1909

My Roommate, Dutch Schildmiller

The fall of our freshman year we got word that right after Christmas vacation the glorious class of '09 would be augmented by the arrival of a guy by the name of George Henry Schildmiller, commonly called Dutch. He was transferring from Cornell where he had been initiated into that exclusive frat, name of Psi Upsilon. The news created quite a stir, for Dutch had made a name for himself at Andover, where he prepped, starring in three sports: football, baseball and basketball. He was a welcome addition to the campus.

To go back a little beyond Dutch's college and prep school days. He was a Waterbury, Conn., boy who had dropped out of high school and had gone to work. An Andover grad saw him playing basketball at the YMCA, liked the way he capered, and persuaded him to go to Andover. Dutch had been out of school for four years, and because of that, started as a freshman. He starred in the three sports mentioned. Those were the days when Andover could beat a lot of college football teams; they were that good. On the same team with Dutch was Heinie Bullock, who was with our class for a year and then dropped out.

Dutch didn't care for the life at Cornell. He wanted a smaller, more intimate college and that, certainly, was what Dartmouth was in those days when the total enrollment was around 1,100. Our freshman Psi U delegation, naturally, was excited about meeting this glamorous character. We didn't boast an athlete in the whole delegation.

In January 1906 Dutch arrived on schedule. I remember the first time I met him. He was the pure Nordic type - blond, blue eyes, a nose pushed a little to one side of his face, the result of being broken in football, a cleft chin. He wasn't a big guy - about 5 ft. 10½" tall, a stalwart frame, and weighing around 170 lbs. He was soft-spoken, nothing fat-headed about him.

Before the year was out, Dutch and I decided we'd room together as sophomores, and we continued as roommates the rest of our college days. Neither of us being flush with that long green stuff, we took a room in Reed Hall, one of the cheaper ones on the first floor. It was rather narrow with only one outside window, and a double-decker bunk back of our living and study quarters.

Reed Hall was a spot to be remembered in those days. A gang of hail fellows lived there. Greetings Norton '08, who made his place in the world as a never-to-be-forgotten character, and Clark Walworth Tobin '10, who seemed to be promising football material, lived across the hall in a corner room. Freddie Carroll and Reggie Cooley lived down the hall a ways. Up on the second floor, Bill Bailey and George Burns were teamed up. Another '09er who lived in Reed was Wallie Ross. Our moments of relaxation were spent in beefing, or chewing the fat, conducting the famous Reed Hall balls out in the corridor, dropping bags of water from a second-story window on those who would enter the premises. We were uninhibited and we had fun.

Dutch and I got scholarships our sophomore year. We waited on table in an eating club on South Main Street run by Bob Truman, a brother of my friend, Charlie. We saved out all the choice portions for ourselves and gave the paying guests the mine run of victuals. No wonder the place went broke after a couple of months. Later, we got work over at the old Commercial Hotel. That year, I got by on 300 bucks, including all expenses, except transportation back and forth to my home in Evanston, Ill., where my father ran a newspaper, The Evanston Index. Newspaper publishers, in those days, got railroad passes. During my four years in college, I never had to pay any railroad fare.

With Mickey McLane, Dutch ran a laundry route. That gave him some income, and during football season he ate high on the hog while on the training table. What he did summers is not too clear. I remember he spent a couple of summers at York Beach, Maine. He may have borrowed a little money here and there, but he managed to get by and always had one or two neat looking suits and other sartorial paraphernalia.

Schildmiller and I did a lot of kidding the three years we were together. It used to be that whoever got the drop on the other in the dawn's early light kept it for the rest of the day. The score, I would say, ended up about 50-50. Once or twice a year the pressure would get a little too tight, and we'd have a scrap. Then we didn's speak to each other for a couple of weeks. Some fun. Some little incident would arise to break the ice and we'd be back to normal.

At the finish of a meal, Dutch had the habit of grabbing a toothpick, picking his teeth, and talking with the toothpick sticking out of his mouth. Maybe he still does. I didn't check too closely when I saw him at our 45th reunion.

When we became juniors, Dutch and I moved over to a first-floor suite in Massachusetts Hall, a dorm that had just been completed that summer. I'll go into further details about Schildmiller in the next issue of the MAGAZINE. Meanwhile, you'll just have to wait.

Now a word about the Alumni Fund campaign. By the time this reaches you, the drive will be almost half over. Let's hope you'll lend support to Dartmouth, if you haven't already done so, and back your loyalty with dollars. If you wish to do something' handsome, join up with the Century Club or the Boosters Club. To qualify for the former, it takes a hundred bucks or more, and the latter, 50 to 100 of those round iron men. Heed the pleas of A. Gordon Wcinz. your head class agent, his hard-working assistants, and DARTMOUTH!

A student trio of yesteryear: Dutch Schildmiller '09 (discussed in the '09 notes), George Burns '09 and Jack Marks '11.

Class Notes Editor, 141 Pioneer Trail, Aurora, Ohio

Secretary, Sandwich, Mass.

Class Agent, 21 Walden St., Newtonville 60, Mass.