1942
Before launching into my tiny torrent of old, stale and leftover '42 news, it might be well if I briefed you people on the machinery of the current class dues campaign which is now underway. This is the first year '42 has been exposed to this business because our class dues for the first five years after graduation were automatically taken care of by the senior class tax many of us paid back in April or May in 1942.
From here on in to our 60th, we will annually be asked to contribute class dues, the amount of which will be determined by the class every five years in that more or less solemn conclave known as the class meeting at reunion time. At our recent Furious Fifth the tariff per year was set at 14.00 by the class.
Most specifically the number one expense this money defrays is a subscription to the ALUMNI MAGAZINE for the year. No one is going to try to tell you that this accounts for all of the four dollars, or even a major part of it. But I will tell you, as a former acting business manager of this excellent publication (it must be excellent—it publishes things I write), that it would cost you three dollars per year if you were to subscribe to the MAGAZINE on an individual basis. Under the class subscription basis the College set up many years ago, each class gets reduced rates on subscriptions if they reach a certain quota figure based upon the number of graduates in the class.
The rest of that four bucks, assuming naturally that '42 will reach its quota figure running, easily without using the whip, will go into the class treasury where it will be used as a basis for a fund which will take care of the ordinary, year-to-year expenses of the class and will also be there for any extraordinary expenditures the class may decide upon. In the latter category a matter the class voted to take up for consideration at the past reunion is a case in point—that of the possibility of donating a suitable war memorial to the deceased members of the class to be incorporated somewhere inside of the proposed Hopkins Center Building, if, when, and as it is built.
Since the class treasury carried a great many subscriptions for the many of you who were in service before graduation and thus had not paid any senior class tax, the fiscal situation is not nearly as healthy for '42 as it normally is for a class of our vintage. By the time this is printed you will have already heard from Treasurer Jack Harriman once, or possibly twice, in the form of a bill for class dues for 1947-48. You will probably be hearing from him a third time. I sincerely urge you to answer his request promptly and in so doing you will be helping the class and Jack.
Now that I have finally shaken the dust of Hanover from my flat feet, after many excursions and alarums, false starts and side tours, I find that it is much harder digging up Dartmouth news in Grosse Pointe, Mich., than it is in Hanover, N. H., a discovery that will rank in time, no doubt, with Newton's little idea about gravity. Those two young executives in the public relations and advertising fields, bulwarks of a couple of fly-by-night concerns, Ford and Gillette, Bill Mitchel and BobDewey, spent an hour or two last week over some cold beers with me. Both were the picture of health and wealth, and it just now occurs to me that the three of us represented one of the largest concentrations of bachelors left in the class, although it must be reported for the sake of strict accuracy that a good bit of the Dew's time is taken up these days with a young and, I understand, extremely personable lady of this town. They both seem to spend a good bit of their time (office time, that is) touring around the United States getting public reaction, executing grand coups and running up expense accounts, always managing to find time to take in things like the exhibitions the Ann Arbor version of the prewar Chicago Bears, the University of Michigan football team, is putting on each week-end. Plus an occasional party or two. For a country-reared rube from New Hampshire, like myself, it was an exciting glimpse into the other gay world of cosmopolitan glitter, dancing girls, champagne and general high living.
And now I come to that curious affliction that besets class secretaries with monotonous regularity ten times a year. It is now time for me to throw a small literary tantrum, beat my heels against the floor, clench my grubby little hands into fists, and whine in a repetitious sing-song, "Nobody ever sends me any news," and keep it up until everyone, including myself, is sick unto death of it. Since I do not possess unlimited funds—as a matter of literal fact, do not possess any funds at all—l cannot junket about the United States and extract news from you people in person. Which is by way of being a blessing—imagine opening the front
door some morning to get the newspaper and finding a small, misshapen Farley on the doorstep, panting heavily and clutching a worn stub of a pencil and tattered note paper. All I can do therefore is to assume the whine again and naggingly beg you to sit down once in a while and write of your doings and those of any of your classmates you happen to know.
The rest of this column will be made of the rag-tag and bobtail of sundry scraps of information I have acquired by means other than the one suggested above. It will be given in no particular order and no sources of information will be disclosed. Bob Kirk and Diet Lamade were elected officers of the Southern Tier (N. Y.) Dartmouth Club in August, secretary and vice-president respectively. On Saturday, September 6, at Philadelphia, Miss Frances Marion Wroten became Mrs. EverettPerdue Johnson. On June 28, at Pittsburgh, Miss Martha Miller Opsion became Mrs.Samuel Miller Bell.
And if the meagerness of the above doesn't convince you that I could use a little help, then I guess nothing will. That's it for this month.
JUNIOR BUSINESS LEADER: Don Williamson '42, left, newly elected president of the Chicago Junior Chamber of Commerce, presides at a meeting at which Senator Wayland Brooks is the speaker.
Secretary, 1092 Grayton Rd., Grosse Pointe Park 30, Mich.
Treasurer, Box 229, Route 2, Los Altos, Calif.
