and assigned to an aircraft carrier. He had been on combat duty in the Pacific since last fall. His letters to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred C. Pearson of Madison, Minn., and to the College had been published as outstanding expressions of the thoughts of young Americans about the war and the postwar world.

While at Dartmouth, Pearson garnered nearly all the athletic, scholastic and class honors open to one man. He was the second man in the history of the College to captain both football and basketball in the same year. In addition to being a member of Phi Beta Kappa he was a Senior Fellow, doing special work in the field of history, was the winner of the Barrett Cup, and was the valedictory orator when his class graduated in May, 1942.

Other honors included Palaeopitus, the class presidency for three consecutive years, Green Key, the Archibald Athletic Prize, the Dartmouth Athletic Cup, Gallagher and Smith Fund scholarships, and his freshman year the William S. Churchill Prize as outstanding man in the class. He was also a member of Casque and Gauntlet and Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. Pearson entered Dartmouth from Dawson (Minn.) High School where he was also top man in his class. Shortly after the outbreak of war he was one of a group of Dartmouth undergraduates to petition the College for a stiffer program that would harden men both mentally and physically for the combat service to come.

LT. (jg) CHARLES M. PEARSON '42, USNR