1932
"Awful news," said Sid Hayward, in reporting Bob Wilkin's accidental death in his swimming pool at Old Westbury, L. 1., on August 31. And awful news it is to all of us who knew Bob as one of the first-rate men in a first-rate class. Before he came East last year to take over a new position with his old firm, the Phelps Dodge Refining Corporation, Bob used to experiment with an underwater diving outfit, consisting of a tight mask and a small oxygen tank. On Labor Day weekend he tried it again in the pool at his recently purchased Wheatley Road house; playing nearby, eleven-year-old Judy thought Bob had stayed under too long and ran for her mother, Barbara, who dived repeatedly in an attempt to bring Bob to the surface. The firemen and police tried to revive him without success. To Barbara Cates Wilkin and her daughter Judy go the deepest sympathies of the class.
Whit Daniels reports in that since he completed his three and a half year stint in the Navy, where he spent most time in charge of the Army-Navy Aircraft Production Magazine, he has been with Chase National in an advertising and public relations job. He and Dorothy have a three-year-old girl, Jocelyn. At about the same time Whit went to work for Chase National, Bill Morton withdrew as second vice president to form his own firm, W. H. Morton and Co., underwriters and distributors, with offices at 15 Broad St. The firm will handle state and municipal bonds and U. S. Government securities. At the same address, Chuck Maxwell became a member of the firm of Breed, Abbott and Morgan on July I. Back from his three years as a Navy lieutenant in charge of the U.S.S. Vent, a salvage ship operating in the South Pacific, Al Boncutter has joined the staff of George C. Newell Co., where he will serve as assistant general agent and will handle public relations for the firm, with offices in Seattle. Also from the Coast the stories are beginning to trickle through again about Bob Ryan's prowess as fisticuffer; since he got out of the Marines, Bob has re-entered the movies. He is currently co-starring with Joan Bennett and Charles Bickford in the RKO film, "Women on the Beach," and lives at 4212 Ben Ave., North Hollywood. Bob Fisher is in the Industrial Relations Dept. at the California Packing Corp., San Francisco. Rog Benezet gets mail at Box 15, Carmel. Lt. Mark Richard, back from Tokyo to California, lives at 609 Rossmore Ave., Los Angeles. And in the "sunbathed metropolis" of San Diego, Dick Clarke wound up his terminal leave March first, after a long term of service with the Navy as combat intelligence officer and for a year as aide and flag lieutenant to Vice Admiral John Henry Newton, CINCSOPAC, and later Deputy COMINCH under Nimitz; then Dick did some Sierras skiing before settling down to executive assistantship, handling sales promotion for the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corp.
Skipping east to the New England area, where your correspondent at famille have been camping on the north end of Lake Dunmore, near Middlebury, Vt., for a working vacation which included much writing, it can be reported that Frank Gilbert of Dorset, Vt., is the manager of Russells at Kearsarge, N. H. (Kearsarge is a mountain); Don Henderson is in the Second National Bank (just as good) at Nashua, N. H. Jack Van Buskirk lives at Lyndonville, Vt. Prof. Clarence Willey teaches psychology at Norwich University, Northfield, Vt. And Ade Nitschelm runs a very elegant hotel, called, as I remember it, Stonehurst, just outside of the ski and skid center, North Conway, N. H. Down south of here Charlie Mayo's schooner Blue Sea has been slapping the waves in and around and outside of Provincetown, Mass., this summer. Farther south, on June 14 last, Jack Carnell was married to Elizabeth Shaffer of New Haven. Elizabeth is a Smith College graduate of the class of 1933. And down east of here, Mose Parker was elected president of the Dartmouth Alumni Association of Maine at a meeting held at the Mansion House, Poland Spring, in mid-June. Among the applauders were Dartmouth's new prexy and Mrs. Dickey. Leon C. Warner, of the Warner Hardware Co., has likewise won elective honors as incoming president of the Better Business Bureau, having been elevated to that post at the 32nd annual meeting of that august organization.
The midwest news is full and good, including the news of the marriage of Mr. James Aloysius Hannan to Theodora Casper, June 15, Saint Rose of Lima Church, Milwaukee, and the return of far-flung Army Doctor Edward Starr Judd to his practice in Rochester, Minn. But as this column approaches the limit of its assigned length, I will have to defer further reports on the midwesterners and the Massachusettsers and the Washingtoniacs and the Newyorksuburbiacs until next month.
But I want to close this column with thanks and admiration to Howdy Pierpont and all the lads who assisted him in putting over the class' part in the all-record-breaking 1946 Alumni Fund drive about which you will read wonderingly elsewhere in this sheet; and to John Clark of New Boston, N. H., for a newsletter in the class tradition of gaiety, information, and not too much nauseous doughpleading (Ping Ferry please note), which never went well with the boys (dough-pleading, I mean, not the letter, which everybody thought was fustrate). That does not say "frustrate-,-'' Clark. Howdy's achievement was the more admirable in that he pulled up Old Greenwich stakes in the midst of the campaign for a move to Massachusetts. And the first of many reminders: The FIFTEENTH REUNION OF THE CLASS OF 1932 will definitely and finally occur on June 20-22 inclusive at the town of Hanover, N. 11., in the year 1947 coming up.
Secretary, 178 Prospect Ave., Princeton, N. J. Treasurer, Room 1801, 80 Maiden Lane New York 7, N. Y.
