Acting Prexy

During the absence of President Dickey in Europe until late May, John R. McLane '07, senior member of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees, is serving as Acting President of the College. In this capacity Mr. McLane will preside at the spring meeting of the Board on April 27-28. Since early February he has been making periodic trips to Hanover to meet with administrative officers and has had responsibility for legal action required of the President.

Elected to Dartmouth's Board of Trustees in 1926, Mr. McLane since 1931 has been one of the College's five Life Trustees. Except for six months, he has acted as Clerk of the Board during his thirty years' tenure as a Trustee, and in addition now holds the important post of chairman of the executive committee. Much of the continuity of personality and purpose in the growth of the College may be seen in "Judge" McLane's love of the North Country out-of-doors and his long and steady devotion to Dartmouth affairs, not only as a Trustee but as a participant in alumni activities.

The senior partner in the Manchester law firm of McLane, Davis, Carleton and Graf, Mr. McLane has long been an outstanding leader in the New Hampshire legal profession. He was elected President of the New Hampshire Bar Association in 1953. He is president of the Manchester Savings Bank, and also a Trustee of St. Paul's School in Concord, N. H., which he attended before entering Dartmouth.

Following graduation from college, and before embarking upon his law studies at Harvard, John McLane went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, receiving the B.A. degree in 1909. He obtained the LL.B. degree cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1912. After his election as Trustee, Dartmouth awarded him the honorary M.A. degree in 1927.

From the time he began the practice of law in Manchester, Mr. McLane has been active in Dartmouth affairs. For 33 years, from 1915 until 1948, he served as 1907's Class Agent. From 1913 to 1918 he was a member of the Dartmouth Alumni Council, and for eight years he was secretary of the Manchester Alumni Association. In addition, Mr. McLane has found time to help the DOC, as a trustee, for many years. An ardent ski enthusiast, he has spent many winter weekends with members of his skiing family at Moosilauke or other favorite ski slopes, and has done much to forward Dartmouth's winter sports program. All three of the McLane sons - John '38, Charles '41 and Malcolm '46 - were Dartmouth varsity skiers, and the youngest two were ski team captains.

Mr. McLane's father, a native of Scotland, was Governor of New Hampshire from 1905 until 1907 and was therefore an ex officio Dartmouth Trustee. The present John McLane has, like his father, been prominent in New Hampshire Republican affairs. He was chairman of the New Hampshire delegation to the Republican National Convention in 1932 and from 1925 until 1940 was chairman of the New Hampshire State Board of Arbitration.

John R. McLane '07