The Undergraduate Chair
FOR the past three years, at the beginning of spring vacation, I (along with 49 other singers and Prof. Paul R. Zeller, Glee Club director) have loaded myself, two suitcases, and a green coat, aboard a White River Coach Lines bus for the annual Glee Club Spring Trip. Each year I got aboard the bus with a different attitude toward the whole thing—but I always returned with the same feeling—a tired one.
My sophomore year was my first with the Glee Club and there was a large lump of excitement somewhere in the vicinity of my lower abdomen as I gave my suitcase to Shorty Bashaw (the bus driver). Then I got aboard and picked out a seat (over the wheel) and waited for an exciting twenty minutes until the motors roared and the trip to Boston began.
The second year's trip was different. There were sophomores from the class of 1952 going along for their first Glee Club spring tour, and I was an experienced junior. I picked out a comfortable seat with plenty of leg room in the front of the bus. I wasn't completely blase, though, for there were grand old senior Glee Clubbers along who were making their third and fourth spring trips. Their prestige was enormous. Some of them had Glee Club senior jackets with the years 1948 and 1949 on them, and it was best not to act too brash with these hardened veterans of the concert-party routine that makes up a spring concert tour.
This year was different. Although I looked forward to the tour (the longest of the three years), it was with a feeling of going back. The tense, expectant feeling was gone, left somewhere along a four or five-thousand-mile road of songs, and there was only a feeling that this, like all other things connected with senior year, was another "l ast."
The whole thing was well-planned before we ever left Hanover. "Bubs" Richardson '52, the business manager, and Warner Bentley, the graduate director of COSO, had made arrangements for places to stay, to sing, and to party. With the assistant publicity director, Syd Gross '53, I had sent out envelopes full of pictures, publicity stories, and biographical sketches of men who lived in cities where concerts had been scheduled. So when the morning of Friday, March 30, rolled around the Club was all set. The night before all fifty of us had assembled in Rollins Chapel for a final rehearsal. After a quick practice of the Dartmouth songs we were to sing the next day on the Kate Smith TV program, Warner Bentley showed up with a small bag containing $1500—thirty dollars of expense money for every member of the Club.
The rehearsal broke up on this happy note, and most of the singers went home to bed, since the busses were scheduled to leave from in front of the Hanover Inn at the soul-shattering hour of 5:15 a.m. I went back to my room and typed out three re- search papers that were due the following morning—and finally got to bed at 4:45 a.m. At 6 a.m. Fred Swanson '51, a member of the Glee Club and the "Injunaires," exploded into my bedroom, bullied me into my clothes, helped collect my equipment, and hurried me downstairs where '"Whitey" Hand '51, the president of the Glee-Club, was waiting in his car.
We made short work of the trip to White River Junction where the busses were just about to head south after a breakfast stop. I switched myself, bag and baggage, from Whitey's car to the bus—and began one of the trips that are a dreary- but-indispensable part of any Glee Club jaunt. .Each bus lias .room for 25 men. The usual trip averages 200-odd miles and runs usually true to form. The morning is given over to almost complete silence. Singers who partied the night before stretch out on the back seat or on the luggage rack above the seats. The tired men who didn't get to the bus early enough to take advantage of these stretching-out places stuff pillows into uncomfortable angles of the regular seats and try to get some sleep.
At noon the busses stop at some spot where there are a couple of restaurants and the hungry singers tuck in a midday meal. The meal Ordered usually depends on the section of the country in which the busses find themselves—and the condition of health in which the eaters find themselves.
Things brighten up considerably during the afternoon—the boys with more money than brains play gin rummy with Whitey Hand—and the rest reminisce about the night before or lay plans for the coming evening.
On that first Friday of the tour, the busses were scheduled to arrive at the television studio in New York at 3 p.m. for a rehearsal before the Kate Smith show. We arrived at 3:27 and there was just time for a short bellow to get the kinks out of the bus-ridden vocal chords before it was time to get dressed. The Club appeared at the end of the program for six minutes of Dartmouth music—and we were followed by Miss Smith who sang a song about "may your troubles all be small ones." After this paradoxical number the program ended and we all got aboard the busses (it was raining) and rode to the Dartmouth Club where we were supposed to sleep and eat.
The concert that night was at the Seventh Regiment Armory, a largish place, half filled by the Glee Club and the audience. The rest of the room was filled with parked trucks and jeeps. This was one of the most unusual concert halls we used during the trip. After the party which followed, it was official: the trip was on.
We spent the weekend: in-Philadelphia, after singing Saturday night in Plainfield, New Jersey. From Philadelphia we went to Washington, and from there to Cleveland, Dayton, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Toledo, Pittburgh, East Aurora (New York), and Rochester. Then, on Sunday, April 15, the caravan rolled back into Hanover—just in time for classes the next morning.
There are no strict training rules during the trip. Professor Zeller merely requests that we keep our voices in singing shape. Other than that what we do is up to us. In most cities the alumni plan parties to follow the concert. Usually the concert sponsors have obtained local girls to act as hostesses and dancing partners.
There is too little space here to tell the stories of all the stops—of all the people we met and the parties we shared in, but as an example of what goes on at one extreme of the concert-party town list, let's take Detroit.
The Detroit concert was scheduled on a Tuesday, and although there was no party planned as such the night before, after the Milwaukee concert, most of the men found something to keep them up until fairly late. On Tuesday morning after breakfast, we left the Hotel Medford in Milwaukee at 7 a.m. We had the usual bus ride to Detroit: sleep in the morning, lunch at noon, and gin rummy during the afternoon. By 6:30 we arrived (an hour late) at the Country Club of Detroit in Grosse Pointe Farms. Here we were given the use of the locker room facilities to shower, shave, and get dressed—and then cocktails, girls, and dinner were provided, in that order. After dinner the busses took us to the Pierce Junior High School Auditorium where we sang to a very full house. After the concert everyone, alumni and singers alike, who were in a party mood returned to the Country Club where the party lasted until about 1:30 a.m.
The fun did not stop then, though. With the staying power of long-distance runners, the alumni kept up the gaiety at various parties until well into the wee hours of the morning. According to the grapevine, the last Glee Clubber didn't get into bed until 5:30 a.m. Then, the next morning, the entire Club went on a tour of the Ford Motor Co. plant in River Rouge where lunch was made available before the Wednesday bus ride to Toledo, scene of the next night's entertainment.
This very sketchy account of "The Undergraduate Chair on a Glee Club Trip" is completely inadequate as a description of the hundreds of little details that go into making up a successful Spring Tour. Sometimes people find it hard to believe that fifty college men are actually anxious to give up a two weeks' spring vacation in Bermuda or the south to travel around the country in a pair of busses, singing and partying a great deal, and sleeping very little. But after one trip—a trip that invariably proves that Dartmouth alumni are the finest hosts in the world (not to mention their wives)—the Club is always looking forward to next year and the big event that makes a singing year a success: the Spring Tour.
Milestones
SENIOR FELLOWS: Louis deRochemont III '52, Newington, N. H.; James L. Fraser '52, New York City; Bruce W. Knight Jr. '52, Hanover, N, H.; Robert S. Lord '52, Marblehead. Mass.; Henry P. McKean Jr. '52, Beverly Farms, Mass.; Marshall T. Meyer '52, Norwich, Conn.; Lawrence Newman '52, New York City; Buck H. Zuckerman '52, Roslyn Heights, N. Y.
PHI BETA KAPPA: Harry J. Berwick Jr. '51, W. Lebanon, N. H.; Robert Caterson '51, Bridgeport, Conn.; Donald H. Cox '51, Newtonville, Mass.; Laurence R. Green '51, Newton, Mass.; John S. Hatfield '51, Berkeley, Calif.; Donald F. Herdeg '51, Darien, Conn.: Robert N. Kreidler '51, Crosse lie, Mich.; Howard A. Pearson '51, Charlestown, N. H.; Bernard G. Sykes '51, Norwood, Mass.: Stanley van den Noort '51, Lynn, Mass.; David C. White '51, Rock Island, Ill.
D.O.C. OFFICERS FOR 1951-52: President, William W. Biddle '52, Radnor, Pa.; Vice President, Preston H. Saunders '52, Providence, R. I.; Carnival Chairman, Robert D. Brace '52, Charles River, Mass.
BASKETBALL CAPTAIN FOR 1951-52: Ewing K. Calhoun '52, Minneapolis, Minn.
HOCKEY CAPTAIN FOR 1951-52: John Grocott '52, Melrose, Mass.
SWIMMING CAPTAIN FOR 1951-52: G. Gordon Kay '52, Koloa, T. H.
OFF TO BERMUDA: The spring-vacation migration for "College Week" is as strong as ever, only the modern student gets there quicker. Above is a Dartmouth contingent about to take off from New York.
bid cannon THE WINNER: Jim Broe accepts the new class attendance cup for 1923, which had the largest group present at the annual Dartmouth Alumni Association dinner in Boston, March 7.
