Thayer School

As another college year draws to a close, plans for an eventful month at Thayer School are taking form. The opening gun will be the meeting of the Board of Overseers on Saturday, May 31, followed the next day by the graduation exercises at which twenty Thayer and Tuck-Thayer students will receive their Master of Science degrees. It is hoped that this weekend, as well as the following two weekends, will bring a goodly number of alumni to Thayer School to renew old friendships, make new ones, and inspect the School. A few days after the reunion weekend, the first groups will begin to assemble in Hanover for conferences which will usher in the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Engineering Education which formally opens on June 23 and extends to June 27.

Comparative quiet will settle over the campus following this meeting until the opening of the Thayer School summer session on August 20. Our doors will be open, however, and summer vacationers are urged to drop in for a visit any time. A rearrangement of the Thayer School program shifting the summer session to the summer preceding instead of following first-year work will bring both first-year and second-year students back to school at this earlier date this year. With an expected first-year class of about forty students, a substantial increase over our present enrollment, the School will be a busy place for the month preceding the opening of college in September.

Walt Douglas '34, a partner in the New York consulting engineering firm of Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Hall and Macdonald, has presented the School with a beautiful, framed color picture of the George P. Coleman Memorial Bridge over the York River at Yorktown, Virginia. Dedication ceremonies for this bridge, designed by Walt's firm, were scheduled for May 7. We are particularly grateful to Walt for presenting this picture to us and we hope that we may continue to receive gifts of this kind from our alumni. We take pride in exhibiting the accomplishments of our alumni in this form and pictures add substantially to the attractiveness and appeal of our School.

Holden Waterbury '47, an engineer with The Austin Company in Denver, has sent us a local announcement of the meeting of the American Society of Civil Engineers to be held in that city June 16 to 20 this year. Says Holden, "The Thayer section of the local ASCE group would like to know where the heck you will be staying when you come to Denver for the convention. We will gladly furnish you with shootin irons (don't worry about that, Holden; the Kimball family never goes anywhere without at least three per member), twenty-gallon sombrero and trappins." Unfortunately, none of us at Thayer will be able to take Holden and his group up on their invitation, but this was intended for broadcast to all Thayer alumni and I know the local delegation will be disappointed if you alumni who can get there don't take them up on their invitation. According to the lessrestrained Colorado Section announcement, "The Greatest Show on Earth used to be Barnum and Bailey's slogan. The Colorado Section will steal that title this year. Seventy-nine Colorado members have rounded up, roped, tied and branded the finest program in the history of the West, to see that your convention fare will be full to the brim." The details tend to substantiate this claim. Wish I could be there.

Jack Whelden EE '51 visited the School in April. So did Hanque Parker CE '47, just discharged from the Marines and on his way to Minneapolis where he rejoins Winston Brothers Company, gets himself married, and then takes off with his bride for Colombia, S. A.

Merit White '31, head of the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Massachusetts, will lead the discussion of a program on "Design of Above Ground Structures" which is part of a conference on "Building in the Atomic Age" to be held at MIT June 16 and 17.

Congratulations to Tom Barr CE '50 on his marriage April 25 to Marian Jane Gaston in the Central Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas.

George Collins '35, staff engineer with Wallace Clark and Company, New York firm of management consultants, left for Ireland on April 15 as a member of a seven-man "team" to conduct a three-month industrial survey aimed at rapid and substantial increase of Irish exports, particularly to the United States. Their findings and recommendations will be made to the Irish Dollar Exports Corporation, an agency of the Irish government.

Best wishes for the summer.