1921
Get out your date books, all you '21-ers, and mark down October 11-13, next fall that is. This is important all you guys and gals! That's the weekend (of the Brown game) that we'll be taking over the Norwich Inn (AND HOW!) and having our 1957 Fall Class gathering. This is repetition, and you'll be hearing lots more about it. Hurry, hurry, hurry, and write to Borden Avery, ownermanager of the Norwich Inn and make, or get the straight dope on, room reservations. We're (Reg Miner is the spark plug) starting early on the build-up because October 11-13, 1957 will go down in history as the greatest of all.
How about people like Bill and EdithPerry taking off on December 11 for Los Angeles for a get-together with Furb Haight, then flying on to Honolulu to visit son Hart-well, who is stationed there with the Coast Guard. Wow! what a wing-ding they'll have in Hawaii (have had, by the time you read this) with men of Dartmouth corralled from all over the islands by Pud Walker and TedMerriam. And that isn't all. Then back to San Francisco to sight-see and "do" the Monterey Bay and peninsula, dropping in on Guy Wallick, Red Kerlin, Jim Wicker, Connie Keyes,Jack Garfein, and all the other brethren in that area, and finally dropping in on Boband Helen Mac Donald in Evanston. We repeat - Wow!
Next month we hope to have some advance dope - hot off the stove - about the coming Alumni Fund. That reminds us of memorial funds, and memorial funds reminds us that more than 30 leading industrial and commercial concerns now have Matching Gift programs whereby the company will match gifts by its employees to colleges. What an opportunity for you '21ers who are with the Bank of New York, Bonwit Teller, Campbell Soup, General Electric, B. F. Goodrich, Jones and Laughlin, National Distillers, Scott Paper, Warner Brothers, and a host of others. Then, First National City Bank of New York just announced that anyone who has been employed with them five years or more is eligible to arrange for a grant to be made to his college - they figure on giving $150,000 under this plan in 1957.
Had a nice letter from our Ambassador to Brazil, Ellis Briggs, the other day. He says:
We are going through the inevitable period of adjustment to life at a new post, and struggling with Portuguese which is no easy chore on a foundation of Spanish. The country is enormous — as large as the United States with an extra Texas - and it takes considerable travelling to acquire even rudimentary knowledge of how it ticks. We have just returned from ten days in Northeast Brazil, Recife, Natal and Fortaleza-and after the holidays head for some Amazonian exposure that I hope and expect will include some bird shooting. By way of progeny note I observe that Ted Briggs '56 was recently accepted by the Foreign Service and is now on duty in the State Department. A grandchild, my first, is impending.
Congratulations to you Ted, grandpa-to-be Ellis - be sure to let us know.
News just in from, and of, Dan Ruggles. As most of you know, Dan has been with the Boston Herald-Traveller ever since he finished at Tuck, thirty-five years ago. For the last five years he has been their advertising director. The announcement has just been made that as of January 1, 1957, Dan retired from his post and from now on will devote most of his time and talents to being treasurer of the United Display Corporation of 365 Albany Street in Boston, a firm in which he has been interested for a good many years. And, incidentally, Dan will be making his home in Swampscott. Best to you, Dan.
Do all you men notice how constantly, and frequently, 1921 appears month after month in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE? We were just skimming back over the December issue - Jack Hurd's review of the new Ralph Nading Hill book "Window in the Sea"; Frank Hodgdon in the 'Wah Hoo Wah" column; '21-ers prominent in various of the reports from the regional clubs; Rog Wilde pictured with the Alumni Fund Committee; Don Sawyer and his gang - i.e. the whole class of 1921, spread all over the 1956 Alumni Fund supplement for winning our Green Derby. Yes, and a couple of them — Lovell Cook and George Forman - listed now amongst Dartmouth's immortals, taking their places there in the Paradise Club with the other 90 stalwarts, of 1921 who have preceded them. It's quite a class, isn't it?
Rudie Blesh, remember him? He came to Dartmouth from Oklahoma City, was a Phi Gam, and active on the magazines - the Jack-o'-Lantern and the Bema —in fact he wasart editor on the Jack-o'-Lantern and the 1921 Aegis. He is today one of the most widely respected and best known authors in the field of modern art. We have his latest work, "Modern Art USA" published by Alfred Knopf, and even to one (such as your secretary who took a semester of art because he needed some credit) who knows nothing of modern art and so has no appreciation of it, this book by Rudi Blesh (as he is professionally known) makes fascinating reading. After he left college Rudi spent some time in San Francisco where he became an authority on Afro-American music, as well as on American popular music. His writings have been widely published both in this country and Europe. His "Modern Art USA" is the result of his commission by the New York Museum of Modern Art to prepare a study of fifty years of modern art in America for a television project.
Running through the list there are a lot of men we'd like to re-establish contact with. We hope to write everybody eventually, but that takes time. No doubt it is your secretary who is the one who has been out of touch. Anyway, how about each one of you dropping us a line and bringing us up to date about yourself - what you're doing, what you've been doing and how, why, and when?
Has anyone any idea of the whereabouts of Bob Harrigan? We came to Hanover together from Portland High School. He had a part in a Broadway play twenty-five or thirty years ago, and that's our last known clue.
Wherever any and all of these men are (1921 pretty well covers the globe) - no matter what they did or didn't do in activities, curricular or otherwise, and no matter how long or how short a time they were members of 1921 —they are still Men of Dartmouth; all of us together are brothers in the bond. If that doesn't put everyone of us into a family that is just about at the top of the list in closeness of kinship, we'd like to know what does.
Secretary, 276 Gano St., Providence 6, R. I.
Treasurer, Rm. 1200, 195 Broadway, New York 7, N.Y.
Bequest Chairman,
