Thayer School

PROFESSOR JOHN MINNICH 29, erstwhile editor of this column, has been the victim of a deal with the present writer whereby John takes over the position of Faculty Adviser for the newly-organized Thayer School Student Engineering Society and the writer returns to his former reportorial activities.

With the resumption of peacetime, or at least post-war, educational activity at the School, the students have shown a very general and real interest in the development of social and professional programs. This involves the reactivation of the student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which has been inactive since 1943, and ultimately the establishment of student affiliation with the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineering. The plan developed by the present student body is to amalgamate the three student chapters into a single organization under some such title as that given above. This organization will consist of four divisions, civil, electrical, mechanical, and Tuck-Thayer. Each division will be headed by a second-year student and will have a secretary elected from the first-year students in the corresponding curriculum. These eight officers will constitute an executive committee to direct the affairs of the whole organization. Officers for this year, naming the chairman first and the secretary second, have been elected as follows: for the civils, H. J. Chadwell '47 and C. V. Helm '48; for the electricals, L. A. Loebel '47 and Robert Coffey '48; for the mechanicals, R. G. Tyler '47 and A. D, Lynn '48; for the Tuck-Thayers, Malcolm McLoud '47 and H. A. Boedtker '48. The executive committee, consisting of these men, has elected the last two as chairman and secretary, respectively, of the organization. The Tuck-Thayer course seems to be living up to its name of "Engineering and Business Administration!"

A group of six assorted individuals from Hanover trekked to the College Grant with Ross McKenney early in November in quest of deer and the party, entirely by accident, had quite a Thayer School flavor, including the president of the Board of Overseers of the School and four alumni, John Minnich and the writer '29, Dick Olmsted '33, and Dan Drury '38. It may or may not be significant that the only deer brought back was bagged by the one layman in the group.

Roy Briggs '45 has returned to civilian life after his spell in the Navy Civil Engineer Corps and expects to take graduate work at M. I. T. In the meantime, he has taken a teaching job in the civil engineering department at Tufts. He is living at 7 Sagamore Avenue, West Medford, Mass.

Dick Livingston '44, one of the three living mechanical engineering graduates of Thayer School, and wife Shirley are living at 390 Richmond Avenue, Buffalo 13, New York. Dick is in mechanical engineering work at the DuPont Company in charge of the development and marketing of "Cordura" high tenacity continuous filament rayon used in the tire cord industry and as a staple fiber for the textile industry. Dick and Shirley are building a home in Buffalo which they hope to move into very shortly.

Roger Gaskill '44, the oldest living mechanical engineering graduate of Thayer School is an engineer in the experimental truck testing division of the Chrysler corporation in Detroit and lives in solitary bachelordom at 111 Highland Avenue, Apartment 314, Detroit 3. Roger completed the Chrysler Institute graduate engineering course last summer, receiving the degree of Master of Automotive Engineering. He dropped in for a visit at the School about the middle of October.

Joe Chenstone, Ex. '39, has a supervisory position with the Eaton Manufacturing Company, Wilcox Rich Division, in Detroit according to Rog Gaskill who sees quite a lot of Joe outside business hours. This is the first news we have had of Joe since that day in June 1938 when he disappeared from the Hanover scene in a Stanley Steamer which he had rebuilt in the shop in Bissell Hall.

Jack MacDonald '14 and Eddie Simmons D. C. '26, dropped in for a visit the morning before the Harvard game last month. Jack, who is Vice-President of the Walsh Construction Company, is in New York City and is currently engaged in surplus property disposal for the War Assets Administration for four Army and Navy camps in the east.

Robert Dewey '23 also called at the School before the Harvard game. He is with the Associated Reciprocal Exchanges at 261 Fifth Avenue, underwriters for companies in both the United States and Canada.

E. I. McFalls, D. C. '16, Vice President of The Master Builders Company in Cleveland, Ohio, visited the School on November 6 and presented an illustrated lecture on air-entrained concrete and cement dispersion to the class in Engineering Materials.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Thayer School faculty.