1942
The April 6 Newsletter carried a complete report of our Treasurer for the year ending August 31, 1958 and I hope you all found time to read it in detail. The desire on the part of the class officers to spend our income for worthwhile projects requires 100% support by the class so that items such as the Memorial Book Fund and periodic Class Directory may be continued. You all noticed the close parallel between dues received and the cost of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE which results in a very narrow margin of working capital for other activities. The obvious answer to improving this relationship appears in the percentage of dues' payers which amounted to 63% for fiscal '58. This can be materially improved but it is up to each of us to do his part.
Bob and Meg Blood are thoroughly enjoying the Fulbright grant which has given Bob the opportunity to devote full time to sociological research this past year in Japan. Bob's long spring letter says in part:
Three different weeks this year Meg and I have travelled about Japan, lecturing with excellent interpreters to university and community groups (esdally women's clubs) and to family experts. One highlight was a delightful conversation with several dozen farmers and their wives sitting on tatami mats in their remote "public hall". . . . When we eat nothing but Japanese food and communicate only in Japanese with the giggling maid who helps us into the inn's yukata robes and cooks the sukiyaki in the middle of the low table, we feel that we are really in Japan. It's a mindstretching, never-a-dull-moment experience, more challenging than we had guessed before venturing beyond provincial American borders and has made us travel devotees from here on out. . . . Romantic love is idealized by the younger generation but difficult to achieve when dating is often forbidden by parents and the Occupation-inspired coeducation is fast disappearing. Women have the vote but there is little equality in jobs or many homes. But the ferment of industrialization is at work and everywhere the new and the old exist side by side in dress, entertainment and social patterns.
Of colloquial interest are Meg's comments that "our house is Japanese-style with strawmatted floors except in the kitchen-dining room. Like Japanese children, our boys often poke holes in the sliding paper doors, but unlike Japanese families we use the upper shelf of one of the quilt closets as a snug bunk for curing colds. Usually we sleep on the floor on our air mattresses and sleeping bags or electric blankets. There's no central heating, of course, but gas heaters in two rooms help to combat the cold if one is active enough." Earlier this year, Bob visited Takanobu Mitsui '43 at his Reader's Digest office in Tokyo as well as having seen Professor Donald Bartlett '24, the new U.S. Embassy Cultural Attache for Japan.
John Callihan, a recognized authority on pension and employee benefit programs, has returned to Tressler W. Callihan & Co., a Boston pension consulting firm as a senior member. John was with this company for eight years from 1946 to 1954 before spending five years as agency pension consultant for the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company. During the past several years he has written many articles in top-flight insurance and other periodicals on designing, selling, installing and servicing pensions and employee benefit programs as well as being frequently in demand as a speaker on the subject he knows so well.
Although president of Travelcar, Inc., Harrison Hoffman has maintained a keen interest in the United World Federalist movement, for which he served as executive director for several years in the Pennsylvania region. This latter interest found him as guest speaker recently at the Kiwanis Club in Torrington, Conn. In the same town, but speaking to the Women's Club, was Bill Winternitz, assistant professor on internal medicine and physiology at Yale Medical School. In the field of clinical and research interest, Bill specializes in diseases of metabolism-diabetes, diseases of the thyroid and other endocrine disturbances.
During the past several months we have recorded several changes and advancements of classmates which we wish to pass along before the summer hiatus. Lowell Peterson became senior vice-president of the Savings and Loan Association in Arcadia, Calif.- Gordon Brown, former buyer for Frederick & Nelson, Seattle, Wash., department store, is now manager of the women's apparel department - leaving Maud Muller Candy Co. where he was a vice-president, Charlie Moore has gone with Standard Steel Specialty Co. in Beaver Falls, Penna., as assistant to the president — Keith Prouty is research director for the Connecticut State Labor Council, AFLCIO in Hamden, Conn. - returning to the United States from France where he was with the American Express Co., Inc. to take an executive position with Wells Fargo & Co. in New York City is John Thomas. — John Brewster, who has been with the City Savings Bank in Bridgeport, Conn., is now assistant manager of the Mortgage Department - moving from Fort Wayne, Ind., where he managed the northern Indiana agency for Phoenix Mutual Life Ins. Co. is Vincent Tibbals to manage offices for the same company in Rochester, N. Y. - Ben Page is now a senior tax representative for Pan American Petroleum Corp. in Corpus Christi, Tex., and as such has moved from his former location with the company in Houston.
An April letter from George McClintock reported the sudden and untimely death of our classmate, Jim Doerr, on March 21. A fellow Minneapolis resident, George very kindly wrote a Memoriam column which you will find in this or a subsequent issue of the MAGAZINE.
In closing for this period, I should like to wish you all an enjoyable summer and will look forward to again bringing you the news of '42 next fall. In the meantime, let Lipp and myself know where you are and what you are doing - we're interested and so are your classmates. Have fun!
Secretary, 209 Beech St., Cranford, N. J.
Class Agent, 6 Cross Gates Road, Madison, N. J.
