Final: $17,514,794
THE January 22 dinner in Commons was attended by some 300 Trustees, Alumni Councilors, Campaign leaders, administrative officers, faculty representatives, and wives. Colorful decorations, a student orchestra, the Glee Club, and formal dress made it a sort of miniature of the memorable Hopkins Dinner at the Waldorf in February 1958, and President Emeritus Hopkins was present as honored guest, to be saluted again by the Glee Club's singing of "Ernest Martin Hopkins" which Reg Bankart '35 and Bill Scherman '34 wrote to the tune of "Eleazar Wheelock" two years ago. Presiding over the festive evening was Ralph L. Rickenbaugh '28 of Denver, Alumni Council president, who demonstrated sparkling talents as a master of ceremonies.
Charles J. Zimmerman '23, national chairman of the Capital Gifts Campaign, announced $17,574,794 as the final total of the two-year drive to raise $17,000,000. In a "now it can be told" vein, Harvey P. Hood '18, chairman of the Trustees Planning Committee, told the dinner audience how Mr. Zimmerman had successfully fought for the higher goal at a Trustee meeting after professional fund consultants had recommended $12,000,000 as Dartmouth's fund potential, how his courage and his faith in Dartmouth men had sustained the whole fund effort, even in some dark moments, and how Mr. Zimmerman had finally seen this confidence borne out and the drive oversubscribed by more than a half-million dollars.
It was unusual, Mr. Hood said, for the Trustees to make a special gift to one of their members, but to mark their admiration of Mr. Zimmerman's leadership of the Capital Gifts Campaign they had decided to do just that. The Trustees' gift, then presented by Mr. Hood, was a cigarette box made of wood from the original Dartmouth Hall and the Old Pine, with a silver plaque on top of the lid and also inside.
The brief inscription on top said: "Presented to Charles J. Zimmerman '23 by the Trustees of Dartmouth for extraordinary service to the College." The silver plaque inside of the lid read: "This box, its base of wood from the original Dartmouth Hall and its lid from that of the Old Pine, was especially designed for one who has served Dartmouth as class president, alumni club officer, Alumni Councilor, Alumni Fund chairman, Overseer of the Tuck School, and Trustee of the College, and who as chairman led Dartmouth's first comprehensive Capital Gifts Campaign to a triumphant conclusion. Hanover, New Hampshire, January 22, 1960."
President Dickey, as the final speaker of the evening, dealt mainly with the mission of liberal learning but also devoted some of his remarks to the significance of Dartmouth's achievements of the past five years culminating in the successful Capital Gifts Campaign.
"Even though this is no time for wasting breath or softening our resolution with the words of self-satisfaction," he said, "we are entitled to the confidence that goes with knowing that we go forward from a strong situation, that the critical fronts of the College are more strongly held than they were five years ago, that we see more clearly where we need to go, and, perhaps above all, that we have learned we have it in us to mount and sustain the kind of total effort that brings reality to great aspirations.
"There is no mystery about the foundation that must sustain any great enterprise of higher education. It has three parts: primarily, an institution-wide sense of adequate purpose; secondly, teachers who personify that learning which goes higher because it is both broad and deep and which is education because it teaches the self to learn; thirdly, students who are able, ready and willing to work for a truly higher education. No edifice of educational preeminence can be erected if all these elements are not present and strong."
Concerning the strengthening of the faculty, President Dickey said: "Many things are necessary to have and to hold teachers whose lives and work will exemplify liberal learning at its vigorous best. Here again, while compensation is not the end of the matter, it is not a bad place to start. It is in this spirit that I gladly tell you that the Dartmouth Trustees have accepted the challenge of enabling our top teacher-scholars to achieve an annual total income, including benefits, in the $25,000 range well prior to 1969.
"The first decisive step on our way toward that goal will be an Alumni Fund that progressively exceeds $1,000,000. . . .
"It is the privilege of each one of us whose life is entwined in the destiny of Dartmouth, whether as beneficiary, worker or benefactor, to teach himself the truth that the foundation stones of this house of learning, as with those of any other great house, must be mended by each of us in his time and measure with both dollars and devotion."
