Letters
"A Sad Thing"
To THE EDITOR:
It was a very sad thing to read about the retirement of the football coach and I believe there are a great many alumni, like myself, who feel as I do, that this retirement is a loss to the College.
There is a suspicion in the minds of many that "the hucksters" who are always demanding winning teams should not be allowed to sell this idea to Dartmouth College. The main curse of the last few years has been the impossible football schedule with "professional opponents" and, to many, it was a tragedy that the Dartmouth undergraduate with certain restrictions including his matriculation, which called for young men of high scholastic standing, should be subject to these contests which were not only too much physically but placed the College on the same footing as the subsidizing universities around the country, excluding the Ivy League.
It is my firm conviction that Dartmouth should play its sports entirely within its own group and that athletics should be maintained but should not be accentuated. If box office is all-imperative, which means too often the physical sacrificing of all undergraduate athletes, then we had better give these sports up. Other colleges and universities have found it necessary and I think it would be far better to use the funds that are earmarked for athletics for a department of religion or for professors who will teach better Americanism.
Sarasota, Fla.
A Violent Objection
To THE EDITOR:
I am one of the many who object violently to the firing of Tuss McLaughry, and I have read Cliff Jordan's McLaughry story in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE.
Mr. Jordan has turned out an expert piece of writing but it seems to me that the restrictions put upon what he could say make the story, in effect, a whitewash.
Why must we have rumors as to the motives of the Athletic Council in firing Mr. McLaughry? It seems to me that information from the horse's mouth ought to be real, or at least that the alumni, in an official College publication, are entitled to direct quotes from the Council explaining why it did this thing.
Or aren't we?
So far, this has been an eye-opening business which has damaged the College not only from the public's point of view but from within its own family as well.
Personalities aside, the question that Dartmouth now has to settle is this: Do we tell the alumni the truth about an action in Hanover that is important and controversial, or do we regard them as suckers, neither important enough nor intelligent enough to be entitled to the facts in the case?
Aver ill Park, N. Y.
Strictly Secondary
To THE EDITOR:
The untimely and unfortunate departure of Tuss McLaughry from the coaching scene at Hanover is nothing to rejoice about. Still less pleasant is the tone of an article on the current Dartmouth athletic situation by Al Laney in the January 19 New York Herald Tribune.
Sent to dig up a story on the current shillyshallying in Hanover, he unearthed a beauty. And I hope he's wrong.
To quote him, "The word 'recruiting' has been a nasty word at Dartmouth for a lone; time but it seems to come naturally to the lips of Dartmouth men now. You hear it on all sides."
Recruiting is still a nasty word. And hearing it on all sides doesn't make it sound any nicer
The article implies that certain segments of the alumni were dissatisfied with the McLaughry won-lost record, got him fired and now are going all out to finance and proselyte an all-conquering team.
For my money, alumni who want to watcj a traveling sideshow whomp the ears off another traveling sideshow can adopt Notre Dame or Massilon High School. Cheering a winner is a fine way to jazz up a battered ego. Especially an almost-always winner.
But boosting battered alumni egos shouldn't be a primary, secondary or tertiary concern at Hanover.
Dartmouth's purpose is education. Athletics are strictly secondary. It's just as simple as that. Let's keep it that way.
Hyannis, Mass.
A Teacher Remembered
To THE EDITOR:
May I be permitted to pay tribute through your columns to a man whose teachings and unique personality were an inspiring influence upon myself and others during my medical course at Dartmouth?
This character who did so much to shape the lives of his students was Gilman D. Frost, M.D., familiarly known as "Gil."
Gil's boys, as his students were called, never will forget the gruelling hours in his anatomy class. He was a tall, gaunt looking figure, slightly bent, with sharply chiseled features, light brown hair, and searching, blue-gray eyes. He would slowly and silently walk into the old medical amphitheater - often times late for lectures - then without ceremony or pre-arranged system of quizzing, he would pick up a bone, and as his eyes wandered over the class, single out a victim and "throw in the gaff."
Gil was no Beau Brummel for dress. His coat sleeves and trousers were always too short, and his tie usually askew, but we all knew that this unusual looking man was an overworked medical practitioner, besides being a keen professor of anatomy and obstetrics. We knew that he was a great teacher, and he imparted his knowledge in a manner which few professors have today.
Dr. Frost always seemed tired, and his faraway gaze out of the classroom window while patiently waiting for an answer in quizzes often suggested that he had lost sleep. Gil was not an old man, and I have always believed that his thin, loose jointed figure was partly due to long hours of riding over the hills of Grafton County to minister to the sick at all hours when he was not in the classroom.
He invariably wore his stethoscope hooked in one armhole of his vest, and he was a character study as he stood before his class, for he never sat down to lecture.
He never told stories in class, but he would occasionally tell us of some interesting case he had seen. He had a latent sense of humor', but he almost never laughed. A lecture or quiz was all business with him, but his smile was as impressive as his curt "No" to a wrong answer.
Gil's life lingers in my memory as an ideal, and is still an influence in my professional career.
El Paso, Texas
