1932
It's the power of the press that got me into this job, I'm convinced. In his last column Carl Baker said the class secretary serves as a "small-bore St. Michael." Obviously the class moguls were sold on this idea, and decided a Michael was a natural. So they got me into a smoke-filled room in Wheeler last June and told me of their decision. No sooner had I left the room denying that I was a candidate for any office than I found a ground-swell going strong, and before I knew it I was swept into office along with the whole (unopposed) ticket headed by Marv Chandler. So I've got the job, and you have me. I am impressed by the literary quality of the work turned out by my predecessors Owsley, Marks and Baker. My writing efforts, for a long time, have been channeled in legal lines, using the latinized verbiage, footnotes and loopholes of the law journals and briefs. I will try, however, to choose words that fit the music of class notes.
I hope the column will enable all of us to get really acquainted with our classmates and their families as they are now. In writing your letters please add a few sentences of description to the bare outlines of the facts. Tell us how you look, what kind of places you're living in, your hobbies. Let us know if your wife is doing anything unusual; in special cases, let us know what she looks like. The same is true of the kids. I'm going to do it for you, until you'll all know so much about my family that you'd recognize them on a train—but I'll promise to omit all but the very cutest sayings. Perhaps my own interests prejudice me, but I'd also like to hear something about your ideas these days. In telling about your job, give us something on the kind of work it is and how world and national affairs are affecting it. Photographs are welcome as long as they have an alumnus in them, so have your neighbors
snap pictures of the whole family. (Sharp, glossy prints, not too small, are needed.)
Now, by example, to show what I'd like to know about all of you. The chief change in my appearance is a matter of hair: it's pretty thin in the top front area, although a few stragglers remain to encourage me. The greying above the ears has increased but isn't in the distinguished class yet. I weigh 145, just ten pounds more than when I used to try to gain a little so I could coast as far as Stu Thatford when we both pushed off from the edge of the pool. 1 have been married for ten years to Alice Corneille Cardozo, who looks as nice as she did when we met. We became parents of three with the arrival of Alice Rebecca last November. Michael was born seven years ago and Julia five years ago. All three kids are so delightfully healthy, lively and normal that there isn't any more to say about them now. You can get an idea of what Michael thinks of me when I tell you what he said after he had brought a young friend in to see something I was making. They admired it for a moment, and then Michael said, "It's pretty good for a Daddy, isn't it?" I earn a comfortable living as a member of the staff of the Legal Adviser of the State Department. Though still working mostly on the tying up of the ends of lend-lease, I'm getting into all sorts of the problems of the world. The lendlease remnants include negotiating final settlements with the USSR. China, and a few other countries, and getting the last of the "pipeline" delivered—the articles on order on VJ day which the other governments chose to buy. Out of over a billion dollars worth of goods, only a few million are left, and now Congress has decreed that the tail end of the USSR material cannot be delivered, despite our agreement to do so. When I'm asked what my future plans are, I can only answer that I couldn't be doing any more interesting work, but I could be more prosperous. So I may be tempted if something good shows up, and if along with it I can see as pleasant a place to live as the apartment community we are now in, known as "Buckingham."
John Clark's letter of August 21 "as from New Boston, N. H." gets top billing: "I snuck down to NYC yesterday to have a bon voyage dinner with Ping Ferry at al. in honor of Chuck Owsley who sailed today for Bern where he's to be Second Secretary of Legation.
Further in line of Dartmouthiana, we had JohnKeller and Reuel Denny as visitors in New Boston last Saturday. John is still in Concord, of course, with the Weather Bureau; Reuel, surprisingly, is :n Hanover for the summer, having cut loose from Fortune after a couple or three years of lead-article reporting (vide: the job on Gianini in the July number). In Hanover, where he sublet a GI shack in Wigwam Circle for himself, Ruth and Randy, he's been writing a good deal on what I gathered was a free-lance basis; and, in between times, he's been dickering with certain universities to see if maybe he shouldn't go back into teaching, after all.
Another of our chums who's writing a bit, too, is Frank (Joe) Carleton who lives here at the YMCA, as I do during the week, in Springfield I wonder whether there'd be any way that you could get guys who got some snapshots of Reunion to circulate them among some of us who didn't think to bring cameras?"
On the last point, photography still being one of my favorite pastimes, I took a lot of pictures at Reunion, some of which are very satisfactory. My idea is to have a picture published each month in the MAGAZINE, and to collect all the best for some kind of distribution in connection with the 20th Reunion. If anyone has a better idea, let me know, and meanwhile send me contributions for publication.
Howie Sargent is in the office of Assistant Secretary of State William Benton, helping to spread abroad the word of democracy as it may be found in the U. S.—a job made harder because so many members of Congress think the word should not be spread. He gave me some notes, to which I have added from my own knowledge:
Jim Wakelin, who is with Engineering Research Associates of Washington and St. Paul, a scientific research group mostly with wartime Navy experience, was cited for his work in the Bikini Operation Crossroads RedTucker is one of three directors of Nelson Rockefeller's new Basic Economy Development Corp., 30 Rockefeller Plaza, NYC. Red, Gladys and seven-months-old Suzanne have (at last) an apartment, in Tuckahoe, N. Y.
.... Bill Briber, just back from Peru, is Director of the Division of Basic Food Supply of the newly incorporated Institute of InterAmerican Affairs of the State Department.
.... Carl Baker finished some major writing assignments in mid-August; I'd like to hear what they were Paul Dunn, the B&O RR announcer, has been given charge of Diesel motive power and is Assistant General Superintendent of Motive Power Anyone who doesn't know what Bob Ryan is doing just doesn't read anything. I liked his comments on his part in "Crossfire"; it made me wonder if the House Committee on Un-American Activities had since been to see him Congratulations to Don Richardson, who was married during the summer to Elizabeth Patterson DeWitt: each had a son, same ages, from former marriages; and to Steve Butterfield, who was married on June 29 in Heidelberg, Germany, to Erica Waltraud Janson of Riga; Steve was in the office of the Chief of Transportation wfth the Army in Frankfort.
Secreidry, 3909 North sth Street, Arlington, Va. Treasurer, _ 607 Front Street, Hempstead, N. Y.
