1900

Plans for the reunion program are well under way, the preliminary report of which is already in your hands. The committee in charge is made up of the executive committee of the class (Walter Rankin, CharlesProctor and the Secretary), with the addition of Clarence McDavitt. This committee had a meeting in Manchester, N. H. in the middle of October arid there formulated the general nature of the reunion program. The event promises to be as successful as our reunions have always been, and for this reason and particularly because it is the fiftieth, it is a gathering which no member of the class can afford to miss, if attendance is in any way possible.

Further progress has been made in locating the families of certain of our deceased members who were with us as undergraduates only for a limited time.

Many remember Percy Forsyth Baker, who came to us from Weymouth, Mass. at the beginning of freshman year. He was a member of the class football team, but, despite his really superior voice, was not admitted to the Glee Club because at that time he was supposed to be in some measure lacking in the more effete social graces. Leaving college at the end of freshman year, he made music his life work and achieved high success as a member of the Temple Male Quartet and later of the Pilgrim Quartet. He was also manager of the Baker Entertainment Bureau and a vocal teacher of repute. Illustrating the irony of fate, during one season he was employed as coach of the Dartmouth Glee Club, in which, as an undergraduate, he could not attain membership. He died in 1933 at the height of his career. After that the class lost contact with his family. It now appears that Mrs. Baker (the former Eva Agnes Lambert, to whom he was married in 1910) lives at 3428 Urban Avenue, Santa Monica, Calif. A son, Lawrence Lambert Baker, was born in 1917. He attended the Boston Latin School and was graduated from the New England Aircraft School, thereafter making aviation his profession, in the employ of the United Air Lines. In 1942 he was married to Miss Elizabeth Perrie of Arlington, Mass. A son, Charles L. Baker, was born to them in 1944. From 1943 to 1945 Lawrence was a sergeant in the Ground Air Force, U.S. Army. Upon his discharge the family moved to Prescott, Ariz. As a result of an accident he died on July 3, 1946. His wife, who has since remarried, now lives in Portland, Ore.

Len Tuttle used a part o£ his vacation at North Sutton to do some fruitful detective work at the neighboring town of Bradford, N. H., in relation to our missing classmate, Pippo Joseph Gafforio, who came to Dartmouth from that town. Certain memories of him still exist in Bradford and the adjoining town of Warner, where he did his preparatory work for college. According to these rumors, Pippo (who, so college records indicate, was born in Genoa, Italy, the son of Prospero Gafforio, a fruit vender) was picked up in Boston asa_waif and in some way was brought to Bradford to become a member of the family of Albertus Blood, and, upon the death of the latter in 1894, that of his daughter, Ida M. Redington, who lived in Roby, a settlement in the town of Warner. Pippo attended the grammar school in Bradford and later was graduated from the Simonds High School in Warner. Even at that time some of the excitable characteristics which he exhibited in college were manifest, for it is noted that he "was picked upon a bit." However "being a fine student and a good character, that obstacle was overcome." He may have been helped financially during his college course by Mrs. Redington. While it was recognized in college that he was eccentric, he seems to have had little difficulty with his studies, so that he was graduated from Dartmouth with our class and from the Harvard Medical School in 1905. His mental deterioration began not much later, so that he entered the Worcester State Hospital as a patient in 1909. There he remained, steadily growing worse mentally, but with his physique unimpaired, until 19,27, when he escaped. No one has been able to find any trace of him after that time.

There now remain but three members of the class, graduate or non-graduate, or relatives of deceased members with whom we are not in some degree in touch. The three are Gafforio, Leonard (an orphan, unmarried, who apparently had no relatives) and Murray.

Secretary, Hanover, N. H.

Treasurer and Class Agent

212 Mill St., Newtonville, Mass.