1939

The balance of our class records arrived the day after Christmas in three boxes via parcel post. One box labeled S & W Southern Yams contained some 700 cards with vital statistics circa 1953 on each of you. A Brooks Bros, shirt box contained a scrapbook of 1939 clippings from the ALUMNI MAGAZINE apparently assembled by Dick Jackson covering our class from graduation through the year 1949. The third box which once contained a suit from J. Press revealed eleven manila folders full of correspondence from predecessors extolling the difficulties involved in keeping our class cohesive during the years of World War II and since.

Having spent the major part of the day scanning these frustrated pages of ancient lore, I've come to a few conclusions:

1. A pitifully small percentage of our classmates, and not necessarily those who were undergraduate politicos, have toiled long, laboriously, and unselfishly (i.e., with no aspirations for personal gain), to keep the balance of the class informed, unified, and competitive.

2. The average classmate is unaware of the personal interest Dartmouth takes in its graduates. He is unaware of the constant detailing and surveillance of the Alumni Records Office in his every activity and progression since graduation.

3. Snobbish sophistications engendered as undergraduates tend to melt with each successive postgraduate year improving class cohesion - particularly during periods of reunion. But, this spirit is difficult to motivate and manifest itself "between" times.

4. We are sentimentalists, and the College counts heavily on this, both to keep us working on its behalf and for financial support. Nostalgia frequently substitutes for current common interest, but there is a sort of religion in this. We can use more of it.

5. As a class (except for that pitifully small percentage), we haven't the foggiest idea how we administer ourselves.

These learned gleanings were quite evident from the files of our past secretaries beginning with Bob Gibson after graduation and shunting (illegally frequently, as far as our "constitution" was concerned) through the "acting secretariats of the war years Tackson, Dickgeisser, Falconer, Hirschland, then after the war's end, back to Jackson again. It was during our Tenth Reunion when legal order was restored and Topliff Hall needed restoring afterward. But even then something went amuck, and by December '49 ChuckGrant, the legally elected chairman of our executive committee, finally announced the committee's appointments of Tom Brooks as secretary, Don Wheaton as treasurer, DuneFarr, class agent, and Bert McMannis as editor of the class newsletter. As the constitution describes the duties, this fortunate cabal was privileged to administer the class until the Fifteenth Reunion in 1953.

By then, we "unanimously" elected our legal limit of eleven on the executive committee: Jack Graham. Jim Corner, Jack Coulson, Al Bodge, Bob Sullivan, Dick Clark, John Perry, Bob Dickgeisser, Irve Naitove, Charlie Neer, and as chairman, Rodger Harrison. The committee then appointed Vincens as secretary, cajoled Wheaton into stringing along as treasurer for a few more years until someone could be trained to understand his double entry system, ultimately made Browny class agent. '

When our Titillating Twentieth arrived last June the well greased administrative wheels of our organization had already appointed a three-man nominating committee whose slate received no opposition from a one-party class system robust from breakfasting on bloody marys. The new and current executive committee: Coulson, Cummin" Harrison, Darby, Naitove, T. Brooks, Endy Smith, Wakelin, Vincens, Wyman, Merriam and as chairman, Bud Clifford. Appointed as secretary, Davidson; as treasurer, Coulson; as class agent, Merriam; as newsletter editor Vincens. These lucky beggars will serve until our 25th Reunion in 1964 when we hope there will be enough surviving classmates to usher in a change of faces.

Dispensing with class organization now for years to come, we hope, let's turn to class news. Your letters are flowing in like glue. In order to get choice tidbits of information, recipes, weather reports, etc., we may be forced to spend half the class treasury on these new expensive postal cards in order to bring our 1953 files up-to-date. You're all at least forty now and there's nothing to hide. In fact, there is probably much that can at long last be said. Share it!

On behalf of the 200th Anniversary Development Fund we had a most profitable visit with Jack Reeder last week. When Jack left Hanover at the end of his freshman year he attended a business college, went into the Army Air Force emerging a Major with many missions in medium bombers over Italy and Ploesti. He married, quit flying - in planes, that is — and entered the family's Dayton Coca-Cola Bottling Co. where he is now president. He is an ex-city commissioner of Dayton, Ohio, having resigned to escape the nocturnal phone calls of irate citizens whose garbage had not been collected. He and Ollie have a daughter and two sons, four horses, three dogs, a swimming pool and a small lake stocked with ten thousand bluegill. Their address is 200 Tait Road. Fishing is lousy, however.

A Christmas card from Paul Winship explained his and Sue's absence at Reunion. They were fixing up a cottage on the Cape. Windy escaped from Madison Ave. a couple of years ago to return to his first love, teaching English Literature. He is at the Holderness School in Plymouth, N. H. They have five kids.

Bud Finck sent a little card in a little envelope that I thought was an invitation to a cocktail party, but it turned out to be an announcement of the arrival of Kenneth M. Finck, born November 30, '58 and currently residing at 118 Paseo Contento, Nogales, Ariz. How many does that make, Bud?

Last night the Dayton Dartmouth Alumni Assn. entertained some thirty prospective freshmen and had the good fortune of having coach Bob Blackman as the guest speaker. If any of you can swing it through your own local alumni groups to get him, by all means do so. He's a fine guy with a lively sense of humor. He speaks with great conviction, and is a marvelous recruiter.

Arriving just in time to make the deadline is a wedding announcement. I know none of the particulars, but it reads as follows: Mr. Charles Philip Geyh announces the marriage of his sister, Marguerite Athalie, to J. Moreau Brown III on Saturday, December 20, 1958, at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Lincoln Park, N. J. At Home: 12 Omley Place, New City, N. Y. Congratulations, Browny! I don't know where New City is, but I think we've scooped the Records Office for once!

Secretary, 1908 Coolidge Dr. Dayton 19, Ohio

Treasurer, 15 Meridan PI., Huntington Station, N. Y.