Alumni Council Grants Awards To Three Dartmouth Graduates

ALUMNI Awards for Outstanding Service to Dartmouth College were presented to three well-known graduates of the College at the General Alumni Association meeting in Hanover on June 18. Honored by the Dartmouth Alumni Council were Philip Sanford Marden '94, Clarence God-frey McDavitt 'OO and Edward Sanborn French '06.

In making the awards, Robert S. Oelman '31, Council president, read citations and presented small replicas of the silver bowl Governor Wentworth brought to Eleazar Wheelock on the occasion of the College's first Commencement. Mr. McDavitt's award was made in absentia and was received for him by his classmate and close friend, Prof. Charles A. Proctor 'OO.

The Alumni Awards were established by the Alumni Council last year, and the first one was presented to President Emeritus Hopkins at the 100th annual meeting of the General Alumni Association. They are given annually by the Council to one or more alumni whose outstanding service to the College is an inspiration to all other Dartmouth men.

The citations for the 1955 awards follow:

PHILIP SANFORD MARDEN

Long-time editor-in-chief of the Lowell, Massachusetts, Courier-Citizen, you have exerted a fine and unmeasurable influence on all who have read your words. For years you surrounded yourself with the rich, blue smoke of Italian stogies - but your head has not been in the clouds. Much of your writing you labeled whimsey; reading it over now with the perspective of years, we with certainty call it wisdom. Any attempt to set wit, wisdom and philosophy onto paper leaves few with success as their achievement. You, Philip Marden, member of the Dartmouth Class of 1894, are one of the few.

The son of George A. Marden, Class of 1861, your devotion and effective service to Dartmouth College has known no limits. First you were an outstanding undergraduate and earned the distinction of membership in Phi Beta Kappa. You then started on an impressive 60 years as an alumnus in which you served for nine years on the Alumni Council and for 10 as a Trustee of the College. For 16 years your outstanding contributions as Associate Editor of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE were enjoyed by an ever-widening circle of readers. Always a leader in your class, you now serve it and the College as Bequest Chairman and an elder statesman in the ranks of devoted alumni.

You received a Bachelor's Degree from Dartmouth in '94, a Doctor's Degree from Harvard in '98, an Honorary Degree from Dartmouth in 1914, and today, on behalf of Dartmouth men everywhere, I am happy to present this Alumni Award for Outstanding Service to Dartmouth College.

CLARENCE GODFREY McDAVITT

of the Class of 1900, your career has been full and distinguished. Since the day in 1899 when you set Dartmouth's first record in the 100-yard dash (ten seconds flat), you have established goals for other men. As a top executive in the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, your understanding and insight in personnel and labor relations led the way for business organizations everywhere. Your work with the International Labor Organization, which kept you on the run throughout the world, brought special distinction to you, your College and your country.

At home in Newton you have been a leader. You have served many community projects in Massachusetts. In World War I you performed vital service with the Red Cross, and from 1940 to 1945 you served on the War Production Board and the War Labor Board.

And, somehow, in a way understood by all Dartmouth men, no matter what activity demanded your time, Dartmouth always seemed to come first. You have served as president of the Dartmouth Athletic Council, the Dartmouth Alumni Association of Boston, the Dartmouth Alumni Council and the General Association of Alumni of the College. In class activity you have been an outstanding Class Agent since 1915, and last year you were chosen as the Class Treasurer of the Year. You were a pioneer-leader in Dartmouth's famed Alumni Fund, serving as chairman of the 1923 and 1924 campaigns. The Dartmouth Outing Club House stands as a tribute to your leadership in directing the effort that provided this splendid gift to the College by your beloved Class of 1900.

At Dartmouth you set a fast pace and have never let up in her service, and now, on behalf of the Dartmouth Alumni Council and all Dartmouth men everywhere, this Alumni Award is bestowed upon you for outstanding service to the College.

EDWARD SANBORN FRENCH

Your grandfather was a railroad superintendent and your father a ticket agent. You grew up in the railroad business and later you helped it to grow.

Born in Maine, a resident of Vermont and long-time worker in Massachusetts, New England has been your yard. At 13, you lurched through B. and M. coaches with a red water bucket to slake thirst and wash down the cinders. Your career as a waterboy was interrupted by four years at Dartmouth in the Class of 1906, but you never forgot the road. Every engineer and switchman along the line knew you as "Eddie," and you learned to swing onto the engines and were accepted around the hot stove as the crew waited for the Peanut to get in. During summer vacations, you were on the rails as a brakeman and baggageman.

After college, you started again with the railroad and rose rapidly to positions of responsibility and, ultimately, to the highest offices of both the Boston and Maine and the Maine Central Railroads.

You have always given wholeheartedly of yourself to Dartmouth and you are now one of her most respected sons. For 20 years you were a Trustee of the College. You have been an intimate friend and confidential adviser to President-Emeritus Hopkins for 30 years, and an indispensable veteran counsellor to President Dickey for his first decade in the Wheelock Succession. You have been one of those behind the scenes who made the show go on. But now we ask you to step from the wings and receive the wholehearted applause you so richly deserve and this Alumni Award for Outstanding Service to Dartmouth.

PRESIDENT EMERITUS HOPKINS, who could not be present last year to receive the first Dartmouth Alumni Award, gets a standing ovation at the General Alumni Association meeting, June 18. Behind him are Charles E. Griffith '15, who gave the Alumni Address at the meeting, President Dickey, and (behind the mike) Robert S. Oelman '31, Alumni Council president this past year.