1912
This is the last opportunity to urge support by every classmate of the Alumni Fund and Boss Getter's role as Class Agent. Boss has been outstanding in that capacity and was so recognized by other class agents in their selection of him as head of the Class Agents' organization. Boss has had his heart set on winning the Green Derby competition but has failed to do so because other competing classes have repeatedly been able to obtain 100% participation. The best our class has done has been around 85% participation. Every new contributor will raise our class participation index by five-tenths percent so if we could get thirty men out of the seventy-five or more who seldom, if ever, contribute to the fund—even if they give only a dollar-Boss's objective can be achieved. That, of course, presupposes that habitual contributors will again perform by each one raising his individual ante to deliver 100% of our increased class quota. Lend a hand and give Boss the thrill that he so well deserves—wearing that Green Derby.
In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Van Dyne Oil Company, Henry Van Dyne was the guest of honor at a banquet given by the Tide Water Associated Oil Company at which Henry was presented with a plaque in commemoration of the twenty years' association between the two companies. Henry in turn presented watches to two twenty-fiveyear employees of his concern. The toastmaster was Osmun Skinner, Dartmouth '28, Henry's son-in-law and vice-president and a director of his company.
At the annual Dartmouth dinner in New York on April 14 fourteen classmates gathered around the class tjble: Randy Burns, Al Freund, LarryGarrison, Charlie Gately, Boss Geller, Eddie, Luitzoieler, Harry McCaffrey, Doc O'Connor, DickRgmsen, Les Snow, Jim Steen, Heinie Urion, RedWhitney and Many el Whittemore. Fred Goodrich made a reservation but a last minute business engagement prevented his attendance. An old regufon "LfTf' Wa£i/lso abse?t inasmuch as he JS on a diet that would not conform to the Hotel Commodore menu. Randy Burns and Dick Remsen were going to give him a visit to make a full report on the affair. Harry McCaffrey, as handsome, hale and hearty as ever, belied his report that last spring he had been in the hospital for three months after an operation which prevented his attending reunion. Eddie Luitwieler came from Boston to attend the dinner on the excuse of business in New York and four days later one of Eddie's twin daughters Betty, had her second child, a girl named Robin Burke. Both mother, daughter and grandparents are doing well—so Eddie reported. Red Whitney came from Washington for the dinner and Boss Geller attended from Owego, New lork Boss reported, however, that after the dinner he and Charlie Gately visited at the Commodore bar until Boss almost missed his midnight train. In the morning the porter did not call Boss until the train was in Owego and Boss landed on the platform with _ his topcoat covering the errors of his hasty dressing.
During the spring vacation Boss's oldest boy Fred, and his wife, Nance, with their year-old son Billy, visited at Owego and the proud grandparents had a great time making a fuss over their grandson. The young Gellers live at Wigwam Circle in Hanover while Fred finishes his Tuckihayer course.
From Sam Hobbs we received the sad news of the death of Nipper Knapp. To Roy Frothingham we are indebted for the following letter which speaks of Nipper so expressively and with so much feeling:
The memory of men with whom we went to college, even though never seen again since graduation, can be a beautiful thing and colorful and tender and sometimes amusing. Reunions serve to refresh these memories and to keep them green There were many reunions with Nipper Knapp during these past eight years of his life in California where, as he put it, "I can live here." The accent was on life. The fact was that elsewhere he could not live in spite of the constant effort and endless battle against odds that increased their pressure with the years. You may recall that he started the fight against diabetes within ten years after college and during the last ten years of his life he was fighting arterio sclerosis in addition, lne purpose of this letter is to comment on the quality of Nipper which was richly evident during his college years and during those years of service to the College as Secretary to the President and as Secretary of the College under Ernest Fox Nichols Not until 1940 did I see him after the long span or years since 1915 when he was Secretary of the College and I was completing my course which had been interrupted. We were in Hanover together in 1913-1915 and from 1940 to his end I visited with him many times in Los Angeles. He came out to the coast in 1940 after losing vital ground in his travels about the country in behalf of the West Rutland Trust Company. The best place on the coast for him was Southern California and he settled down in Los Angeles. In 1941, after an almost fatal trip back East to see members of his family, he returned and persuaded Grace Wheeler to marry him so they might make the most of their friendship and love. Thereafter it was Grace who managed their lives together so that he might live and hugely enjoy every day that was granted. If ever a man lived on borrowed time he did, and how he loved it and made much of every hour. At this stage, seeing him as I did whenever possible, you became aware of what his wife was accom and the spirit and quality of their home and fireside. Nipper never dropped his interest in the Collged and in the Class of 1912. He was not one to live in retrospect. The present and the future were the big things in his that M a hand-propelled wheel chair, with legs that could never nove as they once did on Hanover hills, he would carry on with any topic, expenence, vision or problem that might come into the conversation.People would come to see Grace and Nipper from all over the county, which is Pretty large as you may have read in releases from los Angeles. A visit Was a tonic and a laugh for the visitor and another page in the daily chapter for Nipper himself He had a will to live and a love of life that makes me believe that if there is any such thing as immortality, it will apply to his courageous spirit that will find some place to dwell and survive so he may see from afar what is going on here. He died Thursday, April 15 1948 and was buried the following Saturday at' Forest Lawn. He practically celebrated the 36th anniversary of his graduation and lived to count 57 brithdays, which is good measure. At the services I met Sam Hobbs who had arranged for flowers trom 1912 and had greatly helped my wife Dorothy in certaim ,matters that pressed in during the last day. Swede Ahlswede was there and likewise Nipper's son, Waldo Jr., who has the fine look of his father Mrs Grace M. Knapp and her niece Elizabeth Murphy, will continue to reside at 811 North Harper Los Angeles 46, California. Betty was as devoted to her aunt's husband as a daughter might have been. The memory is freshly green."
Sam Hobbs also wrote equally as feelingly:
Gray was a wonderful fellow and I cannot fully express the admiration I felt for him He rose above the hard and painful afflictions that beset him with a spirit that to me seemed unbelievable. In return he was given the love and devotion heart The ome £at,must have gladdened his' theart. There is no doubt that his death was a blessed release from a future of Pain and helplessness I am thankful of the many times we had brief visits over the telephone and particularly that I got out to see him and talk to him about three or four weeks before his death. At that time he sat in a wheel chair and I could see that the clock was running out, but we had the most cheerlul fifteen or twenty-minute talk that could be imagined and he. was keenly interested in Hayward in coming to town and in what all the boys were doing."
Another sad report is that of the death of Doc Quint, leading radiologist of western Canada. He died on April 21, at the Mayo Clinic at Rochester, Minnesota, where he had gone for treatment a week previously. On receiving news of Doc's death, Lyme Armes wrote:
I had just written my annual letter to Doc about ten days ago and your wire was a real shock. The last time I saw Doc was in the Strand, London, early in 1919. I was the first old-home pal he had seen in oyer four years—and in his Canadian captain s uniform he sat down and burst into tears as soon as we entered my hotel room at the Kegent Palace. Then we had a gabfest. Since that time Doc and I have kept up a continued correspondence.
Bud and Barbara Hoban visited Ray and Eleanor Cabot on April 19, a holiday in Boston,
attending the ball game and seeing the marathon run that afternoon. Hugh Lena Jr. is a captain in the Army Medical Corps stationed at Lowry Field, Denver, Colorado. He expects to get out of the service June 1, and will become assistant resident surgeon at the University of Michigan Hospital, Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was married last September to Jeanne Bennett, a nurse, of Ann Arbor, Michigan. - Virginia Lena went to Skidmore College and graduated from Stanford School of Nursing. She expects to be married on June 26, which is the 28th anniversary of Hug Lends marriage to Helen. Paul Lena, Dartmouth '50, is taking a pre-medical course and expects to work with his brother. Richard Lena is a junior in high school and now states that he will make application for no other college than Dartmouth.
Bill Middlebrook, vice-president of the University of Minnesota in charge of business administration, writes that although he would not leave Minnesota, his adopted state, nevertheless he is a bit envious when he reads of Dartmouth gatherings in the east. Ossie Osgood is the only 'l2'er on the Minnesota campus and he and Bill do not meet too often. Bill Jr. came out of the Army Air Corps two years ago and will finish the School of Business Administration at the University of Minnesota and then specialize in hospital administration under another Dartmouth man. John finishes his first year in medicine this year. Ann is a sophomore at Northrop College and Margaret is in University Junior High. Bill Jr. is married with a three-year old son, and Bill says he is a happy and contented husband, father and grandfather.
Over $20,000 was contributed to the Clyde G. Morrill Memorial Fund sponsored by the Independent Oilmen's Association of New England and the Atlantic Coast Oil Conference in tribute to Click as their late executive director. In presenting the check for the amount of the fund to Click's widow at the annual banquet of the Independent Oilmen's Association, its president expressed the association's grief over the loss of
"A wise and discerning counselor, whose sportsmanship, courtesy, unfailing consideration, high motives and capacity for enduring friendship endeared him to all who knew him. Gifted with an informed, brilliant mind and thorough knowledge of the oil business, he gave his best to the association and to the industry he loved so well."
Under date of April 14, Syd Clark wrote from The Hague: "OH this strange machine, made in Italy and loaned to me by a Dutch friend in the Hague, I'll tap out just a few lines to say hello to Twelvers, including yourself. After burying myself in work on the Scandinavia book all winter, I sailed from New York on the Gripsholm on March 26, and now, after a swift circuit—seven countries in seven weeks—l'll be sailing for home by the Stockholm on Mav 24. All this coming summer I'll be home at the Beach (Sagamore Beach on Cape Cod) as our daughter is coming up from Venezuela to visit us with her daughter and son, not to mention her Dartmouth '4l husband. Heinie, there's no time just now for a travelogue and perhaps Twelvers would have no time to read one, but I would like to get one thing off my chest. I heard a lot of talk last winter, as of course you and everyone did, to this effect: 'lf Europe expects us to cough up a few billions every little while, why don't the people over there get busy and do a little work for themselves? They can't expect us to do it all.'.Such talk seems absurd when one sees what they have done, and are doing. I doubt if Americans, as a race, have ever worked so hard, even when chasing the dollar that's just around the corner, as are the Hollanders, on an average, right now. The reconstruction achieved in just three years is a miracle of elbow grease, along with intelligent planning. It's brawn, at a pace of 14 to 16 hours a day on the of many thousands, that has restored roads and dikes and polder lands and is tackling the immense job of repairing the ruined cities. I saw Rotterdam yesterday and the center-that-was is the center-that-will-be in the foreseeable future. Building construction had to take second place to dikes and roads and rails but big things are doing, and everywhere work. I'm moving on to Belgium and France now, and then England, Norway and Sweden—but East, West, Cape Cod's best."
Secretary, 120 Broadway, New York 5, N. Y. Treasurer, Court House, Dedham, Mass. Class Agent, Box 199, Owego, N. Y.
