1944
This should be a well-garbled effort. I've procrastinated longer than usual, and with the notes due in Hanover, I'm trying to create some semblance of a column 13,000 ft. above the corn fields in one of Trans Worlds more fidgety balloons. The little child across the aisle could be suffering from nothing less excruciating than mastoids, and should have a direct bearing on the frayed quality of this month's report.
The "Needle" Allen's birth announcement of young Davis Arthur (Jan. 11) is classic. The cover shows a poker hand of three queens, one king and a second king being inserted. The announcement: The Robert Aliens Have Filled the House!
I don't know whether it's a sign of advancing age or just good common sense, but more and more of the lads are migrating to Florida. Bob Eshbaugh is now down in Leesburg, Johnny Vandergrift in Orlando, the clergyman-writer Don Oakes at Neptune Beach, and the old native, author Bill Ard has moved into a new abode in Largo. Speaking of new homes, you Civil War fans should plan to visit Hardy Caldwell at his new place on Lookout Mountain and re-live the Battle Above the Clouds.
With the military, Air Force Capt. Dud Wilson is stationed in Savannah, and fastmoving Capt. Fred Hickey finds it prudent to base his mailing address at his home in Utica.
Phil Pemberthy and his corps of ACA's got off to a flying start this year. As of this writing we're jockeying between first and second in our particular Green Derby. This looks like "the next year" we've been waiting for, and the first time '44 will break through the quota barrier. If you haven't mailed in your gift yet, won't you get it off today for sure.
Teeny Riggs sent me an interesting clipping from one of the Oklahoma City papers about Monte DuVal. Darned good picture of Monte in the article. In part, they report:
A recently appointed University of Oklahoma Medical School faculty member is one of a select group of medical scientists over the nation who have won the title of "Markle Scholar."
Dr. Merlin K. DuVal, associate professor of surgery, last July received a $30,000 grant from the Markle foundation to be paid over a five-year period to his school for support of his work.
The award is unusual - in that it is made by the philanthropic Markle Foundation to encourage an individual who shows potentialities rather than to back a specific research or teaching project.
Dick Ostberg, personnel manager of Sylvania Electric in Batavia, N. Y., blew in town a couple of weeks ago to attend a convention in some specialized field of electronics. The purpose, of course, to set up snares and lure some of the better engineers in the field to Sylvania. Many a sales department could take a profitable lesson from these personnel boys in their Battle for Brains. Here is competition and sales at its toughest. It was good to hear that Oz's trick knee is now mended after a dozen years, and that he and Proc celebrated the occasion with a skiing jaunt to the Laurentians this winter.
Jack Childs '09 was kind enough to send me an excellent picture of Becky and Chuck Richardson, and the following letter:
You can see from the attached shot that appeared in the Cleveland Press on April 23 that your classmate. Chuck Richardson, manages to be engulfed in Cleveland's social whirl. I don't know whether he borrowed the tux to attend the opera with his attractive wife, Becky. To show how versatile Chuck is, only a couple of weeks ago he attended a Dartmouth barn dance dressed in blue jeans. Chuck has a daughter, Holly, that he dotes on and he's doing all right in his job with the brokerage firm of Paine, Webber, Jackson, & Curtis.
Another of your classmates, Bob Gilchrist, has become quite subdued since he got married and has become the father of a baby girl. He used to make with the jokes when he showed up at the weekly lunches of the Cleveland Dartmouth Alumni Association, and then he took on the pre-occupied expression common to men of affairs. I'm happy to report, however, that he's gradually snapping out of it. Only last week he came through with a joke. True, it had whiskers, but it was a good joke in its youth. Bob, who is legally trained, gets his wheat cakes from the Cleveland Trust Co. where he's in the Trust Department.
Fred Berthold, Professor of Religion at Dartmouth, has been awarded a Howard Fellowship and with it will study one year in Germany, primarily with Prof. Helmut Thielicke of the University of Hamburg. He will combine research toward a book, tentatively titled " The tear of God: A Phenomenonological Study of Religious Anxiety." Fred has taught at Dartmouth since 1949 and was made full professor last year.
And even more about our intellectual compatriots: Don Campbell received one of the five $1000 Barr Fellowship awards to complete his work for a Ph.D. degree. After completing work at the Yale Graduate School in 1952, Don taught at Classical High in Springfield, Mass.
Alita (Mrs. Howard) Pennington was good enough to drop me a note about the Pennington-Bruce Hanover Weekend over Washington's birthday. She said:
Helen and George Bruce and Howard and I all drove up to the Plains together, having made reservations at the Inn months in advance. We left all the kiddies at home (2 Pennington sons, 3 Bruce daughters). Among our numerous activities were ice skating on Occom Pond, watching the Dartmouth-Penn basketball game, and sponging food and liquor from our old friends in Hanover and Longmeadow, the latter stopover being the home of Bud Park '44.
George and Howard spent one morning experimenting with George's new gun on the Vermont side of the river ... shooting at recently emptied beer cans. Our pilgrimage was highly successful, and the Inn is terrific - excellent food and comfortable rooms. We wives got the carnation corsage treatment, too!
Well, 01' Sherm Davis should be a groom by the time you read this ... if his health holds out. Sherm's fiancee is one of Scranton's leading socialites, and I understand from Boog McLoud (who will usher), that the prospective bride and groom received enough premarital cocktail party invitations to choke a hippo.
Dick Kerwin is now safely married. He and his bride, the former Dr. Mary Anderson, will live in West Chester, Pa. Dick is a research bacteriologist with Wyeth Labs.
Hope you all have a wonderful vacation this summer, that you'll send me some news ... and that '44 goes over the hump in our Alumni Fund Drive.
Evan S. Connell Jr. '45 is the author of a volume of short stories, "The Anatomy Lesson," published last month by Viking Press.
Secretary, 1105 Center St., Milford, O.
Class Agent, 67 Highland Ave... Rowayton, Conn.
