1905
Under the date February 19, the Milton (Mass.) Record contains a leading article about the new building of the Milton Savings Bank. Included are cuts showing the exterior and interior - a very attractive edifice, one would judge — also cuts of the officers. This bank was founded the fall after our graduation.
Frederick Chase is president of this fine institution. Your scribe was sorry he could not attend the Open House on February 20, and so give his congratulations to Fred in person. Soon thereafter he left for Dunedin, Fla. On March 18 he attended the Dartmouth dinner in St. Petersburg, the only representative of '05 present. He had hoped that Jake Atwood and Dick Tolman might be there. Dick was at Clearwater Beach. With Fred in Dunedin was his cousin, Laura Lord Scales, daughter of Johnnie K., of revered memory. Fred expected to return home the middle of April.
C. C. Hills was elected president of the board of directors at a meeting in early February of the stockholders of the Norwich Water Supply Company.
Beatrice and Andy MacMillen report a very pleasant sojourn at the Clearwater (Fla.) Beach Hotel. They were to return to the chill winds of Concord on March 15.
I am indebted to Walt May for the two preceding bits of news. He keeps an eagle eye out for anything concerning '05, a real help to your scribe.
In the late winter Shirley Cunningham's wife went on a motor trip with her sister to California. Shirley, too, is one of my most faithful informants. I suppose it is the sundrenched atmosphere of New Mexico. He seems to be able to see what is going on in all parts of the country, especially New York and New England!
Another piece of news, crowded out of last month's copy, was that Halsey Loder, SolonCornish and George Hersam had attended the Boston dinner February 16. For this I am indebted to Royal Parkinson, another of my most indefatigable correspondents.
Two of our traveling classmates will have returned home long before this reaches your eyes. Sliver Hatch had already reached home. "We (he writes) had a good vacation with a nice sea voyage and two weeks of real hot weather; but it's good to be back home."
From Panama City, Walt Conley writes enthusiastically of his hotel, El Panama. Since writing this line I have had a telephone call from Walt. He and Ethel are home after a delightful trip. They were surprised to run into Chet Lawrence and his wife in Port-Au-Prince. You will recall that we reported in last month's MAGAZINE that the two parties were due to be in that Haitian city. Walt is busy now with his pruning shears on his attractive farm.
Changes of address: John Furfey, 67 Norwood Ave., Newton Center, Mass.; John E.Richards, Lakes Hotel, Detroit Lakes, Minn.; Harry Taplin, 2101 Glenmeyre St., Laguna Beach, Calif.
Make your plans to attend our annual interim reunion. C. C. Hills has arranged for us to be at the Hanover Inn, July 9, 10, and 11. This is an event you will not want to miss. Ask those who have attended last year or the year before.
Who's Who in '05
WALTER HUSTON LILLARD
Man of three continents and three colleges: Dartmouth, Oxford and Hobart; as well as of several skills: coach, teacher, administrator and lecturer - Walter Lillard, son of an editor, native of Paris, Ill., came from Chicago schools to enter Dartmouth. A young man of character and an all-round athlete on freshman football, baseball, captain basketball and track teams, he soon became a part of Hanover life as well as of college life. Presently he was regular end on the famous varsity football team which first gave Dartmouth distinction in major athletics. Also, he was vice president, then president, of the college YMCA. He remained in Hanover two years longer than the rest of our class, taking graduate study and serving as graduate manager of athletics and secretary of the College Club. Not the least of his accomplishments in that period was the winning of Ethel Hazen, daughter of Professor Hazen, to be his bride. This partnership, incidentally, acquired for the Lillard children a long line of Dartmouth ancestry from great, great-grandfather down.
Then came nine years at Phillips-Andover Academy, as instructor in English, football coach, and the last three years of this period as assistant to the principal. In 1909 Walter devoted a year's leave of absence to coaching football at Dartmouth for a season, then studying English drama at Oxford University in England. He won his Master's degree from Dartmouth in 1911 and spent a short time on the Mexican border as lieutenant in the 8th Mass. Infantry. Then 24 years later, in 1935, Hobart College awarded Lillard the honorary degree of Litt.D.
In his 22 years as headmaster of Tabor Academy in the harbor town of Marion, Mass., Walter Lillard trained many boys to enter Dartmouth, including sons of classmates Dr.Loder and Dr. Clough, and including also some excellent athletes and some Phi Beta Kappa scholars. A part of the school's education in discipline and travel was in the form of vacation cruises in the school's yacht to points along the eastern coast of America, to Mexico and the northern shore of South America and to Europe. All of this required a high order of administrative ability. Tabor teams in football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and rowing often distinguished themselves in games with remote schools reached by land or sea.
Mr. Lillard's tenure at Tabor was twice interrupted by world wars and was amplified by two national youth organizing activities. In World War I, he was Captain Lillard, 14th Division Personnel Adjutant. In World War 11, he was Colonel Lillard, Assistant Chief of Staff, Personnel, to the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, and Director of the School of Munitions (Hanover, Mass.). Meanwhile, his extra-curricular activity included a share in organizing the Sea Scout branch of the Boy Scouts of America, whose acting national director he was in 1921, and on whose national committee he served. And it included for a time the presidency of the Dartmouth Alumni Association of Southern Massachusetts. Also, for fourteen years until 1942, he was chairman of the International Schoolboy Fellowship which he had originated and whose aim is to develop friendly relations with schools abroad for better mutual understanding. In 1928, too, he was elected to the Headmasters' Association. In 1932 he was chairman of the Interscholastic Yacht Racing Association.
Leaving Tabor Academy in 1942 to direct the School of Munitions above referred to, until its closing, Colonel Lillard now went into government service abroad, and 1945-48 found him in Austria organizing the resettlement of refugees in the American zone. First he represented the U. S. State Department on the Intergovernment Committee for this work, then became the director of the work for United Nations (IRO).
Back in Cohasset, Mass., our '05 expert in boyology and refugees has been devoting his past four years of retirement to lecturing on his observations in Austria, and to civic activities there. He served two years as chairman of the local Red Cross Chapter, and then two years as chairman of the survey of local public schools. At present, he is serving his fourth year as Director of Civil Defense. In this his good work will not be fully recognized until Russia attacks Cohasset.
In odd moments Walter enjoys gardening, reading new books to appraise them for the local library of which he is a trustee, and watching much football via television, always with the companionship of his pipe. Cohasset does well to contain this man of three countries and three colleges.
Mr. and Mrs. Lillard will never lack for pleasant things to do, since they are grandparents of thirteen. Of their own four children, Walter Jr. '30 is an insurance man and chairman of the Sharon School Committee; Virginia is the wife of the president of the New York State Teachers College, Evan R. Collins '33; Barbara is wife of W. Langdon Powers '34, Assistant U.S. Attorney, son of Walter Powers '06, recent president of the Massachusetts Bar Association; while Jane (Barter) chose a doctor, active in research, for her partner.
Thus the Lillards have trained many boys for Dartmouth, have contributed to the finer cultures of our generation in multiple fields, and have given more than their share to the next generation.
WALTER H. LILLARD '05
Secretary, 358 North Fullerton Ave., Upper Montclair, N. J.
Class Agent, 11 Lakewood Rd„ Natick, Mass.
