1905
The class is saddened by the passing of Francis Wayland Dorothy at his home in Enfield, N. H., in December 1944. Francis received his LL.B. from Boston University in 1907, practiced his profession in Boston and later in Enfield, N. H., where he was born on January 5, 1876. We remember Francis as a happy, studious undergraduate. and later as a trusted member of his profession.
Walter Emery's business address is 195 Broadway, New York City, and his residence is at 337 West End Road, South Orange, N. J.
On Saturday, December 16, 1944, the annual meeting and luncheon of the Merrimack County Alumni Association was held at the Eagle Hotel in Concord. President James B. Godfrey '31, of Concord, was in the chair. Secretary-Treasurer Lawrence I. Duncan gave an interesting report. We were fortunate in having President Hopkins as the speaker. He reported the experiences of the College in training the Navy units and outlined plans for the College after the war. It is always a pleasure to hear the President because his addresses abound in insights, philosophic generalizations and indicate a calm grasp of realities. Macmillan, Preston and May represented '05.
The following Sunday I had the pleasure of hearing the President again when he spoke as representative of the delegates who were present at Durham for the inauguration of Dr. Harold Stoke, the new President of the University of New Hampshire. New Hampshire and New England are fortunate in having these two men in positions of educational leadership in their midst.
One of many pleasant surprises of the Christmas season was the receipt of an attractive card bearing information about Dwight (Varsity) Billman, from Bieber, Calif., his residence, situated at an altitude of 4161 feet. Contrary to the characteristic Californian's refusal to report the facts about the weather, Varsity reports with Yankee candor that it gets "quite cold and reminds me of Hanover." He is in sight of Mt. Shasta and Mt. Lassen, the only active volcano in the United States. Varsity and Mrs. Billman are teaching in the local high school and enjoying themselves to the full. The region abounds in geese and ducks. They have three children, the twins, aged seven, and the other a boy, aged five. Varsity hopes to return to Hanover when cars and gasoline are more plentiful. The best wishes of the Class go to the Billmans for a very happy and prosperous New Year.
Walter Nourse, 'os's News Scout for Los Angeles, devoted part of his Christmas vacation from his duties as principal of a large junior high school in that city, to look up Lill, Brintnall and other '05 men in that region. He has promised an early report for the MAGAZINE.
One of the busiest '05 men is Dr. Charles Goodrich, who has been chief engineer of the American Bridge Co. for ten years. Charles has an enviable record of always sending an immediate and full reply to a request for news about himself and his family. He writes that the biggest job his company ever tackled was the building and equipping of more than 100 of the famous large LST boats. The Company had never built, before taking this contract, anything nearer a ship than a barge or car float. They built and equipped a new shipyard with ten shipways, employing 9,000 workers. The Company is building also other kinds of ships, barracks buildings for the South Seas in lots of 500, airplane hangars in lots of 100, enlargements to shell producing plants and bulldozers for tearing away the jungle and the rubble of shell-ruined cities. Charles has a fine engineering organization and he reports that the Operating Department is also very efficient. Further parts of a very interesting letter follow:
Pittsburgh is living up to its "Smoky City" tradition but we escape a good deal of it where we live in Mt. Lebanon which is some five hundred feet higher than Pittsburgh proper.
Mrs. Goodrich and I.like (strange isn't it?) to boast of our grandchildren, of which we now have four, having acquired a new one on November 29th last, a boy named Clarke Prescott Goodrich, our son's first. With luck Jhe will carry on the Goodrich name on my particular branch. He and his mother are doing well and living at present with our daughter and her three children aged 8, 5 and 3 in our old home in Westfield, N. J. Bob, our son with the new baby, is still a sergeant in the Army ..Air Corps and stationed in Florida, and our son-in-law Stanley Malek is a private in the Infantry and a staff stenographer stationed in Tennessee.
Mrs. Goodrich and I had a great treat in September, a little more than two weeks of vacation at our farm at Suncook Pond, in Center Barnstead, N. H. It was somewhat of a stunt to get there and to get supplies while there with no car but we managed it by train and bus and the kind help of farmer neighbors. As I had not been there since the summer of 1941, there were many jobs of repair calling pretty loudly for attention. So my able wife and I turned to and wielded the paint brush, the hammer, the screw driver, the plasterer's trowel and the wall paper paste brush and accomplished -a surprising lot of repair. For a rest from these arduous jobs, Mrs. Goodrich would walk the half-mile to the mail box while I stopped at the bridge for a few casts with the fishline. Had good luck too, especially one afternoon when an old friend and fellow fishing-fan from Rochester came over for a- visit, and we caught a couple of good bass and a pickerel which weighed just under four pounds and was twenty-five and one half inches long.
Because of no car and the gas shortage, we were pretty well isolated and had few visitors but we are so much in love with our one hundredacre hide-away that we did not have a lonesome moment even though most of the cottagers at the lake had gone home.
The time of our vacation fitted with a trip I had to make to Hanover to attend, on September 29, a meeting of the Board of Overseers of the Thayer School, which was,, of course, a pleasure rather than a duty, especially as the weather then was very fine and we were able to attend the Dartmouth vs. Holy Cross football game on September 30.
It was disappointing not to be able to visit more of our friends in New Hampshire or ask them over to see us. We were in Concord only a few minutes on our way from the farm to Hanover.
It seems hardly possible but my retirement from active service with the American Bridge Co. is just two years away and this service will have lasted for forty years, but "time marches on." When that time comes, we expect to spend at least six months each year at our farm in New Hampshire. It will be a return to our home state for both of us.
It will be a pleasure to welcome the Goodrich family as permanent residents of New Hampshire.
Secretary and Treasurer, 14 Holt St., Concord, N. H.
