Awarded the 1952 John R. Mason Trophy for being the most successful among the class agents ten years or less out of college, David H. Hilton '5l received the following citation at the Detroit Alumni Fund dinner held on March 31:
The John R. Mason Trophy is presented each year to a class agent of the youngest ten alumni classes, the most outstanding agent in the judgment of the Alumni Fund Committee. For last spring's campaign the award goes to one whose work was not only the best in this group, but whose performance was perhaps the best ever accomplished in the first year of a class' alumni life.
Rarely does the Committee honor a class agent after but one year of service, preferring to await evidence of the kind of staying power that marks a man as truly worthy. In this case, however, delay was unnecessary; the facts were clear and compelling. Because this class, guided by this man's forceful leadership, contributed some $4500, 98% of its assigned objective and an averageof more than $10 a man, in a campaign ending just a year after its graduation. Even more significant, 434 members, 78% of scoring base, were among the contributors to this first-year campaign, a participation achievement without precedent in the history of the Alumni Fund.
The credit belongs largely to the agent himself. His class made it a good record; he made it extraordinary. He did it, for example, by a personal hand-written letter to every single one of the 669 men in his class. He did it by creating among his classmates an awareness that the Alumni Fund is a serious business of greatest importance to the College. He did it by challenging them with such words as: "Let's not fail Dartmouth, for if we do, we have essentially failed ourselves since it is we who own Dartmouth College."
His achievement has already won this man and his class the distinction of Green Derby victory, and tonight it brings even greater honor. It is a highest privilege of the Alumni Fund Committee to award the John R. Mason Trophy for 1952 to DAVID H. HILTON, Class of 1951, and to present him with Richardson's History of Dartmouth College as a token of its deepest respect and appreciation.