1905
As noted in this column last month, Mildred and I spent the Christmas-New Year's holidays with cousins in Montreal West. We had gone by train, so the daily snowfall didn't worry us. In Montreal West, where English is practically the only language heard, and even in Montreal proper, in spite of the constant chatter of French, as well as English, it is difficult to feel that Canada is a foreign land.
Of the various pleasant events of our sojourn, the most interesting and unusual was attending a performance of Ti-Coq. This play, at times boisterously funny and definitely ribald, takes one through a range of emotions with its glimpses of happy, cheerful life in the home of an habitant family, and deep pathos in the vicissitudes of the hero, Li'l Rooster. This play, written and produced by Fridolin, who takes the lead as Ti-Coq, had previously been running in its original French version for two years, but had more recently been put into very racy English by the versatile "Ti-Coq." I note that he is taking it to New York, still under his own production and direction.
A news item in the Manchester Union under the date of December 28 informs me that Walter May had been rushed to the hospital on Wednesday of that week. He had suffered a collapse in a State House Annex elevator while on his way to work. His condition was not regarded as serious and it was expected that he would be released from the hospital within a few days. We hope, Walter, you are quite well again now. Walter, by the way, has been deputy commissioner of education in New Hampshire since 1917 and has made a highly commendable record.
Late in October Charlie Goodrich's wife Ruth underwent a serious operation. Fortunately all went well. At last reports she was making an excellent recovery and expected to leave with Charlie on December 29 for their sojourn in Florida.
On January 8 Jim Donnelly was elected to a three-year term as trustee of the Worcester Mechanics Savings Bank. This institution is obviously in a good, sound condition, to judge by the fact that the trustees had just declared a 2 1/2% dividend, an increase of 1/2 of one per cent. Congratulations, Jim.
A letter from a library worker in the New England Sanitarium and Hospital in Melrose, Mass., states that Walter ("Mary") Dillon's condition is unchanged. He is able to do nothing but eat and sleep. "He talked quite intelligibly with me," she writes, "although with obvious effort. One certainly must sympathize with a man in such a pitiable condition." She added that he seemed very much pleased at being remembered. This letter was in response to an inquiry by Royal Parkinson.
From his home in Middletown, Conn., Carroll Campbell writes, "Jean is working hard and teaching for her M.A. at Smith this year, so Clara and I are rattling around alone. I have another year or so in which I can work or I can retire at any time; but, as my work is pleasant and very interesting, I'll probably keep on to the 70 mark." That's the old track spirit, Camp!
Dartmouth men of Portland, Me., or vicinity have a luncheon, writes Cy White, every Monday noon at the Graymore Hotel. Cy is usually accompanied to these luncheons by his son John '45. The latter lives in South Freeport, six miles beyond Falmouth, so that they commute together, a very pleasant and convenient arrangement. John works with the Consumers Water Company at the head of which is Vernon West '09.
On the evening of December 1 at the Community Methodist Church at Ephrata, Wash., Verney Russell was honored by a reception on the occasion of his retirement from the Bureau of Reclamation. He had been in government service 41 years, in addition to five years in private enterprise. Verney, however, is not completely retired; he has been appointed to the Board of Consultants and so retained in part time employment.
For a "retired" man Gene Musgrove keeps fairly well occupied. At Upsala College, where he is teaching in his third year, he is carrying five classes with a total of 155 students. Then, to take up his slack time, between Thanksgiving and Christmas he took over three additional hours for an invalided colleague!
A visit from their daughter and son gave John and Edith Furfey a very pleasant surprise on Christmas Day. Their daughter came on from Chicago and their son John Jr. '44 from Washington, D. C. Our John, nearly helpless with arthritis, reads a great deal and enjoys television, a gift from his children.
In a recent note Rufus Day says he is looking forward to moving into his new home, the house which the Trustees presented to his wife and him as a parting gift. His new address will be, after March 1, 101 Highgate Road, Ithaca.
On the eve of his departure January 18 Walt Conley sent me the expected itinerary of his Caribbean cruise: by steamer for Kingston; six weeks at Montego Bay; then back to Kingston to pick up the same boat but a later cruise; on to La Guaira, Curasao, Cristobal, Havana, and back to New York March 22. We wish you and your wife a grand trip, Walt!
CHARLES F. GOODRICH WHO'S WHO IN '05
Would you like to learn how to get a full, rich enjoyment out of retirement? Then visit and observe Charlie and Ruth Goodrich as they follow the seasons up and down the Atlantic Coast. From New Hampshire to New Jersey to Florida they migrate in easy stages, and back the same way.
Tossing tons of steel around this country and Europe in the form of bridges had been Charlie's business for 40 years, and all the time with one employer the American Bridge Company. Some of his bridges are famous for their design.
Charlie Goodrich, son of a Manchester, N. H., grocer, has actually attained distinction in two professions, civil engineering and music, having taken advanced studies in both. In the first, Dartmouth awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Engineering in 1939, when President Hopkins noted the fame of his design and construction of the Carguinez Strait bridge over a part of San Francisco Bay, built in 1927. This is one of the world's largest highway bridges. Charlie became chief engineer of his company in 1935, after having had charge of the engineering of the railroad bridge across the bay between San Francisco and Oakland. Eight and a quarter miles long, this bridge is the longest in the world. Moreover, at the time it represented the largest contract his company had ever taken. 200,000 tons of steel, three years work, and much commuting between New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago and San Francisco were required. Although Charlie undertook this responsibility with fear and trembling, he must have fullfilled it well and safely for some of his classmates have traveled over this bridge many times without harm or fear of harm.
And now Charlie Goodrich is a member of the Board of Overseers of the Thayer School of Engineering where he learned this profession and received the degree of C. E. in 1906.
His other profession, too, received its start in Charlie's college years. He sang in the Chapel Choir and in the Glee Club, and studied music under "Harmony" Morse. He studied voice in New York also, while living in New Jersey. For nine years he was bass soloist in a Trenton, N. J., church, and for 11 years soloist in a Westfield, N. J., church, when he lived there. Not only this, he sang in quartets and helped form a glee club which has since become a town institution.
In college he and John Dunlap roomed in No. 1 Wentworth Hall. His classmates recall him as a steady, well-balanced fellow, a good student, modest, friendly, and of much smaller circumference then than now. He enjoyed skating and even did some skiing, a sport little known, strange to say, at that time at Dartmouth.
Goodrich's first engineering job was in the City Engineer's office in Manchester, N. H., in the summer of 1904-05. On graduation from the Thayer School in 1906, Goodrich, with his classmate Walter Conley, was hired by the American Bridge Company. Goodrich was placed in Trenton, N. J., while Conley, as it happened, was sent to Elmira, N. Y. There Charlie was assigned to drafting and design work on movable bridges and their operating machinery. At the same time, to eke out the not too big salary of a young draftsman, he taught drafting in an evening school.
After a year of this Charlie went home to Manchester and married his high school classmate, Ruth Drake and brought her to Trenton, where she shared in his church work, and brought up a daughter and son, Elizabeth and Robert. All through life this couple have been great chums, traveling, gardening, fishing and doing church work together. Where Charlie went, Ruth went. But when Charlie retired, Ruth couldn't retire (from dishwashing).
In 1910 our hero was moved to the company's New York office to be an assistant engineer in the design and estimating office. He continued to commute from Trenton. In wartime, 1918, he was active in designing large cranes and derricks for the Kearney, N. J., shipyard. In the following year he had become an assistant engineer in the office of the chief engineer of his company. Deciding to shorten his commuting trips, he bought a home in Westfield, N. J., which is still the family home in the sense that daughter Elizabeth and her banker husband with their family live there, with a room reserved for Charlie and Ruth to use at any time.
Two years later in 1921 Goodrich is found designing a large and interesting railroad bridge in Cincinnati, where a special problem had to be met in replacing the existing bridge without halting trains.
In 1925, in which year, incidentally, he was elected President of the Thayer Society of Engineering, he was assigned to the redesigning of the Carguinez Strait bridge, mentioned above, and in 1927 he was sent out to superintend the engineering of its construction. This was the first of Charlie's sojourns with his wife in California in connection with the construction of three of that state's largest bridges. They thus had opportunity to travel over much of the west and enjoyed it greatly. They took many pictures, and Goodrich developed a lecture which was in wide demand among engineering societies of the west. He also published a now famous article in the Engineering News-Record about the basic ideas of the new bridge design.
In 1928 he was made assistant to his company's chief consulting engineer, and was sent to London and Copenhagen for three months, in connection with the bridge across the Lillebelt in Denmark. He managed to visit other parts of Europe too, quite without let or hindrance oh happy days!
However, California couldn't do without him; the next year finds him building another railroad bridge in San Francisco Bay, over SuisUn Bay.
By 1933, reaching another rung on his ladder, he was appointed assistant chief engineer of the company, and assigned the three-year task, already mentioned, of engineering the eight-mile bridge between Oakland and San Francisco.
In 1935 he attained the top round. He was elected chief engineer of the American Bridge Company. Thereafter he operated from Pittsburgh headquarters and moved his residence there.
In 1939 came the thrill of a lifetime, his Doctorate from Dartmouth, a well-deserved honor.
After 11 years on this high plateau, Dr. Goodrich retired (1945) from the American Bridge Company, only to begin consulting for another company in New York!
The story of his four years of semi-retirement is fascinating. He is on the Board of Directors of a New Jersey engineering company, and for six years has been an elected member of the Board of Overseers of the Thayer School of Engineering. Now that he is semi-retired he invites '05 classmates to visit him at any and all points of sojourn in his peregrinations. He is probably our most interstate classmate.
Impressive too is the list of professional societies in which Charlie has been active. He was an elected National Director from District 6 of the American Society of Civil Engineers for a three-year term, 1943-45. He was a member of the American Society for Testing Materials, the American Institute of Steel Construction, Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania, the Dartmouth Society of Engineers, the American Welding Society and the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce. Not having received an invitation, he is not a member of the D. A. R.
Here is the family migration circuit: January 1-April 1, Palm Harbor, Fla., Box 77, c/o C. H. Dingee, near Clearwater. April, 1541 Harrison Avenue, Westfield, N. J., c/o Mrs. Stanley Malek. May 1-November 1, Barnstead, N. H., Drake Pond Farm.
November and December, Westfield, N. J. There is room enough to roam if you visit his New Hampshire farm. It contains about 100 acres, animal-less except for the woodchucks and deer that compete for the garden crops, with a sandy beach on Upper Suncook Lake, boating and fishing, and a house 160 years old. Offering, as it does, such fine opportunities for recreation and good health, it is a grand rallying point for the Goodrich clan, for all the members of the three generations summer there.
At Westfield, too, the Goodriches are at home among friends of 18 years standing. Their daughter Mrs. Malek, having inherited Charlie's taste for music, is a noted soprano soloist in church choirs and civic cantatas.
Wherever you find Charlie Goodrich you will find a great engineer, who has spanned many waters and shortened many distances. You will also find one whose life is so interwoven with that of his family that his story cannot be told separately. Finally, you will find a kind, good friend.
TAKING IT EASY on the Inn porch, Charles F. Goodrich 'O5, subject of a "Who's Who" in the class column this month, is shown with Mrs. Good- rich on one of their frequent visits to Hanover.
Secretary, 358 N. Fullerton Ave., Upper Montclair, N. J.
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