The College Days of Sherman Adams

President Eisenhower's "Chief of Staff" Favored a Good Stiff Pace Even Then

IN the twilight of June 3, 1919, Sherman Adams '20 loped down the Ledyard Trail from Velvet Rocks to the Hanover Plain. He was accompanied by the 1919-20 Council of the Dartmouth Outing Club that had installed him as its next president in an outdoor ceremony while the sun set beyond his native State of Vermont. Ahead at Robinson Hall lay the responsibilities of his first executive position in any organization. Whatever his thoughts may have been on that dramatic occasion are his own.

Under the meridian sun of January 20, 1953, Sherman Adams rode down Pennsylvania Avenue following the inauguration of President Eisenhower at the nation's Capitol. Ahead at the White House lay the responsibilities of his present executive position as civilian "Chief of Staff" of the most powerful organization in the world a title Sherm personally dislikes, but which best describes his responsibilities as Assistant to the President of the United States. Whatever his thoughts may have been during that significant ceremony are also his own.

Much has been printed in recent months about the role that Sherman Adams is playing in the present national administration. This article has to do only with his undergraduate years, when he was exposed to the same basic experiences that have led other alumni to accept positions of responsibility in this government of ours.

In the fall of 1916 a "Freshman President," Ernest Martin Hopkins, greeted some 460 members of the Class of 1920, including one Sherman Adams, a graduate of Hope High School, Providence, Rhode Island, where he had excelled chiefly in debating circles. The new President was later elected an honorary member of the Class of 1920. Perhaps that is one reason why the now President Emeritus decided to make one exception to his rule of no public speaking after retirement, when he accepted an invitation to address the Statewide testimonial banquet at the Manchester Armory on December 17, 1952, in honor of Sherman and Rachel Adams.

During freshman year Sherm participated in the programs of several campus organizations with which he remained identified during his four years at college: Outing Club, Glee Club, Choir (an active group in the era of compulsory Chapel), Dramatic Association and Christian Association.

In his second year he served on the Sophomore Smoker Committee and was a member of the Outing Club's Publicity Committee, which published the first printed annual report of the club's activities.

With Ronald Lodge '19, Sherm climbed Mount Washington on three successive days in mid-winter, easing off on the third descent by crossing the Northern Peaks in a 20-below-zero blizzard for night refuge at Madison Hut.

In the summer following his sophomore year Sherm forsook a summer job in his beloved White Mountains for the U.S. Marine Corps, enlisting as a private on July 18, 1918 and remaining in the service of his country until January 22, 1919, nearly midway through his junior year.

By his third year Sherm was secretary of the D.0.C., a member of its executive committee, and the leader of its more ambitious mountain-climbing expeditions. Here he functioned at his best with his insistence on detailed plans and his knowledge of the White Mountains gained from summer work with the trail and shelter crew of the Appalachian Mountain Club.

In early February, 1918 he led a small group over the Northern Peaks, spending a night at the A.M.C. Madison Hut and crossing the Presidential Range to Mount Washington in mid-winter conditions, descending to Gorham via the Carriage Road.

In late February of the same year he led a group of 45 undergraduates, the largest number of Club members to make so long a trip, on a four-day outing to the Profile House in Franconia Notch, climaxed by the entire group traversing the Franconia Range under ideal weather conditions. Sherm arranged for a special car on the B & M's 3:06 from Hanover to Littleton, little realizing that several years later he would be concerned with the schedule of a campaign train that would carry a victorious Presidential candidate back and forth across this land of ours.

A month later, with Ellis O. Briggs '21, his successor as president of the D.O.C. and now U.S. Ambassador to Korea, Sherm undertook a four-day outing from Bowman Station near Randolph to Glencliff at the southern base of Mount Moosilauke. Mount Washington via Mount Jefferson was the first day's objective and Crawford Notch, the second. Then on the big third day, across country whose vastness is respected by anyone familiar with the White Mountains, Adams and Briggs snowshoed in a blinding snowstorm from the Willey Station in Crawford Notch across the extensive Pemigewasset Wilderness in the heart of what is now the White Mountain National Forest to the club's Agassiz Basin Cabin near Lincoln and North Woodstock.

In later life Sherm and Rachel Adams have made their home for exactly thirty years in Lincoln. Its lights have beckoned them homeward at the end of many a long and weary day, but it is doubtful whether this mountain village ever looked more welcome to Sherm than it did on that March day at the end of the historic snowshoe trek from the source of the Saco River to the valley of the Pemigewasset.

On the fourth day, perhaps just to taper off, Adams and Briggs swung around the northern base of Mount Moosilauke through Kinsman Notch, flanking its western slopes via the Tunnel Road to the village of Glencliff, present location of the $185,000 Adams Nurses Home at the New Hampshire State Sanatorium, which was dedicated 33 years later on June 24, 1952, in the fourth year of Sherm's service as Governor of the State.

His senior-year activities proved a fitting climax for his eventful college career with much of his time devoted to Outing Club activities. He observed on many occasions later that his liking for the countryside and people of rural New Hampshire, stimulated by his D.O.C. activities, persuaded him to make the Granite State his permanent home.

In October 1919 Sherm was the leader of a 20-man trip to the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, the first official fall expedition conducted by the Outing Club to those challenging peaks. As chairman of the Carnival Outdoor Committee, he spent much of the fall developing the program for what proved to be one of the most exciting Carnivals of that era. Dart- mouth won all events, scoring nearly twice as many points in the various ski and snowshoe races as its strongest competitor, the University of Vermont.

The ski jumping tournament was climaxed by a simultaneous triple leap (on the "Old Jump") executed by Fred Harris '11, founder of the club; Richard Bowler '22; and John P. Carleton '22, first of the many Dartmouth skiers to compete in the Olympics. Individual somersault jumps by the latter two Hanover boys ended an impressive demonstration by the Big Green skiers.

The February 1920 issue of The National Geographic featured an article, "Skiing Over the New Hampshire Hills" by Fred Harris '11, that proved a powerful influence upon the college of that era. It was read in more than two million homes throughout the country many of them the homes of high school boys thinking about college. That spring applications for admission jumped from something like 825 to 2625. The Secretary of the College observed that this unprecedented and sudden increase could be accounted for only by the National Geographic article. The increased volume of applications forced the College to adopt the selective process of admission with its accumulating benefits through the years.

Sherm was the obvious leader for the annual Mount Washington Trip over Town Election Weekend on March 5-10, 1920. Based at the Ravine House in Randolph, readily accessible by train from Hanover, the group made numerous climbs of the Northern Peaks. Every one of the 55 members of the expedition reached the summit of either Mount Adams (named for the second President of the United States and an ancestor of the leader) or Mount Madison, both mile-high peaks rising well above timberline. Commented The Dartmouth: "a virile trip."

In the spring of Sherm's senior year, the annual mileage contest sponsored by the D.O.C. brought him further laurels, although he still wishes he could be remembered as something more than a longdistance walker during his college years. This competition ran for four months starting at the end of Christmas recess. Medals were awarded the three undergraduates who covered on foot, skis, or snowshoes the greatest number of miles. This was "duck soup" for Sherm, whose Dartmouth career coincided with the rise and fall of this unique college competition.

In his sophomore year, with Ellis Briggs 'at, he made the longest single day's hike to that time in D.O.C. history (from White River Junction to Bellows Falls) and scored the highest average mileage per trip 46 miles. On a five-dollar wager he later set out with Briggs to walk the 136 miles from Hanover to Springfield in 66 hours. The marathon ended at East Northfield, where Sherm recalls, "The next thing I can remember was going into a restaurant about 5 o'clock, sitting down on a bench for a cup of coffee and a couple of doughnuts, and not being able to get up, whereupon Briggs called an omnibus and took me to a road house until the night sleeper came in, upon which I was loaded like a sack of sugar onto an upper for Hanover."

In his junior year Sherm finished sixth among 36 competitors with a total mileage 339- But then came his final year and the experienced Sherm was out to be "top man." Competing with 231 others, most of whom had fewer extracurricular activities, he tallied a total milage of 413.5, second only to C. C. Throop '22, future Outing Club president and now superintendent of the Coke By-Product Department of the Pittsburgh Steel Company.

Highlight of this contest and probably the peak accomplishment for all time in local walking circles occurred on Memorial Day of 1920, when Sherm and his closest rival, William P. Fowler 'si, now a Boston attorney, joined forces in an effort to cover the 83 miles over a devious route between Skyline Cabin, northernmost D.O.C. cabin three miles north of Littleton, to Hanover within 24 hours. The details of that memorable walk are set forth by Fowler in the December 1932 issue of Appalachia. Suffice it to record for this purpose that the pair left Skyline at midnight and with timely encouragement from Prof. Leland Griggs '02 dragged into Hanover at thirteen minutes before the following midnight thus proving "it could be done in 24 hours," and adding substantially to their mileage accumulation.

Bill Fowler, who should know, has stated in comparing his contemporary long-distance hikers, "Of all these men, Sherm Adams stands out as the most relentless walker. He is, or then was, about five feet seven inches tall, about 140 pounds in weight, slender, wiry, and with muscles of steel a living refutation of the theory that long legs are essential to fast walking.

...Although I [Fowler] duplicated Sherm's best walking record, and although Dan [Warren F. Daniell '22, father of two Dartmouth track and cross-country stars in recent years and now in charge of the Great Northern Paper Company's testing program at Millinocket, Maine] outdistanced us both, neither Dan nor I ever had quite the speed and dash that Sherm could display as he snapped his legs along for mile after mile, his whole frame shaking from his machine-like muscle-action."

The next fall Warren Daniell walked 86 miles from Hanover to Hinsdale, New Hampshire, within 24 hours, but he would be the first to urge that the Adams-Fowler record be kept on the books as his travel was entirely on public highways, whereas the previous stroll of three miles less included 23 miles on trails and woods roads and involved ascents of 5600 feet in elevation.

At his last meeting as D.O.C. president, Sherm had the satisfaction of seeing a new Constitution adopted by unanimous vote. As Governor of New Hampshire, he later engineered a major reorganization of the State government. And in his new post at the White House he continues to make changes aimed at more efficient operations.

Sherman Adams' campus activities, however, were not monopolized by the Dartmouth Outing Club. For four years he sang second bass with the Glee Club, serving as its leader in his senior year, when the club performed in 24 out-of-town concerts, and appearing in one of its popular specialties, the Campus Quartet.

In the Camera Club, Sherm acted as its treasurer in his junior year and secretary the year later. He was a member of the Dartmouth Christian Association Cabinet in his last two years and as a senior served on the Board of Governors of The Arts, an influential group in those days.

In his senior year he was the first president of the D.O.C. to serve as an ex-officio member of Palaeopitus, then numbering twelve of the "Big Men on Campus."

As a brother in Sigma Alpha Epsilon, he was an active member of its fraternity life.

Despite all these extracurricular activities, Sherm, with a major in Economics and minors in Mathematics and German, ended his senior year in the Third Honor Group. With 225 other seniors (less than half the entering class because of World War I and academic casualties) he received his college degree, standing by while such notables as Herbert Hoover were granted honorary degrees.

Then, in his own words, "Upon acquiring the sheepskin, which was whisked into a trunk and has not been seen since, I went into the woods of Ludlow Mountain in Vermont scaling logs."

Such were the college days of Sherman Adams. His days in the Eisenhower Administration are still to be experienced and recorded, but if his Dartmouth example is any criterion, he has set a fast pace for the years ahead.

BACKING UP THE PRESIDENT:This photograph, prophetic of the role of Sherman Adams '20 in the new Administration, was taken when General Eisenhower campaigned in New Hampshire.

AS D.O.C. PRESIDENT: Sherm Adams, one of the "hikingest" members the Outing Club ever had, shown all set to lead a student party on .a trip to the mountain country north of Hanover.