Joe Berwick, the Sandwich Man

The passing of Joe Berwick from the Hanover scene should not go unnoticed, for he was a well-known campus figure around the turn of the century. To students in our time, he was familiarly known as "Joe, the Sandwich Man."

Mere mention of the Sandwich Man brings back vivid memories of student days. The scene is a dormitory hallway - any dormitory, for Joe visited them all. He sticks his head inside the door and yells "sandwiches" in a stentorian voice that can be heard throughout the building. Doors open and students congregate around Joe and his basket of sandwiches kept moist by a damp cloth. They select the snack they want —ham, beef, chicken.

Food isn't all that those guys want. They want a songfest and that's right down Joe's alley. He has the highest, strongest tenor voice of anybody in that neck of the woods, bar none. He can carry any number of singers and be heard above 'em all. True it is that once in awhile he gets a little off key, but what's a sour note or two among friends?

Those who are more intimate with Joe's history, recall that he attended medical school. He might have turned out to be a prominent doctor, but he got side- tracked before graduation, got married, and started a family. That was in the '90s. Joe earned his living by doing various jobs and operating his sandwich business. After the sandwiches were made, the only equipment he needed was a large clothes hamper which he carried on his shoulder.

Joe was a powerfully built man, broad of shoulder, thick-necked, an eagle beak of a nose, a wild mop of thick hair. His custom of wearing a handkerchief knotted around his neck continued throughout his lifetime.

Not averse to taking a "snort" or two with friends, Joe had congenial times with college students and with alumni when they'd return to Hanover for reunions. Old-time hums featured every gathering where Joe was present, for Dartmouth guys are probably the singingest bunch in the whole Ivy League. They'd tear into: I Says To Mandy, White Wings, Sweet Adeline, Down By the Old Mill Stream, Good Old Summertime, We Shall Know As We Are Known, to name a few. And at the top of the heap would be Joe's tenor. When he got going good, the cords of his neck stood out.

Joe outlived practically all the townies and campus characters we knew in our college days. He was just short of 85 when he cashed in his last chips. The last years of his life he suffered from a heart ailment which kept him inactive. Sometimes he'd have to lie abed; other times, he could sit in an easy chair on the front porch of the house on East Wheelock Street where he lived. He wore an old bathrobe, a wide belt around his abdomen, and the proverbial handkerchief around his neck. His hair was still thick and wild.

My friend, Charlie Truman, the official steamfitter of Dartmouth College for a period of 47 years, made it a habit to visit Joe every day. Each June that I have been back to Hanover over the past years, he and I would call on Joe. I'd have the banjo and the three of us would indulge in a little harmony. Joe liked the music soft and sweet, for he had mellowed with the years. His love of singing was with him until the end.

And now Joe has joined the departed souls we knew in our undergraduate days: Jim Haggerty with his thin hawk nose and ever-present cigarette sitting on his stool downstairs in the Commons; Hamp Howe, the livery stable man; Dud, in his high silk hat, driver of the stage coach; Ed Dewey and Ed Orrill, the local tonsorial artists; Robbie, the old clothes man; Jake Bond, preserver of law and order; lovable old Major Pelton, janitor at Crosby Hall; his brother, Tony, the popcorn man, with his black-dyed mustache and his dog Cy; Doc Crosby, the fat man with the thin wife; Old Major, the tailor; Alex, the janitor at Richardson Hall; old Cap Carter, who was janitor at the new dorm, Massachusetts, when it opened up in the fall of 1907; Phil Trachier; Dick Hawk, another janitor, who married Elsie Johnson, a glamor girl who was minus her front teeth; Henry Pelton, clerk at Rand's furniture store; Joe Truman, Charlie's brother, who was janitor at the C & G house.

All of them are gone, and now Joe. It looks as if us guys are getting old.

The late Joe Berwick