1932
Washington is generally known as a southern city, but this winter its southernness has been pretty well limited to its social customs. We have had plenty of snow, which has stayed put long enough for sleigh riding. The temperature has been below freezing for weeks, freezing the Potomac from shore to shore and bringing ice-skating on the reflecting pool and ice-covered roads and walks. But it isn't a pleasant cold—so damp and penetrating that nostalgia for the famous dry cold of Hanover blooms anew. Oil-short New Englanders can sympathize because the shortage is harder to take when it isn't even comfortably cold outdoors.
In my mention of George Hahn last month I said there was a lot more to say. Here are further excerpts from his letter (which he says was stimulated by what I said in the October column; I'm glad it worked):
"Bill Mackinney continues at Westinghouse (lamp bulb division), covers the Philadelphia district. Their second child, Jocelyn Thayer, arrived in the latter part of the summer and keeps their son good company. The Mackinneys have just acquired a Great Dane puppy, 'Tyoo,' weighs forty pounds at four months. Bill is quite active in the Dartmouth Club here and has been a. member of the executive council of the organization for a few years.
"We [nine strong] outgrew our home in Merion so we moved to Rosemont in July. I have had a reasonably busy year [a neat understatement, if I ever saw one—MHC], was president of the Dartmouth Club of Philadelphia, was certified as a specialist by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and was also made a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. I have managed to write a few articles for the medical journals and just recently was to co-author of the section on gynecology in Tourish and Wagners Pre-Operattveand Post-Operative Care.
"I am continuing my teaching at Jefferson Medical College, where I have just been made chief of the gynecology clinic. I am also in charge or the cancer prevention clinic there. I am a member of the Committee for the study of Pelvic Cancer, the Cancer Control Committee of Philadelphia and the Council of the Obstetrical Society of Philadelphia. I have just been made a Director of the American Cancer Society (Phila. Div.) and have been appointed a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Donner Foundation (Cancer Prevention Clinics.) A good share of my work is done at the American Ocolologic Hospital (a cancer hospital) where I am the gynecologist.
"That was quite a spiel, but you asked for it! I did, and it leaves me breathless and full of admiration. Furthermore, it makes me want to hear from your wife.
John Clark, in January, sent the following:
" 'Joe' Carleton has left Springfield and is back on his native heath in Winchester, Mass. Joe and I bunked together in the YMCA at Springfield last summer, and I know from our commiserations over drab potato salads that he must be entirely content to be reunited with his wife and four kids.
"A report from Brussels contains a snapshot of the very trim slated-roof villa which Katie and Rod Hatcher are refurbishing for themselves at Uccle, just beyond the copper beeches of the Bois. Rod's new job with International Harvester seems to take him around the lot generally and to Paris particularly where presumably he snigs onion soup at les Halles with Wentworth. They've had a visit from Clark Denny and had a plan to slip over to Switzerland during the holidays to see the Marks es and Owsley. .
"One of my more dependable agents signals that Reuel Denny is very happily installed in the English Department at the University of Chicago where the pace is so fast that at last he s finding time to do some writing on his own.
"My kids tell me that the seven o'clock radio hereabouts frequently carries the voice of JohnKeller broadcasting the weather forecast from the Concord Airport. [I gather that he means seven A.M., and I therefore assume that the broadcasts are transcribed.—MCH.] Over turkey on Thanksgiving Day we learned from him direct that he's been commuting to Cuba, N. Y., and Brooklyn for reasons ethereal, we sensed, but not the sort involving barometers.
"When we miss Keller on the weather, we can usually turn to The N. H. Morning Union and read of Reg Abbott's latest adventure with the flying meteorologists with whom he's becoming very chummy.
"I sponged a tasty lunch in New York recently with Bill Morton, who plies an esoteric trade in which people buy and sell pieces of paper printed in unheard of places for dollars sliced by micrometers into 32's, of all awkward divisions. [Too esoteric for me; how about some details?—MHC.]
"Bob Buckley's star continues in the ascendant up in Claremont. For one thing he's added a third name to his law shingle; for another, he was a conspicuous leader in the community's successful effort to abandon its town meeting form of government, and, in one breath-taking leap, adopt the city manager plan. People who remember their "Coniston" are coming to refer to Bob as Jethro. (John Kieran Clark, some of us call him—MHC.)
"I saw Howdy Pierpont for a moment on Washington Street in Boston some weeks back. He was on from Chicago to sell his Winchester estate and said he had already contracted to put most of the boodle into a ducky little set-up somewhere along the Lake Front."
AI Gerould has left the UN and has assumedduties as librarian of Clark University, Worcester, Mass Carl McGowan, who is practicing law in Washington, was connected witha law suit in which a Federal Court in Chicago held that members of the Atomic Energy Commission are merely human and can be required to give evidence Ned Rollins has been made assistant secretary of the Franklin Savings Bank in New York City BobHouse is selling for Rockwell-Barnes Cos. of Chicago, makers of the "Rock-a-File the first basic filing improvement in more than 50 years." Bob lives in Maryland, near Washington Margie Hamel is still living in Auburn, N. Y., with her and Jack's three sons, Billy Rickie 8½ and Robbie 7½ Dan Gage says he missed reunion because of the arrival of third daughter, Lynn; he saw Jeff and Dot Jeffery and found them not changed a bit A Christmas Card signed, Townsend Penberthy Dickinson, reads:
"Sir Stork happily dropped 'yours truly' on the fire escape of my immediate ancestors—the T. B.Dickinsons (Helen & Brown) at 155 East 93rd Street, N.Y.C. in time to wish you the merriest holidays ever."
The January Class Dinner in New York sounds like a real success. The following attended with wives: Art Allen, Chandler, Cleaves, Corbett, Cram, Doerr, Dyche, Dickinson, Fred Gage, Maxwell, Warren Moore, Modarelli, Rushmore, Wolff, La Vine, Sey Rogers, and Tucker; also bachelor Englander, Nat Leonard '33, without his wife, and Dyche's sister-in-law. Entertainment consisted of some high-quality singing by Mrs. Dickinson and Mrs. Rogers, a talk on the fun of being a wife at reunion by Mrs. Maxwell, and a speech by Modarelli on the difficulty for the youngest of six to feel at ease while talking.
I am glad to be able to announce that Charlie Doerr will be chairman of the Memorial Fund Committee. Bill Morton felt he could not give it the necessary time. Also, Don MacPhail will write the Newsletter during the Alumni Fund campaign this spring.
Secretary, 3909 North 5th Street, Arlington, Va. Treasurer, 607 Front Street, Hempstead, N. Y. Class Agent, 388 Berkeley Rd., Winnetka, Ill.
