1924

CEDRIC w. FOSTER— Guest Editor

It is hardly necessary to introduce our guesteditor for this issue. He wrote a very interesting story for the ALUMNI MAGAZINE not longago and every one has heard him broadcastingover the Mutual Network. He has been innewspaper and radio work since he left Dartmouth and today is one of the outstandingnews analysts in radio. Your secretary is quitesure you're going to enjoy reading his column.

This is a last-minute attempt—typed myself—to get this column out for the next issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. A telegram from Jim White reminded me of my promise and also that brief sentence at the end of the February issue "Ced Foster will be guest editor next month," jogged my memory anew. There was a second and last sentence following that which read: "Send the Secretary some news, please!" I don't quite know how to take that unless Jim feared I would have no news and, as a matter of fact, he may be right. For the past seven years I have been on the Mutual network doing a daily newscast, Monday through Friday; and for three of those years I also broadcast on Sunday evenings, under the sponsorship of the Employers' Group Insurance Companies of Boston. (Plug, even though they don't sponsor me now, but you never know.) During that time it has been my privilege to run into many Dartmouth men but in the more than a quarter of a million miles that I have traveled, it is most difficult to remember names. I suppose, in the last analysis, we have a few friends in this world and many acquaintances. In addition to that my career at Dartmouth was a rather short one, though the memory of it will always be close to my heart. Those were wonderful days. One recollection is standing in the snow outside of Dartmouth Hall, waiting for the in-between-classes-mob to come running out, unaware of the fact that the steps were covered with ice. I recall how Professor Roule came out one morning, how his feet went out from under him, and the stream of invective which poured from his mouth as his body went one way and his books and papers another.

But it is difficult to recall names unless you have had intimate association with a classmate. The closest friend I have in the Class of 1924, and for that matter the closest of any Dartmouth graduate, is Charley French. By a curious coincidence, Charley was the first man, bar one, I met freshman year. Hal Cowley, now sojourning at Stanford, was the first, though I doubt whether he remembers that meeting in the middle of the campus with both of us wearing pea-green hats with the white button. During my stay at Dartmouth, which was the entire first year minus four weeks, when I resigned with 48 overcuts and flunking four courses, and the first semester of junior year, I formed a fast friendship with Charley.

The years went by. Too many of them, actually. It was about 20 years later that I next saw him. I was addressing the Chamber of Commerce in Cleveland, Ohio, at the Statler Hotel at its annual meeting and was just about to go on the air with my regular program prior to the address. Somewhat bald but still with the round, cherubic countenance and with the high, tinkly laugh, a man walked up to the head table to say: "You don't remember me, I'm sure " I interrupted and at the same time glanced quickly at my watch. "There's only 50 seconds to go before we're on the air. But your name is Charley French, you were in the class of 1924 at Hanover and your home was in Hutchinson, Kansas. What in hell are you doing in Cleveland?" Then came that tinkly laugh.

Suffice it to say we got together after the luncheon and since that time I have spent many happy hours at Charley's home just east of Cleveland. There he lives in a beautiful house, overlooking the golf course of the Country Club, with his wife Jeanette and with two adorable little girls—Peggy and Jeff. In between times there comes from Vassar College, that institution of higher learning on the banks of the Hudson, another charming daughter, Mary, the eldest child. Not only charming but most beautiful, with her mother's dark eyes and flawless complexion. Then to the house come the rattle-trap jallopies filled with kids and off goes Mary, dancing, swimming, skiing or skating as the season may be.

I always knew that someone had to make a box. X always knew that boxes were necessary to our present-day, capitalist economy. You put tooth paste in them and little gadgets such as shaving material. I knew they had to be made but I never dreamed that when I knew this banker's son from Hutchinson, Kansas, a quarter of a century ago at Dartmouth that he would go into the box-making business. But such has been the case. He is vice-president and sales manager of the Great Lakes Box Company in Cleveland, Ohio; he has a block of stock in the business and he's done right well for himself and his family. Sufficiently well so that he's able to indulge in Sun Valley in the winter and trips to the east when the spirit moves. Also golf and swimming in that cold, chilly climate of Cleveland in the summer when the thermometer never drops under 100 degrees.

Enough of Charley except to say that he's a host par excellence, his family is closelyknit and quite wonderful and I know that I speak for him when I say that any '24ers will be graciously received at the French domicile at his home which is actually in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.

In Denver, Colorado, last summer at a luncheon of civic leaders a guy came up to me—again with that "you don't remember." It was Gerry Wood who's in the brokerage business in that city one foot above a mile above the sea, or something like that. (Check with the Chamber of Commerce.) Gerry lived across the hall from a single room in Topliff where I slept junior year (my second half of freshman, actually) and he took it upon himself to get together a group of Dartmouth men at the Denver Athletic Club for a noon-clay meeting. It was delightful and, again I'm sure I speak also for Gerry, when I say he'll do the same for you, too.

Then there was Minneapolis and another group of Dartmouth men a year ago. EddieLynch comes to mind, though he was not our class. Lynch, of the forward-passing-catching fame in Athens, Georgia. Then there was the Connecticut State Association meeting in Waterbury and the Hartford meeting where Stan Weld, 30-odd years out of Hanover and Charley Rice, one year more than we, presided so ably.

Here in Boston you'd think I'd run into more Dartmouth men than I do. But the truth is in the last two years I've originated more broadcasts out of Boston than in the city. Ted Learned is here doing a fine insurance business. Jeff Adams still smokes his cigars though he's lost so much of his avoirdupois that he looks like a wispy elfin. "Lutethe Luitwieler" never fails to show at any affair of import, nor does that red-headed Moloney who came to Dartmouth after realizing the inadequacies of Holy Cross. Stan Lyon is another stand-by. "Red" Holbrook came into the Yankee Network some time ago, I am reliably informed, but I didn't see him. He's in the radio business; Berlin, New Hampshire, I think. Al Liebling is scheduled to come here soon to address the Neiman Fellows at Harvard and Jimmy Broe, of '23 asked me to come along at that time. He may have been here already because I've been in Dallas, Texas, for the last three weeks and in Chicago and Washington. Pinky Booth generally shows for the Harvard game coming up from Worcester where he's doing a fine job with his father's properties, The Telegram and Gazette and the radio station, too. Across the street from me lives a very swell guy, Harold B. Hodgkinson by name and president and general manager of Filene's. A month ago I dropped across the street to say hello to "Hodg," who is the only man who ever became a director of the Harvard Club of Boston after getting his undergraduate degree at Yale. As I walked in his upstairs living room, I heard this voice say, "Cedric, how are you?" It was none other than that of Ernest Martin Hopkins and it was a grand surprise. "Hoppy" must be close to seventy but I can vouch for the fact that he looks no older than he did freshman year when he signed my certificate for admission to Dartmouth College. And, that .... incidentally, is the only thing to prove to anyone that I have ever crossed the threshold of any institution of learning in the United States. No diploma of any kind, grammar school, prep school, high school, Sunday school, that is not a record of which I am proud but is, nevertheless, a fact.

As for 20 Chestnut Street, Boston, where the Fosters are living, the key is out to "all and sundry" as Jim Curley would say, and it would indeed be a pleasure to greet members of the Class of '24 at my home. Our older daughter Shirley is married and is with Life magazine and has spent the last two summers in Europe in a reportorial capacity. Our younger daughter, Sarah Ann (Shirley is 25 yes, that's right—she was born junior year) is 21 years old and has just returned from 16 months in Europe during which she traveled and went to the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland. From all I can gather, she went there just about as much as I went to Dartmouth. Incidentally, the Fosters who married on (get the date) December 12, 1921, are still man and wife and very happily so. We met on Saturday and married 48 hours later which only proves that the less you know of a woman before you marry, the better chance you have for happiness after your marriage.

RECENTLY APPOINTED TO POST: Leonard W. Larson '25 was recently appointed assistant secretary of the Lumbermen's Mutual Casualty Company in Chicago, III. Except for a three-year military leave of absence, he has been with the Lumbermen's and affiliated Kemper Insurance Companies since 1927.

Secretary, 101 Fifth Ave., New York 3, N. Y. Treasurer, Niles & Niles 165 Broadway, New York 6, N. Y. Class Agent, N. Y. Trust Co., 100 Broadway, New York, N. Y.