1920
Among happy recollections of freshman year in New Hampshire Hall is the picture of Henrietta Rose that adorned the SwezeySnedecor quarters. It was set apart as an especially prized possession of Freshman Fashionplate Carroll, who traveled to Hanover well-stocked with haberdashery from the Swezey & Newins emporium in Patchogue, L. I. Four years later Carroll went straight back to Patchogue, married the girl, and has lived there happily every after. More than that, the Swezeys live on Rose Avenue, and our private guess is that Carroll established the family residence there for properly sentimental reasons, or else prevailed upon the local selectmen to rename the street in honor of Henrietta.
That's the way it is with the Swezey's and so we take pride this month in adding Henrietta Rose Swezey to the portrait gallery of distinguished wives of Twenty men. For some time we have cherished the story that the Patchogue Advance ran as a Who's Who about her last summer, because its tribute to her "spontaneous friendliness and sparkling personality" is eloquent testimony to the local regard for her. Naturally, that regard has been well earned. From the time when she came back from Barnard College and Columbia School of Business to work in her father's bank there in Patchogue, Henrietta has been a big asset to the community. Trustee of the Congregational Church, member of the local chapter of the D.A.R. and of the Patchogue Sorosis, her most recent civic activity has been on behalf of the Red Cross.
But the real fact is that Henrietta Swezey has contributed most to Patchogue by helping very actively to make Swezey 8c Newins the outstanding department store in Suffolk County. When Carroll was ill back in 1940 she stepped into the breach, knowing nothing at all about retailing, increased sales and profits, and made herself permanently a fashion director to be reckoned with. The Advance, talking about her "love of merchandising and natural talent for knowing what the public wants," says that "she has a natural flair for clothes which automatically carries over into the fashion stock of the store." Of the two Swezey children, Priscilla is scheduled to enter Colby Junior College in the fall. Her older brother Kim (Carroll Jr.) became a Dartmouth freshman in February—and if his desk has a pretty girl's picture on it, his biography can just about be written for him 25 years in advance.
Although St. Louis papers, and others, carried late March stories about Charlie McKenzie's elevation to the post of Dean of the Faculty of Westminster College, Fulton, Mo., it is especially gratifying to have the word direct from the new Dean himself. "I got out of the army in October, 1945," Charlie writes (he had been a major in the Army Air Forces, serving as instructor and director of academic training at the San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center). "Joined the editorial staff of the Star-Times in St. Louis and worked on that paper for six months. Last June I came here as chairman of the department of Political Science. This new work is thoroughly delightful in a school more nearly like Dartmouth than any other I have seen in the Middle West and a town as small as Hanover was when we were there."
Still another kind of paper (the NationalUnderwriter for January 30) ran still another story of new distinction for a member of the class of 1920. According to this account, BobVan Iderstine, "former president of the Holborn Agency Corp. of New York, is president of a new company, Old North State of Greenville, N. C., which is authorized to write all lines except life insurance and annuities The new company had its genesis in the belief of a group of men in the eastern part of the state that since there was no company in that section and since all North Carolina companies were owned by northern interests, there was a place for a local company in eastern North Carolina." Bob has confirmed the foregoing with a personal note, saying that he has been commuting between New Jersey and North Carolina since last November, getting the company started, and now plans to move permanently south in June.
"They're out, and yet they're in." Two veterans, close to the alphabetical top of the class roster, Tom Ainsworth and Charlie Ashton, have become mainstays of the Veterans' Administration. Tom, finishing up as a major in the Medical Corps, found himself unable to resist the pressure put upon him by the V.A. because of the great shortage of doctors. Given what amounted to a choice of location, he picked the Veteran's Hospital at Northport, L. 1., where the Ainsworths have a lovely home and plentiful opportunities for recreation. Part of Tom's Army tour included a highly specialized course in psychiatry, from which he emerged as a full-fledged psychiatrist.
Quitting the Navy with rank of commander, Charlie Ashton likewise found attractive inducements for hooking up with the Veterans' Administration. Among them was his recent purchase of a grand old house and 150 acres in South Dennis, N. J., not far from Cape May Court House where his VA. activities are carried on. Charlie is a member of a private hunting preserve, and his enthusiasm for hunting and fishing has brought about a permanent attachment to the pine woods of South Jersey.
Resuming his travels in February, WarrieGault headed for Honolulu. Shortly before that, Treasurer Roc Elliott had taken quite a trip of his own. Roc rated as one of the four Alumni Council members who covered the greatest distance getting to the late January meeting in Chicago. (And that put Roc's picture in the March MAGAZINE, in case you didn't notice.) One of his new Council activities is membership on the Alumni Fund Committee, to which stint he can bring long experience in class dues collecting. JohnnyStickney recently wrote Roc of his equal pleasure in resuming both active membership in the Class and the civilian practice of medicine. Johnny is a heart specialist at 155 East 73 St., New York. He is waiting for another reunion to come along, so that he can feel like a Dartmouth man again.
New York's Herald Tribune respectfully quoted the sentiments of Tommy Thomson, "Navy's genial track coach," in a February 8 article on the "maturity" of the returned G.l.'s who were out to break track records. Tommy had good reason for believing that the "old men" of 28 and 29 who are back in college can still cover the ground. He broke the American record for the 120-yard high hurdles when he was 25, equaled it the next year, and almost tied it again at 29.
Up in Portland, Maine, Tommy's lifelong pal Jim Robertson reports the family "coming out of hibernation like a bunch of bears, after being holed up for the winter." Jim and Mary's daughter is finishing her training at Children's Hospital in Boston and is to be married in May. Other Portlanders, hauled to the phone by your secretary on a Down-East weekend, broke a silence of too many years. Keith Coombs in charge of the local social security office, likes the town and the job and considers himself settled there for life. His son Minott is about to finish up at University of New Hampshire in Ju,ne. Steve Johnson, now located at 396 Congress St. in Portland, where the Union Mutual Life Insurance Cos. has its offices, lives in nearby Cape Elizabeth. He and Mrs. Johnson have two children, Dick, 12, and Caroline, 8. Another long-lost Twenty, Howard Phinney, is now reported to be situated at Tenant's Harbor, Maine, a tiny fishing community farther down the coast near Rockland.
Other News from Up North. Buttons Hill was elected an alderman of Rutland, Vt., on March 5, as reported more fully by Al Foley in our still-flourishing Twenty. Frank Moulton served as chairman for the Red Cross Drive in Littleton, N. H., as did Sammy Sampson in Hanover. Sherm Adams, says the Manchester Union for March 30, "is the man most responsible for seeing that the hungry maws of this nation's paper machines are fed their daily diet of pulpwood." Executive officer of a committee from the industry, Sherm acts as a "roving ambassador" to both the United States and Canadian governments: "His duties chiefly are to establish a pattern of wood distribution to American paper and pulp mills normally dependent upon Canada as a source of supply."
Secretary, Blind Brook Lodge, Rye 17, N. Y. Treasurer, l Windmill Lane, Arlington 74, Mass.
