1934
This month we have a real treat in store, not only for you, but for old Bill Embry aswell. Mrs. Marty Dwyer (Joy to you) grabbedon to an invitation I extended, to be guesteditor for the month. And following you willfind one of the best columns you've yet hadthe pleasure of reading:
Remember last year you wrote Marty when he was in Panama and said "How about handling the column for a month as a guest writer?" Well the old stupe hasn't done anything about it yet, and in angrily gesturing with your card trying to talk him into some action, I suddenly noticed it was addressed to both of us. So I thought I'd try to make up for his lapse.
Marty and I are together now, in San Francisco. We were lucky enough to have several months of marriage on the Navy when he was stationed at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island —shortly after he became ex-class secretary. The second and third years of our wedded life were accomplished on air mail stationery, to and from the Pacific end of the Canal. This present resumption of marriage in reality instead of absentia doesn't hurt a bit. The end of the war and the prospect of wonderful peace prove that life can be beautiful.
In these fast-moving years I've had an education in the Dartmouth fellowship that reminds me somewhat of those 90-day indoctrination courses. There hasn't been much time, but brother has it been strenuous. Of course, we began the curriculum by meeting each other through Ralph Brabbee (his wife being an intimate of mine from pigtail days), and by being assisted into wedlock by Bill Scherman (whose children I used to help mind to work my way through college house parties). Since then there have been so many othersit seems as if I've met hundreds already, but every issue of your writings and of Bill's Newsletter convinces me that the Class of 1934 is numbered not in the hundreds but the thousands.
Will there be a Reunion next spring? I surely hope so. I still have the first sight of Hanover ahead of me. And I want to see with my own eyes whether that woodsman really snaps the barrel over the shoulder with his teeth .... and whether Al Baldwin really looks that funny in a green and white-pocketed jacket. Just yesterday we looked over some of the Fifth Reunion snapshots, and I'd like to meet some of those completely strange faces (unfamiliar is what I mean) that I've heard so much about—like Senator Hinsman (who Marty claims was his roommate, but you know these celebrity-hunters!), and that man with the intriguing name of Link Daniels, and the one with the intriguing frame of Phil Glazer. And Jack Gilbert, whose piano playing the Fords make such wild claims about .... and the characters who double-hoaxed the class column with the gangster cleanup in South Bend and the runaway horse rescue in Chicago.
I'm also anxious to meet Kirk Spitler, who led Marty to Time, Inc., back in 1935 and thereby started a chain of events in which the most recent link is this letter. And Cal Calmon, who invented that marvelous de-salting process. And Curt Howard, who helped capture the Greenland weather reporters And the one who told Corcoran to shut up in the movie house And the class baby, Ed Moore the younger. Please bring him, Ed—we have a niece (our best score to date) we'd like to introduce him to.
Marty saw Bill Hartman a few times in Panama, both while Bill's "can" was parked there and on his way back from the combat area later. The last meeting brought out a really funny story about Hartman, and I'll try to make it stand the acid test of printer's ink. Bill was awaiting transportation back to the States, and stumbled on the pleasing discovery that the Navy Officers' club served excellent Martinis, which made the waiting hours less vexatious and helped him forget a very bad boil. Marty happened upon him in the course of stopping in for his "one-before-dinner" as he laughingly calls it. Apologetic that he couldn't spend the evening with Hartman, he explained that he was scheduled to attend a violin concert downtown. This bland statement bubbled Bill over with kindred spirit as well as amazement at finding a fellow Deke groping for culture in the tropics. Choking with emotion, he said he'd love to go. And so they made the long trek out of the Zone and into the labyrinths of lower Panama City, carefully (and I suspect wistfully) dodging Kelly's Ritz and the Palm Terrace, and climbed into the gallery of the National Theater in the middle of the first solo number. No more than three minutes later, Hartman leaned over, groaned, "I can't stand Mendelssohn and this boil is killing me," and immediately hightailed it down the steps and all the way back to the bar and a hot bath.
Marty had a few other '34 encounters in the Panama. Art Grimes checked in at Balboa on the way out armed-guarding and again on the way back, but the score was pretty low, netting one short telephone conversation out of both attempts. Marty wants Allan Jacobson to know that both here and in the Canal Zone his commanding officer has been John Armstrong .... and to tell Nick Xanthaky that one of his good friends down there was Pete Skalkos Joe Schuldenfrei got over from the Atlantic side one week for school and a few beers. .... Mike Joseph was in the neighborhood, and so was Bob Palmer .... and McDaniel, of the Dartmouth eccy department, was on the intelligence staff. When Marty came up home on leave last summer, we ran into Mac at Nick's in the Village. The two greeted each other like two Vassar sophomores, and McDaniel launched into the delighted announcement that one of his present instructors in a refresher course was Dave Hedges. Dave later provided the punch line with the fact that he had flunked his former professor in communications and navigation.
Lt. Dwyer is now helping to police, protect and preserve the harbor of San Francisco. We're living in a lovely house near the Presidio, cherishing a Buick we went overboard on to drive out here in, and savoring California. As we rode into Los Angeles on the way out I heard all about Maury O'Connor, Fred feinaldo, and that fabulous character Brice Banks, and ' what a wonderful time Marty had with them in the glorious old year of 1940 supermarketing for Life Mag on the Coast. Matter of fact, as we rolled through the whole country, I absorbed my geography with a generous portion of "who lives where" and with a great deal of regret for not being able to make turn-offs and be sociable.
There was a Dartmouth dinner out here a few months ago. Marty saw Charlie Kehoe, who's a first lieutenant in the Army, a target flyer, and resident of San Jose. And Ed Klee, who he said was a face out of the really distant past. And one day, while he was riding out of Berkeley with friend and benefactor Dave Smith '35, another car came buzzing by, and Marty remarked casually and sort of abstractly, "That looks like a classmate of mine who lives in Hawaii—name of Dean Howland." Dave said, "Well it is Dean Howland—lives right up the street." Dean was at the dinner, too; in fact, he was elected vice president of the San Francisco association that very night.
Elanor Smith spent almost all Dave's senior year at Hanover, so in the foursome I'm the only one who hasn't been Mrs. Smalley's best friend at one time or another and doesn't know the Campus Cafe from the Senior Fence. The two old grads tried several nights to make a go at the Winter Song, but they both seemed to want to do the same zoom-zooms and would end up the frightful mess by sliding into Sweet Sue or Mississippi Mud.
The surprise meeting of the year (second only to that of Hulsart and Bobby Peters on Eniwetok) belongs to me and Stan Silverman and the 14th floor of 111 Sutter, this city. Stan, covering the Conference for OWI, almost fell through to the 13th, and I lost a week's worth of composure. The meeting resolved into promises, faithfully kept during the following week, by sessions at the Press Club and near Art Tatum's piano at the Club Savoy. We were pleased to be part of Stan's last pre nuptial week as compensation for not being in New York for the wedding.
And while all this goes on, the people do keep getting famous, don't they? A recent issue of the Chronicle reviews Major John Spiegel's "Men Under Stress" and says many fine things about it... . and the August issue of the Alumni Magazine not only reviews "The Plot Against the Peace," co-authored by Albert E. Kahn, but presents as its book-reviewer your own Hafey Arthur..... And most spectacular of all, did you notice who by-lined the biggest United Press news story of the century? JAPAN SURRENDERS, by Ernest Barcella!
I'm sorry about Gerry Hall, and George Coppenrath, and Tom Leslie. I hope that Marty Braun has been found, and also that the news about Ken Keeley is still good.
Secretary and Treasurer General Box Co. 816 S. 16th St., Louisville 1, Ky.
