Letters

Praise for Injunaires

To THE EDITOR:

Last week, I, and about a dozen other alumni, had a good close look at a sample of today's Dartmouth undergraduates and we were impressed - and very proud!

The occasion was the appearance of the "Injunaires" on the Dartmouth night program we ran as part of a continuing series of after-rehearsal shows for the University Glee Club of New York.

Through the efforts of Alan Welty '27, one of our Dartmouth members, and his son, Alan Jr. '56, a member of the "Injunaires," this group of ten Dartmouth Glee Club men drove down from Hanover to sing for us.

Well, sir, during the past two years that I have helped arrange these after-rehearsal shows we have listened to many good undergraduate singing groups - The Yale Whiffenpoofs, Augmented Seven and Orpheus and Bacchus groups, the Nassoons and Tiger Tones from Princeton, and other outfits from Brown, Amherst, Columbia, Penn and Trinity. But, with all due respect for these lads, and without recourse to our green-tinted spectacles (which are handy for Dartmouth-Army football games) the consensus was that the Dartmouth Injunaires were as good, if not better than, any group we have ever heard perform!

These Injunaires sang with a poise and discipline that was mature and professional and yet there was in their performance a variety, an enthusiasm and a sure sense of humor that saved it from being too perfect. Besides singing well, they looked and acted like gentlemen. Not "off on a spree" gentlemen either.

The College, the Glee Club and its director, Paul Zeller, the parents of these talented Dartmouth singers - all should be extremely proud of the Injunaires.

P.S. The names of the Dartmouth grads in the University Glee Club for whom I have been spokesman are as follows:

Ken Quencer '23 Woody Gauss '23 Tom Gillespie '27 Ted Girault'27 Dr. Jack Greener '27 Alan Welty '27 Frank Williams '29 George Werrenrath '33 Bill Fitzhugh '35 Fred Warne '36 Jack Wiesman'36 Dick Cutler '53 Roger Attwood '54

EDITOR'S NOTE: For the Dartmouth Glee Club in general the following praise was sent to President Dickey by a non-Dartmouth man after the Club's appearance on Ed Sullivan's TV show in March:

"I am writing to commend summa cumlaude the young men who sang so enthusiastically and professionally. It was my privilege and honor to be their guest on Sunday evening at an after-theatre party - more of a real college smoker. The impression they made will be the subject of conversation for quite some time. Their virile and buoyant youthfulness was most evident but at all times it was tempered by their outstanding manners, a true sense of propriety, fine ethics and, we might describe it as the French so aptly do, gentilhomme. Their scholarship shone and their conviviality delighted all. Proud of their college, anxious to reveal their fine musical training, they sang numerous songs to the delight and satisfaction of everyone present. . . . Too often we are eager to enumerate errors or faults. In this case, we should adequately praise and commend without reservation."