1920
One of these days, out of sheer affection for Sherman Adams, your secretary will cook up a batch of these notes without a single mention of Sherm's name, for that will be the '20 column that the Assistant President likes best. But the time is not yet. So long as the guy remains, in the opinion of many both inside and outside the Big Green fold, the most important Dartmouth man in the world, we propose to spread on the record at least brief mention of what he is doing and what is being done to him.
Kenneth Harper's article on Sherm, "The Man Eisenhower Calls Boss," had the featured spot in the February issue of American Magazine, along with a full-page frontispiece of "The Rock" in color, captioned as follows (a direct quote from one of Sherm's speeches). "If we all would decide to give a half-dollar more work for the dollar we receive, we would all come pretty near getting back the half- dollar we are losing because our dollars are only worth half as much." Harper's own estimate derives from an old-time Capital observer who told him: "Adams is the second most powerful man in Washington. That makes him automatically one of the most powerful men in the world. It's hard to overestimate his influence." And, in tackling the really difficult assignment of describing Sherm, Harper gives us plenty of adjectives to choose from: "quiet, determined, shrewd, loyal, impulsive, frugal, brusque, waspish, high-strung, and possessed of a grand passion for work ... 'a Calvin Coolidge with glands.' "
Andrew Tully, feature writer for the NewYork World-Telegram and Sun likewise pulled no punches in his January 16 story on Sherm, who, says Tully, .. could become the second most powerful man in the United States —if he can survive the job. ... In a sense Sherman Adams will run the Presidency, under Dwight Eisenhower's supervision. So far he is doing well at it. He merely works 14 hours a day. Right now he's staffing the new White House and passing on all jobs in the Executive Department. At the same time he must keep track of what's going on in all the other 'shadow' departments. Mostly, Sherman Adams' job boils down to getting done whatever Gen. Eisenhower wants done."
Beverly Smith gave the title "Ike's Yankee Lieutenant" to his lead article in the January 24 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. This piece had the best and most recent pictures of Sherm and Rachel, more humor and more human interest than most of what has been written about them. Its introductory lines ran: "No new official in Washington is closer to the President than that ex-New England lumberjack. Sherman Adams, called The Rock. This lean and incorruptible White House intimate is a man you will be seeing a lot of. hearing a lot from." As for Rachel, the January issue of New. Hampshire Profiles paid her some small part of her due in a mighty fine article by "Deak" Morse, telling how affectionately this wise and talented woman has come to be known as "The Pebble," to match her husband's "Rock." Rachel can be depended upon to handle affairs (including her husband) efficiently and happily in the 100-year-old home they have leased near the House Office Building on Capitol Hill. Steve Stevens '01 sent us a picture of the house, which has all the sturdy qualities of its new occupants.
Up in Lincoln, N. H., former home town of Governor Adams, more than 400 north country friends crammed the high school auditorium on December 27 to pay honor to Sherm before he doffed the gubernatorial robes. Ted Marden, who sang under Sherm's direction in the College glee club, did the subject justice in his talk, "College Recollections." Writing in connection therewith, Ted says: "All of us are proud of Sherm and Rachel, for what they have done, are doing, and what they are going to do." The Mardens' older daughter Betty (Mrs. John Hyde) now lives in Concord, only a few "blocks from the house where her father grew up, while the younger daughter Barbara, who became Mrs. George Pasichuke in December, has taken up residence in Littleton, comfortably close by her parents.
A record crowd of 49 Twenties assembled for cocktails at the Dartmouth Club in New- York on January 14, to give Classmate Adams a send-off for Washington. Here's the roll call for that event: Sherm Adams, Bill Anderson, Sherry Baketel, Hal Bidwell, Pop Birch, Bill Bishop, Eddie Bowen, Ginger Bruce, Paul Canada, Tom Carpenter, Ted Cart, Hal Clark, Tom Davidson, Roc Elliott, Ben Farnsworth, John Felli, Gene Fiske, Beardsley Foster, Phil Gross, Clint Johnson, Rus Jones, Paul Kay, Arch Lawson, Carl Lenz, Tinker Lombard, Jack Mayer, Charlie McGoughran, Bill Mezger, Gerry Morse, Newt Nash, Stan Newcomer, Roger Nutt, Al Osborn, Al Palmer, Ned Pearson, Dick Pearson, Pete Potter, George Sackett, Ned Shnaverson, Prugh Sigler, Spence Snedecor, Charlie Stevens, Shorty Stickney, Gerry Stone, Bill Tracy, Dean Travis, Lek Willard, George Winter and Bob Winters.
Grist for the secretarial mill from the above shindig: States represented, besides New York, included Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Stan Newcomer, Pete Potter and Roc Elliott traveled the longest distances, and all managed to combine business with pleasure. Jack Mayer,George Sackett and Gerry Stone made up the hard-hitting committee that got the gang together. Dolly Elliott was persuaded to join 12 Twenties for a jumbled-up dinner following the stag party - and survived the occasion, thanks to her customary combination of poise and good nature. Hal Bidwell, who came quite some miles himself (from Hartford), broke the news that his daughter graduates from Bates this year. Newly announced grandpappys in the gathering: Tinker Lombard, whose grandson Thomas S. Hodgson III was born April 18, 1952, barely a month after his dad was lost in Korea; Paul Canada, whose granddaughter was born last August to a pair of Duke University graduates; Phil Gross, who welcomes Katharine Clark Gross to the family fold, as of December 16, 1952. Her father, third of the Phil Grosses and himself a graduate of Dartmouth in 1950, is now a shavetail in anti-aircraft and guided missiles, so that his recently arrived daughter divides her time between paternal and maternal grandparents. Proud father (and well he might be!): Beardsley Foster, who can't help liking to look at the picture of daughter Barbara, Smith sophomore, which made a lovely cover for the November issue of the Ladies' Home Journal.
Long lost Twenties, who saw each other at the New York party for the first time in many years, included Bill Anderson, Jersey City realtor; Ned Pearson, operating (in his own words) "the same deal at the same old stand" - trust work for the Hanover Bank; DocStickney, now in charge of home office examinations for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.; Bill Bishop, merchandiser of fine papers for Marquardt & Company, downtown; BenFarnsworth, whose daughter Ellen Elizabeth, a graduate of Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art, is now working for General Drafting Co. of Convent, N. J.; Gene Fiske and Paul Kay, fellow-pillars of civic life in Mount Vernon; Charlie Stevens, former diplomat now back on the Rutgers faculty; and Bob Winters, who could use his 17-year-old, 190-pound son to help him manage the truck division of Bishop, McCormick & Bishop in Brooklyn.
Chicago Twenties had their get-together at the University Club on January 27, with practically 100% attendance, plus Stan New-comer and Dick Pearson. Nate Whiteside was spreading the good news of how his boy Peter had weathered a siege of polio at Mary Hitchcock Hospital last fall and is back playing hockey at Kimball Union Academy. Nate couldn't say enough in praise of John Amsden, whose Presidency of the Hospital has made it a model of its kind, and who has a daughter in the senior class at Sweet Briar. Another, so the boys tell us, who can lend his praises to Mary Hitchcock, is HershChandler, former Chicagoan now permanently resident in Lutz, Fla., who broke his arm in five places last year, sustained further damage from a tetanus shot, and ended up hospitalized in Hanover for the necessary repairs. Hersh moves all over the lot, apparently, in this country and the West Indies, consolidating his gains toward the prospect of early retirement.
Frank Mayer's boy, who graduated from Andover, is now a sophomore at Amherst; likes it 0.K., being that close to Smith; the Mayer daughters are at Ethel Walker and Girl's Latin (Chicago). Frank Corbin and Wally Shnitzboth recuperative in recent years from a variety of ailments, are today about the healthiest looking members of the Chicago delegation. But a physical fitness award should probably also go to LaddieMyers, whose rapidly improving golf game has brought him two holes-in-one and who will tell you (if pressed) about the 237 games he rolled on local alleys. Frank Corbin's daughter, by the way, sees something occasionally of young Jimmy Vail, naval air cadet at Pensacola. Lee Davis, Len's boy (Wabash '50), back from Japan where he was with the HQ Company of the 34th Infantry, has started work with General Electric in Chicago. The Fred Hamm family is now training its academic sights on Pine Manor, where Fred and Dorothy hope to enroll younger daughter Barbara in another year.
Most traveled Twenties operating out of Chicago are Don MacKay and Henry Spero. Henry claims not to winter in Florida, as more and more classmates are beginning to do, but is nevertheless eternally going through the state on one errand or another. Lately he saw something of England and Scotland, in his endless buying and selling of printing machinery. As for Don, he and writer-wife Ruth have caught onto a new way of moving around: driving a new car to their outbound destination, turning it in there as per original agreement, and making their way back by plane or what-not. Last summer they used the system on Los Angeles, San Francisco and Lake Tahoe. The next scheduled trip will be to Texas or Florida; after that, to Oregon, Washington and Banff.
Phil Kitfield was feted as "the man who engineered every modern road in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts," when he retired on January 21 as chief engineer of the Department of Public Works to accept a similar post with the new Massachusetts Toll Authority. Five hundred leaders in highway planning, construction and maintenance turned out for a dinner in his honor at the Statler in Boston.
"One of the most difficult parts for me," Phil writes, "was giving up membership in the American Association of State Highway Officials, inasmuch as the Turnpike Authority does not so qualify. I was on the Executive Committee, a member of several other committees, and chairman of one. However, I retain my membership in the American Road Builders Association. My oldest daughter Ann graduated from Colby Junior College in 1950, a year after Carroll Swezey's daughter, and has been Mrs. John A. Clarke II since August 1950. Joyce graduated from LaSalle last June and is working in Boston. Sally expects to enter Green Mountain next September, thus adding to the variety of alumnae funds I can be tapped for."
Still other Twenties have played prominent parts in recent news. Red Small was the subject of a feature article in the November 9 issue of the Boston Sunday Post, wherein he was heralded as "Uncle Sam's Top Pain- killer." The story by James Nevin Miller told of a personal visit to Reel's quarters in the National Institute of Health at Bethesda, Md., and of "the vital chores" he found Dr. Small performing there "in developing new drugs to relieve the harrowing pain of sufferers from chronic diseases." Referring to Red as "the recognized living authority on the chemistry of narcotics," the writer tells how Red's work with metopon and other wonder drugs is breaking the monopoly of morphine for the relief of pain.
Jim Frost, Connecticut educator and eager beaver in the audiovisual field, spotted a picture of Charlie McGoughran in Ethyl News for December. It showed Charlie taking his customarily active part in the November annual meeting of the American Petroleum Institute.
NEW CLASS AGENT: Philip H. Bird is in the picture as the newly elected Class Agent for '19.
VICE ADMIRALS AND AN AMBASSADOR: Eflis Briggs '21 (second from left), U.S. Ambassador to Korea, is shown with (I to r): Vice Admiral Clark USN, Commander of the 7th Fleet; Vice Admiral Sohn, Commander in Chief, Korean Navy; Vice Admiral Briscoe USN, Commander of the U.S. Naval Forces'in the Far East, on the Pusan airstrip in Korea last November.
Secretary, Blind Brook Lodge, Rye 17, N. Y. Treasurer, 1 Windmill Lane, Arlington 74, Mass.
