1935

I didn't fully realize the hazards of writing a class news column until I picked up a copy of E. B. White's revision of William Strunk's little book called "The Elements of Style." White, who is one of my most favorite writers, uproariously distinguishes between the class secretary who begins - "Well, chums, here we are again with my bagful of dirt about your disorderly classmates, after spending a helluva weekend in N'Yawk trying to view the Columbia game from behind two bumbershoots and a glazed cornea - as against the matter-of-fact style of presenting the news. ("One of our classmates has become a gondolier in Venice.")

None of our classmates has become a gondolier so far as I know, but I am rather hampered in presenting the news to you with E. B. White looking over my shoulder. Perhaps Dick Halvorsen, who used to work for the New Yorker, could stand this editorial supervision better.

One of the men missed at our twenty-fifth reunion was Dick Upton of Concord, N. H., and a former Speaker of the House of Representatives there. I spoke to him on the telephone just before reunion and found him tied up in defense of someone in an income tax suit. Don't know if he won, but that sort of talent might interest you Dick has been named vice chairman of the State "Gregg for Governor" Campaign Committee. It isn't clear from the news item which party Gregg is in, but if Dick Upton is for him I hope he wins.

Also Down East comes news of one of our 1935 candy makers, Galo P. (Red) Emerson, who has just been elected president of the New England Retail Confectioners Association. In true New England fashion, Red is not listed as the president but "proprietor" of Putnam Pantry Candies in Danvers, Mass. This makes him a competitor of Dick Muzzy, proprietor of Page & Shaw, and Fred Haley, proprietor of Brown & Haley out Tacoma, Wash., way. Fred's bio in the Reunion Book (written in the third person), might interest you. His Tahitian experience was the real McCoy, as anyone who saw him at the Golfside on Saturday of reunion weekend knows. He took off his shoes to do a Polynesian dance - the Merry-Go-Round - complete with singing in Tahitian dialect. It was fabulous! Better even that George Colton's rendition of the "Funny, Funny Faculty" Saturday night, but that was not in Tahitian.

Bob Hage has dropped a line as follows: "Young Carl Funke started at end against the University of New Hampshire Saturday - probably the first '35 son to be so honored." He was in the Penn Game, too. Bob also reports the following news: "Last month I was having breakfast on the Washingtonian while en route from White River to New York City and who should walk in but Curt Lamorey. Shortly after, his beautiful French wife and his two children joined us. They were on their way from their states-side vacation to the ship taking them back to England, where Curt is Texaco's manager of marine sales. The youngsters are in English 'public' schools and working much harder than their American contemporaries."

Edward Fitz-Randolph Donnell blew into town the other day en route from a Hartford meeting of the Fuller Brush Company to his regular post in Kailua, Oahu, Hawaii. After some years in a business involving leather goods, empty wallets, etc., under the trade style of Donnell Hawaii, Fitz decided to take over the island distributorship of the Fuller Brush Company. This has gone very well for him and apparently also, for some of his men _ at least those willing to work in that salubrious climate. One of them, a young man of native background, who handles an island outpost, has done so well he is practically king of the place. Between telephone calls Fitz was making to everyone in Manhattan, Mac McCarty, Reg Bankart, GeorgeColton and I grabbed him for lunch in the genteel surroundings of the Park Lane. On the way out the swinging doors we tangled with Brad York, who is with Life Magazine as a "space cadet." Didn't have a chance to talk with Brad but have been intrigued ever since by the idea of a space cadet at the Park Lane. .

McCarty, incidentally, is master-minding installation of a swimming pool reactor exhibit on the vast display floor of the new Union Carbide Building at Park and 48th Street.

Mac has given me a letter Jim Berkey sent him including an issue of the Northern Virginia Sun which featured Jim's work as president of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, as president of the Atlantic States Construction Corporation and "an officer in nine other corporations, for the most part connected with the construction and real estate fields." The news article continued as follows: "Mr. Berkey zoomed into the limelight in the county as planning commission chairman. Last year he was cited by the Arlington Chamber as the 'businessman of the year in public service.' " It was apparent in June that in spite of these accolades Jim had not lost his ability to sing the old songs with enthusiasm.

Jim's letter also referred to a visit from Dr. Johnny Jewett, who came to Washington as an especially appointed representative of the Governor of Massachusetts, for a White House medical conference. John, incidentally, has been recently promoted to faculty rank on the staff of the Harvard Medical School, which responsibility, as clinical associate in obstetrics and gynecology, he holds in addition to his regular medical practice in Boston. He is also chairman of the Committee on Maternal Welfare, Massachusetts Medical Society, and a member of the Massachusetts Committee on Children and Youth.

While Fitz is going back to Hawaii and Jewett to Washington, Johnny Howe is making plans to head the other way. John has been program officer for the Middle East in the Secretariat of the United Nations Technical Assistance Board, with offices in New York at the United Nations Building. He is leaving the middle of October for four months of duty in the middle of Africa to help supervise, as a United Nations officer, the plebiscite in the British Cameroons. There will be some twenty United Nations men involved, each assigned to a specific district to keep everything honest. John's will be at Tombel, near the French area, and a part of the world where you get around on your own two feet unless you can snag something four-footed to sit on. John has been getting his walking legs in shape and scratching up on the native languages which include Howza and pidgin English. He will be back next February and we will get a report on what the light is doing to darkest Africa.

John missed reunion because of United Nations pressures which kept him in New York last June. He had just returned from a wonderful cruise with Hobe and Frieda Griffin, sailing all over New England waters in early summer fog. John may need some of his dead reckoning techniques to get around the Cameroons.

ODDS BODKINS: Bill Laurie, vice president of J. Walter Thompson and manager of the Detroit office, has been elected to the agency's board of directors. Lowie Haas has been promoted to assistant to the sales manager of United Air Lines in Chicago. Link Washburn, it now turns out, is professor of geology at Yale University. Lou Weitz, former president of the Cleveland Alumni and a busy Shaker Heights lawyer, was re-elected president of the board of trustees of the Bellefaire Jewish Children's Home.

To the members of the Executive Committee in the June issue should be added the following as ex-officio members (former class officers):

A. Bamford New York T. Steele New York S. Diamond New York H. R. Bankart New York M. McCarty New York R. Specht New York P. Chase Boston J. Wallace Boston D. Ley Boston G. Colton Hanover G. B. Kreer Chicago C. Huck Chicago B. Chaney Minneapolis F. Haley ' Seattle E. Offutt Washington, D. C. R. Naramore Bridgeport R. Kugler Philadelphia T. Harbaugh Toledo J. Gilchrist Cleveland

And, as E. B. White says you SHOULDN'T say: "Speaking of news, howzabout tossing a few chirce nuggets my way?"

Secretary, 575 Lexington Ave. New York 22, N. Y.

Treasurer, 305 Grosse Pointe Blvd. Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich.