The Fifty-Year Address

PRESIDENT Dickey, Honored Guests and Members of the Dartmouth Family:

President Dickey has been kind enough to mention that I was the valedictorian of the Class of 1906. I had the last word for the Class before we went out into the world at our commencement. And so perhaps it is appropriate that I should speak for them here again, fifty years after.

But I assure you that this is not the last word for the Class of 1906.

This is not Hail and Farewell — Aveatque Vale — as we used to say in those bad old days when everybody had to study Latin.

The memory of those days almost makes me believe that Mr. Dooley was right when he said, it doesn't make any difference what you study, as long as you don't like it.

Farewell is not the right word for a 50-year speaker today. Thanks to the miracles of modern science, we of the 50-Year Class still have a long and happy Indian summer stretching out before us.

Today the older alumni are holding not only a 50th reunion, but a 55th reunion, and a 60th reunion, and as Sid Hayward has said, still older classes, even up to the 70th reunion class, are also represented here at this Commencment.

More than half of the 50-Year Class are still alive and morethan half of its living graduates are present in this room.

We are happy to pick up again the threads of friendship which have never been broken but only laid aside for a while. And we are particularly happy to have this opportunity to express our loyalty and devotion to the College.

Dartmouth is not a college - Dartmouth is a religion.

The fact that we are here is more eloquent than anything we can say here.

THE GREATNESS OF OUR TIME

A 50-year speech today should not be tinged with the sadness of old men - walking backward into the future. It should ring with a sense of triumph.

The fifty years since we graduated have been the greatest fifty years of progress in the whole history of mankind. There has never been anything like it - not even during the great days of Pericles or in the lifetime of Leonardo.

We have seen a general diffusion of wellbeing which has made this country the envy and the wonder of the world.

We have seen the coming of the mechanical slaves that have lifted from human backs the burdens of oppressive labor.

We have seen the automobile - the airplane the miracle of nationwide and worldwide radio and television - the tapping of the limitless sources of atomic energy - the magic bullets that have destroyed diseases and have almost abolished pain.

I do not mean that the Class of 1906 has done all these things personally and single-handed but in our little way we have done our part. We were in the procession. We have shared in the excitement and the glory.

And you of the class that is graduating here today will share, in your next fifty years, in an accelerating progress yet to come.

THE GREATNESS OF THE COLLEGE

We feel a sense of triumph also in the greatness that is Dartmouth.

Every institution takes its character from its leaders. Great leadership is contagious. We have had great leaders and in our minds President Tucker, President Hopkins, and now President Dickey stand out above the rest.

These three men have rebuilt the College — with a new magnificence of scale — with spaciousness and dignity and beauty.

These three men by the sheer force of their own character have lifted the whole life of the College to a far higher level of moral and intellectual discipline, and warmed it by their human kindness. They could do this because in their own persons they embodied the things that any young man — anywhere, at any time - would long to be.

They have made the name of Dartmouth a source of confidence and pride to everyone who ever went there.

Not they alone. We remember also with affection and with appreciation the other members of the faculty who, in our time and since, have served the College with such distinction and with: such complete devotion.

We are grateful to them for the doors they opened and the tools they put in our hands.

We say of them — as Pericles said of those who died for Athens - their story is not merely graven upon stone; it lives on, here and far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives.

MEMBERS OF THE CLASS OF 1906

It is customary in a 50-year speech to mention some of the members of the Class itself. This is not mere pride or vanity. It is fitting that we should give to the College some little report to indicate that we have not been entirely unworthy of our opportunities.

I shall speak first of WALTER POWERS, the President of the Class, President of the Boston Bar Association, a great lawyer, a great scholar, a great wit, a man of infinite personal charm, a man who is not only witty himself, but who has the gift of inspiring wit and good companionship in others.

NED FRENCH, a Life Trustee of Dartmouth, whose strength and wisdom have contributed in no small degree to the success of the administrations of President Hopkins and President Dickey; a ma'"., as you will see, of versatility - President of the Boston and Maine Railroad and of the Maine Central; President of the Jones and Lamson Machine Company; Director of the First National Bank of Boston, of the National Life Insurance Company, the Oxford Paper Company, the Rock of Ages Corporation, and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. A typical Dartmouth man!

NAT LEVERONE, a man with a profile directly out of Raphael. A man who has had the habit of success; Phi Beta Kappa in college; outstandingly successful in many fields of business; perhaps the finest public speaker that I have ever heard; who in recent years has given himself with the most complete devotion to innumerable good causes - and who has been honored as few men ever have been honored for his public services.

HOWARD DAVIS, the greatest benefactor of the College among our classmates. To him the College owes the Davis Field House, the Davis Hockey Rink, and to a very large extent this great gymnasium. He made a very large — indeed the largest individual contribution.

Gus AYRES, the chief engineer for the six construction companies who joined to build the Hoover Dam - one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest dam in all the world.

HALSEY EDGERTON, who as Treasurer of the College not only protected but increased its endowment during the black days of the depression.

The Class of 1906 has had nine good men upon the faculty of Dartmouth - including FRANCIS CHILDS who, if I may use a literary allusion he would understand, bears all that weight of learning lightly like as a flower.

NED REDMAN and ART CHAPIN - for years these two men have kept up a continuous stream of communications to the Class that have charmed, amused, delighted and united all its members.

As a result, this is by far the largest 50th reunion in the history of the College, except one. President Hopkins' Class of 1901 nosed us out by a small margin - but we count that as a well-deserved personal tribute to him. Last year every living graduate in the United States contributed to the Alumni Fund. We have always more than met our quota. Over the years the total contributions of the Class to the College have exceeded 1665,000.

It is impossible to go down the whole long list of members - teachers, ministers, doctors, judges, lawyers, authors, men successful in business, in wars and in public affairs.

But I assure you that the Class of 1906 believes that its members have made real and vital contributions to the communities in which they live. If there is anything in the law of averages, we shall wake up some day on the Dartmouth side of Heaven and in the cheering section too!

We really did learn things here. We had never even heard of that ridiculous saying of old Moliere - that "A gentleman knows everything without ever having to learn anything."

If we had heard it - we would have had too much sense to believe it. We knew what we were here for. We knew very well there were many things we had to learn. We worked and we were not ashamed of it.

Confidentially, in those days, when you once got to Hanover, you were here for the duration. There was very little else to do. We did not have to resist the present diversionary temptations - which you of the Class of 1956 have so successfully resisted. And if because of some personal idiosyncrasy some of us were allergic to this and that, nevertheless I assure you that unconsciously or even against their will they had planted in them seeds which over these fifty years have flowered beyond all expectations.

To THE GRADUATING CLASS

Finally, you of the class that is graduating here today, you may be thinking What have you old men, out there on the edge of life, to say to us about the things that really signify?

Even in this rapidly evolving world there are things that still are changeless. You will discover them yourselves.

The message from my class to yours is only a message of faith and confidence.

You are the product of a selective process which has brought to the College an extraordinarily high standard of student membership. You are better educated, better disciplined, better prepared for life than we were.

You are the heirs of a great tradition and we believe you will be worthy of it.

You are its immortality. It will live on in you.

You are entering life at one of the great turning points of history.

In the communities in which you live, you will in some degree be leaders. The first duty of a leader is the duty of courage. A captain must not be afraid — or if he .is afraid he must not show he is afraid.

Do not listen to the faint-hearted. This is a good world - a brave world. Go out to meet it - gladly, confidently, and with willing tension.

You will find that there are tilings that are unattainable - things you cannot change. Do.not feel bitterness or frustration on that account. Have reasonably realizable ideals.

You will find there are things that you can never understand.

But in the end — as you grow older you will achieve a quiet confidence that is deeper than all thought.

We of the 50-Year Class give you to remember these confident words of Gilbert Chesterton — The pale leaf falls in pallor But the green leaf turns to gold, And we who have found it good to be young, Shall find it good to be old.

Thurlow M. Gordon '06, New York attorney,who gave the 50-Year Address for his class.

Chester A. Zinn Jr. '56, class chairman and speaker for the seniors at the Commencement Luncheon, photographed with President Dickey before the start of the program.