1905
On December 10, a crisp clear evening which made the Walk to the Dartmouth Club from the Port Authority Bus Terminal something of a pleasure, your scribe foregathered with a sprightly group at the annual '05-'06 dinner. Ned Redman's ('06) dinner was quite up to the high standard he always attains, while Tub Besse was his ever-gracious and witty self. Our numbers were small - Conley,Emery, Graves, Fall, Goodrich and Graves for '05, and Lonny Russell '06, besides Ned and Tub. We missed Ed Gilbert, a regular attendant at these feasts. Our sympathy went to him in the shock of his recent bereavement.
The high-light of the after-dinner small talk, - we have no formal speech making! was an appreciation of the movement looking toward the "working of the religious element" at Dartmouth under the Tucker Foundation, referred to in this column last month. This movement got its initial start, we are proud to believe, at one of these New York dinners some years ago. At that time Rufus Day spoke very earnestly on the need at Dartmouth for a renewed emphasis on moral values. Ed Gilbert passed the word along to Royal Parkinson, who took the matter up with President Dickey.
Among those who are taking advantage of the more leisurely days of retirement to do some extensive traveling is Verney Russell. Starting from Washington State with his wife in mid-fall, he journeyed by train along the northern border of our good old U.S.A. to Springfield, Mass., then down through New York and the East Coast states to Florida, which he toured by bus as far as Key West. Back home he went, via Biloxi, New Orleans, Chicago and on by the Empire Builder of the Great Northern R.R. In passing through the newly irrigated lands of the Columbia Basin, Verney felt a justifiable glow of satisfaction in that he had had an important part in the building of that irrigation system.
From the land of warm sunshine, New Mexico Shirley Cunningham writes that he and his wife have five grandchildren, with another expected. We hope that the sixth has arrived safely. Shirley says he would like very much to attend our 50th, though it is a little early to decide surely. We hope you'll make it, Shirley. And you also, Verney.
Fred Chase had all his children with their spouses and four grandchildren with him for Thanksgiving. At last account Fred was about to take off for his winter sojourn in Florida.
Not sufficiently preoccupied with his railroading here in the East and the problems of the New York Transit Authority, Henry Norton has been putting his mind on the commuters' difficulties in San Francisco. According to the News of that city, Henry has devised a plan which he has put before Mayor Robinson, an Aerial Transit System. This sounds exciting, not to say revolutionary!
Congratulations to Walter May. He was one of 31 educators honored for outstanding service to education and for contributing to "the educational advancement of New Hampshire youth" at the centennial of the New Hampshire Education Association held in Manchester, N. H., on October 14-15.
Because of a severe automobile accident suffered some time ago, Fred Call has been unable to work. He continues to live in Clinton, Mass., whence he originally came to Dartmouth.
Among those who suffered severe damage from the late, unlamented hurricanes was Frank McCabe. Three times has he been visited, with heavy loss!
Herford Elliott was another to suffer severely. Besides his own efforts he had to employ several men to clear the wreckage and plant replacement trees. Though retired, he keens as busy as ever.
Likewise Lyon Weyburn lost about 100 trees, many of them old mighty specimens, on his estate on Cape Ann. Lyon's address is now 1100 Pemberton Building, Pemberton Sq., Boston 8, Mass.
At his home in Greensboro, N. C., WinfieldBarney is finding relaxation and happiness in such efforts in the way of manual labor as building terraces and an outdoor oven. He was considering spending a part of the winter in Florida.
Note change of address: Carl Preis, after having resigned from Eversharp, is now getting established in Florida, Jacarlene Farms, P.O. Box 36, Seffner.
California also draws a fair share of our men. Henry Thrall expects to stay at the Lafolla Beach Club at least until February 20. He has every expectation of being with us next June in Hanover.
ANNUAL BOSTON ALUMNI DINNERHotel Statler, Feb. 16, 1955
Ike Maynard has taken a six weeks' trip through Spain and Portugal with his wife and two other couples. As a sequel to a note about Cy White last month, it is only fair to .say that he bagged, not a doe, but a buck!
"Who's Who In '05" EDWARD PERCY NOEL
From Who's Who in America to "Who's "Who in '05" is by no means a descent. Percy Noel, world-journalist and lecturer, is hereby enrolled in both. Emerging from St. Louis, he reached Dartmouth via the King School of Stamford, Conn. Tall, rangy, dark and kindly, and with a taste for light opera, his interests were of an adventurous nature, it took only a year of Dartmouth to prepare him for a life of restless motion —in the theatre, with the auto industry, with the aviation industry, as correspondent or editor with some fourteen newspapers - and in a dozen countries of Europe and Asia. His constant mobility has kept him at the forefront of numerous historic events. He scored such world news beats as the air bombardment of Venice in 1915, the first Zeppelin bombardment of London, the break through the Wotan section of the Hindenburg line by the British army, the passage of the German peace envoys through the French lines at "Cease Fire," an interview with the reportedly dead Sun Yat Sen, an expose from Shanghai in 1925 of Moscow's plans in China. Percy made the first photographs from an airplane in America in 1910.
Percy's early adventures were in the theatre, and these he loved; but more of this hereinafter. His first recorded journalistic task was in 1904, as reporter with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a year. Then, short terms with the Chicago MotorWay as its New York editor, with the New YorkCommercial, and the New York Evening Post. Thereafter, he spent four years with the St. LouisGlobe Democrat. Then, leaving surface travel to its own devices, he spent four years as editor of two Aero weeklies: the Aero of his native city, followed by the Aero-Hydro of Chicago. In fact,' he was an authority on early aviation.
In the war years, 1914-19, his persistent pioneering took him to Europe, including London, Paris, Italy, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, and Belgium. During all of this period, he was correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, and for the last two years of it he was also attached as correspondent to the British General Headquarters Staff in France and Germany. In Italy he was arrested, manacled and paraded to mobs as a spy. He was accredited to the League of Nations after the war.
After spending a year in Russia and the Baltic states for the Associated Newspapers, he traveled six more years in Europe and Asia, with headquarters in Tokyo, for the Philadelphia PublicLedger and the New York Evening Post, and in 1927 for a year with the Philadelphia Record in Paris.
Then followed sixteen years of brief missions of a journalistic nature, in Japan and France for the N.E.A. Service, the Associated Press, the Columbia Broadcasting Company, the Intransigeant, the International News Service, the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service, and the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D. C. - back in America.
Finally, until his retirement in 1948, forced because of age, Percy spent five years with the Washington Bureau of the United Press. For newspaper columns he still writes with righteous indignation over some of our Government's notorious activities. He has written much for newspapers and magazines, chiefly for the Information Service of the U.S.A. and the Citizen's Committee of the United Nations. Until he was dropped because of the policy of economy on the part of the Government, he was Far East commentator for the Voice of America. In the musical field Mr. Noel has been working on an English version of the French opèra-comique Marouf and revising his own Blackships libretto. The latter was revived for five performances at Hibiya, Tokyo, in May 1954. At the present writing he is working on an original play with a few songs. Meanwhile, with his son Henry, he sings in the famous choir of the Church of the Epiphany, in Washington. Just to round out his career, he has been selling Ford cars.
Mr. Noel appears to have now become stationery at the Noel Place in Nokesville, Va., but nothing is guaranteed.
In 1907, Mr. Noel married Zana Shaw of Rochester, N. Y. Their two children are Henry M. and Helen V. (Mrs. Homer) Gayner. In the 19305, he married Suzon Rinjonneau. Their son is Yves Jeffery Percy Noel.
There is much color in Percy Noel's nomadic career, which it is difficult to condense into printall a product of his restless, imaginative energy. His experience with the British Medical Corps and then Red Cross for the French Army in 1914, as assistant chief transport officer, when he found the door to reporting closed by the armies, made him a participant in the evacuation of 60,000 wounded from the first battle of Ypres, and led to his own hospitalization. Also, he was with the British Expeditionary Force from which he was invalided out, only to return to eye-witness reporting, resulting in the award of the Mons Star and the British service medals. Finding France short of aviators, he helped Norman Prince organize the Lafayette Escadrille. His watchful eye on the Zeppelin factory led to his arrest in Switzerland as a spy.
Similarly, his pre-journalism led to three years of activity in the theatre with the Murray Hill (Stock) Theatre, with famous actors and actresses, understudying Charles Surface; "excommunicating" Sir Henry Irving in Dante in musical comedy, in 10c and 20c repertory; in three plays with Amelia Bingham, finally as manager of one of them; first director of the Little Theatre of St. Louis, director and organizer of the Lakeview players of Chicago; author, also, of several opera libretti in English verse, including that for Japanese composer Yamada; himself a playwright and producer and thereby a member of the Sociètè des Auteurs et Compositeurs.
By contagion, Mr. Noel is a connoisseur of wines, and author of numerous essays about their varieties and virtues as contrasted with milk. This accounts for his Chevaliership in the Ancient Order of Tastevin, in which he preceded American Ambassadors. It also accounts for his election in New York to the Acadèmie de Vin de Bordeaux!
Percy's joining is somewhat limited. He belongs only to the White House Correspondents Association, the Department of State Correspondents, the Overseas Writers, the Overseas Press Club, the American Legion and the Dartmouth Alumni Association, the Cercle Interallie, the Cercle Artistique et Litteraire, the Club International of Geneva, the Sons of the American Revolution, and the American Volunteers with French Army. If the reader is a member of any of these, Percy is his brother, and could be several brothers at once.
This account shows what a year at Dartmouth can do for international cooperation whenever she has a Percy Noel for a medium. Percy Noel is one of '05's nine-man delegation in both Who's Who in America and "Who's Who in '05."
PERCY NOEL '05
Secretary, 358 North Fullerton Ave., Upper Montclair, N. J.
Treasurer, 8027 Seminole Ave., Philadelphia 18, Pa.
Bequest Chairman,
