1905
A winter trip to Florida means practically inevitably meeting '05 men. Fred Chase enumerates the following men, with their respective wives, whom he ran into down there: Atwood, Roger Brown, Falconer, Goodrich,Lillard, MacMillan, Tolman and Tuck. He mentions missing the Hills and Carl Preis also in that state. He with Atwood, Brown and Goodrich attended the Dartmouth dinner in St. Petersburg.
Fred expects to be present at another small reunion when your class officers are to be in Hanover for the Class Officers' meeting, May 6 and 7. We shall undoubtedly see C. C. Hills, also, who is heading up the arrangements for our approaching 50th. C.C., now back from his trip to Florida, writes that he and his wife enjoyed the cordial hospitality of the LeonSmiths in Fruitland Park.
A valuable addition has. been made to the collection of portraits of famous alumni at Dartmouth. Bill Blatner has presented the College with a portrait of Daniel Webster painted about 1840. This is being presented as a gift in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of our class. The class will be very warmly grateful to Bill for this generous gift, as will the College as well.
Some months ago - earlier mention somehow got sidetracked - there appeared in the Boston Record an interesting reminiscent account of Tom Keady. I quote one sentence: "If you are a Dartmouth man, however, you remember him as one of the Big Green's immortal athletes, and as one of her former football coaches, and as the man who wrote the words of her powerful football song, As theBacks Go Tearing By."
I have a letter from a friend of "Mary"Dillon. It was this friend who brought Mary back from Florida in 1948, after he had suffered a stroke, and placed him in the New England Sanitarium, Melrose, Mass., where he has been confined ever since. He reads voluminously such small books as he can hold in one hand and enjoys having the ALUMNI MAGAZINE read to him, especially the news of '05.
A breezy, cheerful letter from Lou Wallis from Miami states that he is engaged in shipping farm equipment and livestock to South America. He is still in active good health, can pass a football and plays tennis. He's "sold," he says, on the climate in Miami, though he would prefer to be in the Tropics.
In a letter written in February, Max Cook writes of the beauty of California at that season, when the hills are green and the dry streams come to life. He regrets that he will not be with us in June.
"Elsie" Grover and his wife were visitors in Hanover in early April.
Note change of address: Frank English, 201 High St., Wareham, Mass.
Word has come of the passing of HarryTaplin in Newport Beach, Calif. We extend our deep sympathy to his family in their loss.
While this will reach you men of '05 only shortly before our grand 50th anniversary reunion, I hope that even then if there is anyone who is still in doubt, such a one will still decide to join us in this outstanding, never-tobe-repeated event.
As a closing piece, here is one of our own gifted poet laureate's beautifully nostalgic poems.
You Will Sing Again
Sweet were the songs on Sunday afternoon When all our family in glad accord Through childhood years when every month was
June Together sang our praises to the Lord. Today, when all but two have taken wing, Our hearts are willing but our lips are dumb; Like little birds before, they learn to sing We try and try but music will not come.
"Be patient, child, we need your songs above; (The wings of angels -wafted this to me) The fireside voices of your earthly love Now make immortal music full and free; The Lord will lead you to your own, and then Together you will sing His praise again."
Who's Who in '05
ROYAL PARKINSON
Royal Parkinson's chief claim to distinction, he says, is in being one of the ten members of the Parkinson family who won degrees from Dartmouth from 1838 to 1938 starting with Rev. Royal of the.Class of 1842. At the age of one, Royal of the Class of '05 moved his parents and brother safely from his birthplace in Ottertail County, Minn., where his father was the judge, to Cape Cod, where his father became superintendent of schools. Roving through schools at Falmouth, Taunton, Amherst and Waltham, all in Massachusetts, he arrived at Hanover the hard way. With wide interests, but excelling in none, liking people (but too sensitive and too self-conscious for comfort), he concentrated on acquiring and earning an education. "With no attainments other than election to the dispensorship of caps and gowns to classmates, he entered the lower realms of the outer world.
His business career was devoted to diligent work and long hours, interspersed with numerous humorous events and incidents. The first twelve years were dedicated to the electrical and gas utility field, with.. Stone & Webster managed companies and with the Rochester (N. Y.) Gas & Electric Corp. Not being prepared for electrical work, he attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology evenings for two years in the Lowell Institute School and graduated in electrical engineering. He also took evening courses in electrical engineering at Lowell Textile School. He started as a meter tester with Stone & Webster's Lowell (Mass.) Electric Light Company, became the Whitman (Mass.) superintendent for the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Brockton, and returned to Lowell as power sales engineer. Here he gained considerable experience selling large blocks of power and in administering company relations with municipal and state governments. His final five years in the public utility field were spent in Rochester, N. Y. At first an industrial engineer, a task which brought him in contact with a wide variety of industries, he became general manager of two subsidiary suburban companies for the Rochester Company. Here, too, he encountered and solved a variety of public relations problems. As president of the Rochester Efficiency Engineering Society, emphasizing the human factor in efficiency, Parkinson became interested in the human phase of business.
The next 27 years were devoted to the personnel directorship of the American Optical Company in Southbridge, Mass., during its remarkable growth to 13,000 people in 270 stations in this country and Canada and five branch factories. While here he was recalled to Rochester temporarily to survey the State's "model employment office" for the Management Council of the Rochester Chamber of Commerce.
Ten years ago, after an illness, he undertook a consulting business of his own in Boston which, although unique in advising about fifty companies on organizational, plant-site and personnel problems, has proved successful. At his office in the Statler Building or at plant sites east of the Missouri and from Puerto Rico to. the North Pole, he can be found most hours of the day, six days a week. A sense of doing useful work is recreation with him. According to the income tax mortality table, he will retire 12.6 years' from now!
During his tenure with the Optical Company he was active extensively in committee work for the Massachusetts . Personnel Association, the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, the American Management Association, the National Association of Manufacturers, and, for nine years, was a member of the Management Advisory Council of the National Industrial Conference Board.
He served five years as president of the Southbridge Manufacturers' & Merchants Association and various terms as vice president of the local YMCA, vice president of the local hospital, manager of the local Hoover-for-President campaign, was president of the Lowell Institute School Alumni Association and once the school's graduation speaker. He attended Princeton's Industrial Relations Seminar for nine years and there observed the New Deal's Washington officials develop their program. When social security legislation was in its formative stages, Parkinson was called upon for counsel, by various ,national and state committees of employers, and appeared before the Massachusetts Legislature's committee and Congressional committees handling this subject. Governor Saltonstall appointed him an employer member of the Advisory Council of the State unemployment insurance system. He has since contributed toward keeping these needed social insurance programs directed to the service of employees rather than only to the interests of voteseekers.
He served a five-year term (1920-1925) as '05 class agent for the then Tucker Fund, and recently a year as secretary pro tem for the Class. With several others of '04, '05, '06 and '07, he has been encouraging emphasis in education at Dartmouth upon the moral and spiritual values (the really permanent values of life) as the guide needed in the anxious confusion of these times. This year he is one of a small team of men . for the Boston area seeking to raise a large sum for the William Jewett Tucker Foundation, by which President Dickey and the trustees have made this emphasis on moral and spiritual values really important at Dartmouth, in fact, of equal importance to intellectual development. They have set up the program on a permanent basis, independent of changing administrative personnel. This emphasis will apply to all faiths. Substantial cash gifts, annual gifts, and/or residuary gifts are being sought from those who have faith in the idea. This is surely a commanding cause for Dartmouth men. Parkinson's present activity with the Tucker Foundation does not compete with Fletcher Hatch's Alumni Fund.
With his wide interests, Royal plays a modest part in civic affairs, church, education, social insurance, government, international relations and baseball. He is a chapter Mason.
A perfectionist by nature, driven by an impatience to accomplish self-assigned tasks, with a surplus of unused courage, unruffled by tempests, considerate of others whatever their station in life, he is an active promoter of fairness in any situa-Parkinson
married Loretta C. Munroe, a Berkeley (Calif.) schoolteacher, while in Rochester, after ten years out of college. Their daughter Dorothy is in business in Boston. A year after her mother's death in 1926, he married another teacher, Mrs. Ida Still of Walla Walla, Wash., then Dean of Women at Fitchburg Teachers College, thus continuing his propensity for depriving education of expert educators. The Parkinsons live a quiet life in their little Newtonville home, with some local interests.
ROYAL PARKINSON '05
Secretary, 358 North Fullerton Ave., Upper Montclair, N. J.
Class Agent, 11 Lakewood Rd., Natick, Mass.
