1933
This is it, Gentlemen. You will barely have time to read these notes before you pack your bags and entrain, encar or enplane for Hanover and our Frolicking Fifteenth, as scribe Ripley euphoniously dubbed it in his Reunion Letters. And it is quite a show that Chairman Bill Dewey and associated gauleiters have billed for you, from the first cocktail on Friday afternoon through Sunday morning breakfast at the tent. No reunion has been better planned or more meticulously organized with a view to what you want when you come back to Hanover than this one.
From all indications we are going to have a real turnout. Your friends will be here. Bill has been deluged with yes answers to his postcard questionnaire. Down in the jungles of Venezuela, Don Phinney is using his spare time brushing up on his English getting ready to fly home just in time for the opening number. One of the latest queries came from StirlingWheeler, Gerente for Young and Rubicam in Mexico. Stirling, thinking, and rightly, that the Mexican postal system might well have crossed him up, was in the dark about reunion dates and, asking us for this information, wrote,
"At the time of the Fifth I was in the South and could not get up. At the time of the Tenth I was in the Navy and couldn't make it, but with the Fifteenth coming up I would like very much to plan to come up from Mexico."
That is the story we on the Committee are getting from every point of the compass, so if you happen to be one of the lead-pants boys within a few hours of Hanover who's been thinking that maybe he'd better weed his garden that week-end, think again and take the next train north. You really don't want to miss this one. The Tenth was tough to make for a lot of men, especially those many who were just beginning to get back into a civilian routine. This time it's different, and we're going to have the reunion we would like to have had then. Be seeing you, we hope.
With Reunion and Sam Black's Alumni Fund campaign stirring the '33 kettle the postman has made a fair number of calls on '33 business this month. Before we get to that, though, a word about the Fund. We're off to a good start at this writing, over the $2,000 mark in contributions and the 100 contributor mark in participation. That means a lot of men still have to fake that final step of getting the rubber band off the old checkbook, and until they do Sam and the boys will be wearing black pouches under their eyes and burning the midnight oil in the old roundup. But it looks fairly promising for a start, and you can get it really rolling heavily, if you haven't already kicked in, by sending yours in to the Fund Office in Hanover.
Down in Park Ridge, N. J., on March 6 the arrival of William Allen Jr. was duly celebrated by Bill and Dorothy Sherman. The inimitable James J. Doherty recently shook the dust of Connecticut from his feet and moved to Maywood, N. J., to work for the Western Electric Company as Personnel Engineer. The word from Illinois is that Bob (Robert Sewell) Turner will be the Director of a trip to Alaska this summer.
The trade magazine, Broadcasting, published a profile of Johnnie Schneider's career in advertising earlier this spring, and we offer you a few excerpts as a brief on a guy who will have you rolling in the aisle at reunion with his stories, if we can cajole him to put on the show he gave us at our Tenth. Broadcasting wrote:
"John Schneider, account executive with the Kudner Agency, N.Y., has been described as a man who, if you give him an inch, will take a yard-stick. At any rate, it was his brilliant talent for analysis and measuring that turned his career into its present channel." Describing his first job after graduation and how John got into advertising, they reported: ". . . . he took a position as a delivery boy in a grocery store after a brief wrestle with insurance. It was a large chain store and Mr. Schneider soon bucked his way to clerk and was gunning for a post in product merchandising when drama entered in the form of a drama critic, John Anderson, who introduced him to Arthur Kudner, then president of Erwin, Wasey & Cos. Mr. Kudner was looking for a bright young lad to formulate a comparative analysis survey for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Cos. The survey and Mr. Schneider proved so successful that when Mr. Kudner left Erwin, Wasey to organize his own agency .... Mr. Schneider went along as assistant account executive on the National Distillers account. His rapid rise there may be gauged by the accounts he was quickly called upon to assist in handling. These included the Ass'n of American Railroads, Litt. Industries Pan American Coffee, Fisher Body, and many others." After telling of John's service in the Army during the war, where he rose from buck private to captain, they describe the work John has been doing since his return to civilian life: "After the war Mr. Schneider returned to the agency and soon was named account executive on the Texas Cos. account. The radio billing of that account is said to be over a million and a half a year. Advertiser is currently sponsoring the Tony Martin show on ABC and the Gordon McCrae program on CBS. In addition to handling the radio advertising of the Texas Cos., Mr. Schneider is account executive on Swank Inc.—men's accessories."
Mel Katz sent us a report last month on the 33s that attended the New York alumni dinner in April. It reached us just too late for the May MAGAZINE, so here it is, not as big a turnout as in other years but a group that made up in enthusiasm for their weakness in numbers. In addition to Mel, Harry Robinovitz, C. S. Webster, Chas. J. Chapman, GeorgeFarrand, D. L. Evans, and George Smith. Mel and his family, by the way, took their vacation skiing at Sun Valley last winter, which kind of took the glamor out of eastern ski slopes, but Mel, we heard from him was still hankering for a late spring jaunt to Tuckerman's.
Swede Branson and frau were in Hanover some weeks ago, staying at the Inn. Your secretary is developing a real genius for missing the Bransons when they come to town. Did it again this time. Bob Grow recently left Baltimore and his job there as General Manager of Climatic Control Corp. to join his father's firm, Homer Warren & Cos., insurance and real estate, back in his home town, Detroit.
Secretary, 20 Valley Rd., Hanover, N. H. Treasurer, 2812 Grant Bldg., Pittsburgh 19, Pa. Class Agent, The Stanley Works, New Britain, Conn.
