1925
Recently Speedy Fleet was feted for having spent 25 years with the same hometown bank near the tip of Long Island the Mattituck Bank of which he became President. Now he writes, "The past two months have been extremely busy ones for me, as we have been completing the conversion of the Mattituck National Bank to the North Fork Bank and Trust Company and at the same time merging into our new Trust Company the First National Bank of Cutchogue. This, I believe, is the first conversion and merger of this nature under the new National Bank Conversion Act and it involved two or three trips to Washington as well as a number of trips to the Superintendent of Banks, State of New York. There was a definite Dartmouth angle to the deal, inasmuch as my brother, Class of '21, was formerly the President of the First National Bank of Cutchogue and we also enlisted the legal services of John L. Sullivan, Class of '21, who very definitely knows his way around Washington."
Norm Smith has received national publicity on his election to the Presidency of the Osborn Mfg. Co., in Cleveland. Since 1938, when he became Vice President and General Manager, sales have risen from 2 milion dollars to about 8 million. Osborn is reputed the world's largest manufacturer of power-driven wheel brushes for cleaning, finishing and deburring of metals and many other materials. It is one of the leading manufacturers of foundry moulding machines for use in iron, steel and brass foundries.
Doug Archibald sent the article from TheNew York Times, another picked it up in the Wall Street Journal, and Bud Petrequin sent a note along from Cleveland with the comment that this rated as pretty big news in his town.
An interesting report to all I think follows: "The present interest rate of 2 1/2 on bank loans to business firms with the highest credit rating is a reasonable one, Lloyd D. Brace, president, told the annual meeting of stockholders of First National Bank of Boston. As a consequence, the bank executive does not believe the bank interest rate structure should be greatly changed. The bank earned $9,420,200, or $4.23 a share, last year, compared with $8,728,600 or $3.92 a share in 1949. Factors responsible for the better earnings showing were special services rendered by the bank, an increase in loans and slightly firmer interest rates. First National, Brace explained, is one of the few banks in the country engaged in the factoring business, a specialized form of financing used largely by the textile industry. It is a profitable business Brace said. The bank's real estate department was particularly active last year in obtaining Federal Housing Administration guaranteed loans on new buildings during the construction period, he added, and reported also that its automobile loans nearly doubled in volume during 1950. Its letter of credit business sky-rocketed last year because of an inflated economy throughout the world and a general improvement in world trade. As an example, he said, increases in prices of raw wool, wool tops and woolen and worsted goods have trebled the amount of credit required to finance these commodities and goods."
Incidentally, on January 1 Jock became a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, representing banks.
A while back Advertising Age had a photo of Bob Misch, vice-president of Al Paul Lefton Co., Actor Guy Kibbee, and Murray Kushell, ad director, Pal Blade Co., flying to Bermuda as members of the Rod & Gun Club of the Air. Eddie Edwards was asked to take a bow and make a short talk over the loudspeaker as a former Braves and Yankee pitcher at the Hingham Family Sports Night. Jack Reeder has been appointed chairman of the agency of William H. Weintraub Co., advertising firm seems to me Jack handles the Kaiser-Fraser Co. for one thing.
Members of Staten Island Zoological Society recently heard an account of insect life in the Western Hemisphere, given by an expert entomologist, Dr. Alexander B. Klots, assistant professor of biology at City College of New York. Dr. Klots, author of A Field Guide to theButterflies, released last month by Houghton Mifflin Company, spoke to an audience consisting of high school teachers as well as society members. The entomologist, who was educated at Dartmouth, Yale and Cornell, is a research associate of The American Museum of Natural History, and a fellow of the Entomological Society of America.
In the Saturday Review of Literature 1925's Ted Geisel pops up again. "Dr. Seuss" is a disguise that Theodore Seuss Geisel, wistful for a Ph.D., assumed when he feared that marketing some doodled animals under his full name would jeopardize the professorial status he coveted after Dartmouth '25 and Oxford '26. The third time that his untaught drawings made Judge magazine, Standard Oil of New Jersey, giggling over a Flit gag, signed him up for their by-product. "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" ran in magazines, billboards, newspapers, and sponsored movies for 13 years, a longevity record for a humorous advertising campaign, which, says Dr. Seuss, "was lucky for Geisel, as no college faculty seemed to want him much anyway." So between '27 and '37 he founded the "Seuss Navy," a promotion stunt for Essomarine Products whose membership tonnage by 1940 displaced the Royal Navy; wrote and illustrated boffos for Judge,Life, College Humor, and Vanity Fair; painted murals, and completed his first children's book, And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, whose rhymes scanned to the intestinal rumbles of a Swedish liner.
Most of his seven subsequent juveniles have been produced as animated cartoons; Mulberry Street became a Deems Taylor symphony and a university textbook; The 500 Hats ofBartholomew Cubbins was elected the best book for their children by the Japan Library Association. As wartime lieutenant colonel, Geisel picked up a Legion of Merit writing and producing information films for troops; and for their collaboration on Design for Death, a social-political history of the Japanese, he and his wife won the Academy Award for the Best Documentary Feature of 1946. He's done a "bit of mummy digging in Peru," traveled extensively in Europe, and is now settled down in a remodeled observation tower on a California mountain behind La Jolla, content simply to write yarns that will make youngsters laugh.
NORMAN F. SMITH '25, Vice President and Gen- eral Manager of the Osborn Manufacturing Cos. of Cleveland since 1938, was elected President of the company in January. Osborn makes power driven wheel brushes and foundry moulding machines.
Secretary, Kenneth B. Hill & Co., Rm. 1007 80 Federal St., Boston 10, Mass.
Treasurer, Elm St., Norwich, Vt.
Class Agent, 80 Eastlawn Dr., Teaneck, N. J.
