Thayer School
ACCORDING TO INFORMATION received here from the Navy last month, we now anticipate a continuation of the V-12 civil engineering curriculum at Thayer School until at least November 1946. This prospect is due to the Navy's plan to continue V-12 engineers in their program until graduation instead of transferring them to the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps, as will be done with the majority of present V-12 students. Our present eighth-term civil engineering group is now reduced to four men by various causes including schedule irregularities dating way back to freshman year and an increased demand for officer candidates in the Marine Corps which prompted them to remove two of our Marines last month. The remaining trainees will complete their work here and receive the bachelor's degree in June. There are 25 sixth-term Navy and Marine trainees in civil engineering and present indications are that these men will remain to complete their eighth-term course next March. The fourth-term group of civils is the largest and now numbers 47. This is the group which will remain in the program until November 1946.
Approximately half the trainees in the third-term class of 300 have indicated their desire to take an engineering curriculum. These men are now enrolled in Professor Ermenc's course in Elementary Heat Power for deck officer candidates, and will be screened during the current term. Those who are accepted for engineering will then be able to take engineering courses in the NROTC program, presumably in Thayer School if Dartmouth has an NROTC unit.
Incidentally, the youngest living graduates of Thayer School are Henry W. Parker '46 and Samuel C. Florman '46, and they have other distinctions as well. Hank, whose home is in Goffstown, N. H., first came to Dartmouth as a freshman in the fall of 1942. Entering Thayer School as a Marine in March, 1944, with a 3.6 average, he completed three semesters of Thayer School work with a straight A record and received his B.S. degree summa cum laude this February. He is now at Parris Island.
Sam, whose home is in Brooklyn, entered Dartmouth in the summer of 1942, came to Thayer School as an apprentice seaman with a 3.8 average, completed three semesters of Thayer School work with a 3.94 average and also received his B.S. degree summa cum laude in February. He is now at Camp Endicott in Davisviile, R. I.
After sending in my notes to the ALUMNI MAGAZINE last month, I spent a delightful weekend in Pittsburgh, mostly as the guest of Charles F. Goodrich '06 and the American Bridge Company of which he is chief engineer. On Saturday, Mr. Goodrich took me through the office, yard and shops of the Bridge Company at Ambridge. On this tour I had the pleasure of the company of Ralph Moulton '30 who is assistant manager of the Ambridge plant. This plant, which normally has been devoted to heavy construction fabrication, is at present working on such varied items as mine excavators, bulldozers, turntables, and light framing for airplane hangars. In addition to his responsibilities at the bridge shop, Ralph has a couple at home in the form of sons aged, respectively, five months and six years.
The following day I was honored to be the guest of Mr. Goodrich at the launching of LST 1088 at the Bridge Company's shipyard in Leetsdale, and at the reception given afterward in honor of the ship's sponsor. The use of a single launching way to serve ten shipbuilding ways, and the procedure of broadside launching into the Ohio River were particularly interesting features. Incidentally, movable and vulnerable equipment was being raised to positions above flood level while I was at both these plants, foresight which must have paid dividends judging by the picture in the New York Times of March 8 showing the flooded Leetsdale yard.
At the shipyard I had a good chat with Jim Dunn '35 who has one of the top management jobs in the yard. Jim was in fine shape on a somewhat larger scale than when last seen, and, not content with having charge of some 1500 welders at the shipyard, has added something new at home in the form of four-monthold James Andrew Dunn Jr.
Mr. and Mrs. Goodrich entertained me in their delightful apartment in Mt. Lebanon for Sunday supper, supplying a fitting climax to about the best job of visiting-fireman-entertaining I have seen yet.
Lieutenant Charlie Hitchcock '39 returned to Hanover Feb. 10 armed with projection slides showing diagrams and photographs of the harbor-building operations at the now famous Omaha Beach. He showed these in connection with a lecture on "The Seabees in the- Normandy Invasion" given at the Thayer School. Congratulations are in order to Charlie both for the extra half stripe and for bringing to our engineering students a story which was interesting and important.
I have had a good letter from Lt. (jg) Hugh McLaren Jr. '40, who is some place where it's cold with a Coast Guard Unit. Hugh is in charge of a construction outfit of some hundred men and reports some interesting work. Hugh was married last March 25 "to a girl from Jamestown, New York." Congratulations are somewhat delayed but nevertheless sincere.
We are also indebted to Hugh for the news that George W. (Ace) Bailey '40 is still with Raymond Concrete Pile Company in Venezuela and that his wife is with him there; and that Bob McCarty '40 and wife were in New York recently on their way to California.
Dean Garran recently received a fine letter from George Kisevalter '31 which I wish space permitted me to quote in full. Kisty is a major in the Army Corps of Engineers attached to the War Department General Staff Military Intelligence Section in Washington. I can't resist quoting this much from Kisty's letter:
I have read with pleasure of the fine work Thayer School has done and is doing under your splendid direction in the field of engineering education Everywhere that I have gone thus far, from the task force assignment of building radar stations on cliffs and almost on volcano fringes in the Aleutians under Jap attack to studies on permafrost, the background you gave me in Thayer School has been of direct and indispensable value I spent many weeks on the Engineer Board of the Office of the Chief of Engineers U. S. Army and have translated nine volumes (some only in part) of Russian work on permafrost.
Kisty mentions having seen Merit White '31who is also in Washington working for a military agency as an engineer expert studyingbomb damage. Merit has spent considerabletime in England during the past year on thisassignment, and I was most interested in hisdescription of the work when I saw him atthe annual meeting in New York last January.
Congratulations to ex-Prof. Harry Schutzand wife on the birth of Henrik Arthur inNewtonville, Massachusetts, on Feb. 19.
