1933
The duckboards have made their annual appearance on the campus and while no one who knows Hanover is sanguine enough to think, or brash enough to say, that spring is just around the corner, the slush and puddle season is upon us. If we still have to contend with sub-zero temperatures and occasional blizzards we will at least have the promise, on good days, of better things to come, and we have more than a sentimental interest in these glad tidings this year when we've had an anxious eye on the coal bin all through the winter.
With a fine disregard for reality the "Spring Term" got under way a few days ago when some 900 sailors and Marines and 200 civilian students came back to their books after a brief break. Among the civilian students this term are forty-nine '49ers, the advance delegation of the new freshman class. How does that make you feel, '33? A rapid computation suggests that if this accelerated program remains in effect for a little while—and even if it doesn't—'33 will have some pappies of Dartmouth men in its ranks ere a handful of years have passed.
There's a fine figure of a naval officer adorning this page—none other than Lt. Roger V.Smith USNR, shooting the sun somewhere in the far reaches of the Pacific. When he sent this picture to his mother Roger wrote: "Don't let this one fool you. I just navigate by sniffing the wind and wetting my finger, with an occasional spit to leeward to judge our speedl" Roger is in command of an LCI (L), and has seen action in New Guinea, and more recently- at Leyte.
Working with commendable efficiency and dispatch Special Investigator F. X. Murphy of Waterbury hardly gave us time to get our scouts out before he filed a report with us on the Doscher case. He writes that his Saipan representative has confirmed the fact that the Lt. Doscher mentioned in the New Yorker article we quoted last month as having been wounded in action was our Bob. No word has been received as to the seriousness of his wounds.
Our Boston correspondent, Jim Woods, has sent us a little welcome news of our patrician beantown fratres, who have, almost without exception, cloaked themselves in a cold silence ever since the Notre Dame fiasco last fall. BunMudge is now a lieutenant, training a platoon of anti-tank gunners at Camp Blanding. Lt.Walter Besancon is spending the winter in pleasant climes, serving on the staff of the U. S. Naval School at Hollywood, Fla. EdwinHome's mother wrote to Jim saying that Ed had been overseas for many months. She wrote, "His destination is a military secretnot a combat theatre, but a lonely spot and should anyone care to correspond with him, he would appreciate it very much " Sorry we can't give you Ed's address in these notes, due to censorship regulations, but we'll be glad to give it to anyone who would like to write to him. Drop us a line and we'll send it to you.
Henry B. Pierpont, according to recent advices, was recently promoted from personnel manager to assistant trust officer of the U. S. National Bank of Omaha. Henry has been with the bank since his graduation.
Cpl. James O'Toole recently graduated after completing a course of training in Information and Education at the School of Personnel Services, Lexington, Va. Before going into the service Jim was a teacher and did industrial research for the Crompton-Knowles Co. in Worcester. He will work on the War Departments' Information Program for American troops, and will be stationed with the San Marcos AAF, San Marcos, Texas.
We received word recently of the promotions of Capt. William C. Brown and Lt.Comdr. Walter L. M. Snead. Lt. Kenneth B.Weeman USNR is now stationed in Seattle, Wash. Lt. Comdr. Whit Kimball has made mine warfare his speciality. He is currently servicing as executive officer on a large ship, after having had his own command for some time.
Lt. Tom Noonan, ancient denizen of. Topliff with your secretary, writes that he was inducted in February 1942, after living a sedentary, but in retrospect exceedingly attractive, life as a lawyer in Mahanoy, Pa. Tom went through OCS in 1943, and after serving at several stations in various capacities now finds himself, after a contract termination course at Michigan Law School, assigned to the Detroit area as contract termination officer. Norm Payne informs us that Lt. Don Doherty has served extensively in both the Atlantic and Pacific theatres as officer in command of Navy gunners aboard a Liberty ship.
Latest '33 to find his way to Hanover was Jim DeHaven. I found him a few days ago in the research lab of the Eye Institute looking over a complicated optical instrument with Ken Ogle. Jim was here as a consultant from the Battelle Memorial Institute of Columbus, Ohio, an industiral research organization with which Jim has been associated since 1940. The physics that your secretary picked up while serving as an ersatz associate in the Physics Department proved inadequate to give us even a glimmer of an idea of what Jim and Ken were up to, but we did gather from our brief talk with Jim that he's been in on some very interesting war and industrial research in the last few years.
Someone told us not long ago that Ed.Staudt was now chief of the Housing Statistics Unit, Bureau of the Census. Someone also gave us his address as Malabar, Fla., Box 116. Seems quite a distance to commute. That's th? trouble with this job. Most of the time you don't get any information, and when you do it's something screwy, like that.
SHOOTING THE SUN. Lt. Roger V. Smith '33, USNR, skipper of an LCI (L) somewhere in the South Pacific, has seen action at Leyte and other wellknown spots in the Pacific Theatre of Operations.
Secretary,so Valley Rd., Hanover, N. H.
Treasurer, 281 a Grant Bldg., Pittsburgh 19, Pa.
