1889

Upon the opening of another collegiate year your secretary desires to express appreciation of the many things done by members of the class which have aided him during the past year in the performance of his duties. Of the fifteen members left in our class group, one or more communications has been received during the last few weeks from fourteen of these members. The continuance of these contacts will insure your receiving news about your classmates you want to hear.

Our venerable classmate, Rev. Edward B.Blanchard, died June 15th from injuries received in a fall. He observed his 88th birthday two months before his death. His obituary appears in this issue.

The David N. Blakelys had an interesting summer. Mrs. Blakely and her son John selected the Maine coast for their vacation and spent it at Ogunquit. Miss Bertha Blakely (David's sister), librarian-emeritus of Mount Holyoke College, and Miss Mary Fletcher of Hanover, N. H., accompanied them.

The daughter of the family, Miss Elizabeth Blakely, went far afield seeking relaxation from her exacting duties in the surgery department of the Harvard Medical School. She spent the month of July in Utah—mostly with Mormon friends in Salt Lake City—making the journey each way by the United Air Lines. It was not her first experience in traveling by air, and she was fully prepared to enjoy the exhilaration which comes from being a passenger in a swiftly moving plane thousands of feet above the earth's surface watching the constantly changing panorama. It was an opportune time for Miss Blakely to visit Salt Lake City, since July 24th was the 100 th anniversary of Brigham Young's arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, and it was being celebrated with parades, concerts, the unveiling of a striking monument to the pioneers, and the musical play "The Promised Valley." Besides a great deal of gay social life in Salt Lake City, she made two visits at a ranch on the Provo River, 70 miles southeast of the city. Here she indulged in horseback riding and mountain climbing, the region affording a superb view of the Rocky Mountains.

"Sully" spent the summer, as usual, in Boonton, N. J., where he owns and operates a rather extensive farm. In a recent letter he made no reference to the amount of grain he raised this year, with wheat recently quoted at $2.70 per bushel, and corn selling at its highest price for years. Those of the underfed do hope, however, that this experienced gentleman farmer—the keen observer of economic conditions that he has been for many years, and still is—contributed a generous share this season toward harvesting our country's bountiful crop of the world's much needed cereals. George Bard observed his 82nd birthday on August 24th in Cambridge, Mass., at the home of his relatives, Mr. and Mrs. Richard B. Sanderson. Your secretary was invited to be present at the early Sunday afternoon festivities which honored the occasion—a delicious dinner followed later by a birthday cake (with lighted candles) served with ice cream. The latter part of the day was enjoyably spent in the family circle, which included the parents of Mrs. Sanderson, and was enlivened by the presence of the two young sons of the Sandersons—Richard and David. Mr. Sanderson graduated from Harvard in 1927. Mrs. Sanderson graduated from Radcliffe the same year.

We all are familiar with the story of the young man of our class who left the hills of his native state of New Hampshire a month and a half after his graduation, and one week later—a little less than three months before the territory of Montana was to be admitted to statehood—settled in Great Falls in that then territory, and began his long and distinguished career in the newspaper world. What the eminent author John Gunther, in his recently published-book "Inside U. S. A.," has to say about this member of our class is a story some may not have seen. Its reading is well worth while. Here it is:

"Great Falls (Montana) is dominated by two things, (a) huge smoke-stack of Anaconda's copperproduction plant, and (b) O. S. Warden. The smoke-stack, 512 feet high, was built by the old Amalgamated Copper Company; when dedicated in the 1890's a fifty-foot-square platform was set on top, and a community dance held thereon. Mr.Warden, who was born in New Hampshire, is publisher of the Great Falls Tribune and Leader, which, with the Lewistown Democratic News, are among the very few papers in the State not controlled bag and barrel by Anaconda. Mr. Warden is 82 years old, and the first vote he ever cast was for Benjamin Harrison. Last year (1944) he attended his 55 th reunion at Dartmouth, and enrolled as a future student there his three-year-old son."

Mr. Gunther, further referring to the newspapers in Montana, has this to say:

"As to circulation, the Anaconda Company newspapers run behind. For instance, Mr. independent Great Falls Tribune has 27,000 in a town of 35,000; the Anaconda Company paper in Butte, the Montana Standard, has 16,000 in a town of 31,000. The Warden policy is quite simple. He rarely opposes the Company directly; he prints the news. Anaconda knows that he cannot be bullied, bought, or frightened off. It also knows that he will oppose equally anything unjust to Anaconda, and anything unjust that Anaconda does. The Company could ruin Warden and drive him out of the State, but it would cost a tremendous amount of money and no end of scandal—and he has told them so."

Secretary and Treasurer, 108 Mt. Vernon St., Boston 8, Mass.