30,000 Dartmouth Men Are Her Friendsand Problems

Charlotte Ford Morrison, Dartmouth's Alumni Recorder,Retires This Month After 36 Years with the College

FOR years I have had a recurrent nightmare that my successor will be an IBM machine," wrote Charlotte Ford Morrison, Dartmouth's Alumni Recorder for 36 years, in a letter to President Dickey announcing her plans to retire at the end of this month.

And then she added with that wry touch of Yankee humor for which she is noted, "I wonder what it will write to all my 30,000 alumni friends? There's one thing for sure, Phil Marden can't take it to the Inn for dinner!"

Charlotte's successor, we are glad to report, is not an IBM machine, but a tall, attractive brunette - Miss Alyce Robertson of Brooklyn, New York - who presumably can be taken to the Inn for dinner.

Charlotte's dread of an IBM replacement typifies the highly personal approach she has brought to her duties of keeping track of Dartmouth's far-flung family for so many years. When the Dartmouth Alumni Council, at its meeting last June, passed a resolution of appreciation as she stood listening, her response was a simple, warm, "I don't think any other woman ever has been blessed with 30,000 men friends."

It wasn't always this way. In 1926, when Charlotte Ford became Alumni Recorder, the ARO, as the Alumni Records Office is popularly known, was located in a little room on the top floor of Parkhurst Hall where it housed a minimum of furniture, one hand-operated addressograph machine, and a single filing cabinet. At that time there were 8,000 living alumni of the College and onequarter of these were "lost"; that is, there were no known addresses for them.

Today the ARO domain occupies the southwest corner of the first floor of Crosby Hall and there are seventy filing cabinets containing information about 30,800 living alumni. Only 24 graduates and 155 non-graduates are currently in the "lost" file — a record no other college of Dartmouth's size can match. The office has six addressograph machines, including a high-powered automatic machine that runs envelopes through at the rate of 2500 an hour. Working here, under Charlotte's direction, are two young men (who run the machines) and six women. Last year the machines and the people behind them addressed over one and one-quarter million pieces of mail, recorded 12,608 address changes, and kept 128 alumni clubs and some 200 class officers informed monthly of address changes, new jobs and other pertinent facts about club members and classmates.

In addition the ARO maintains a complete vocational index which enables the College quickly to identify the alumni in specific occupations. The file is divided into 85 major occupational categories and, as Charlotte says, "Fitting all 30,000 alumni into 85 categories is a Procrustesbed operation. For instance, where would you put an audiologist, a soluble superintendent, relief supervisor in a shank shop, a stereotomist, or a man who says his job is keeping the international nose clean (he turned out to be working at the U.N.)?"

Another important service rendered by ARO has been the preparation of five Alumni Directories and two General Catalogues. The most recent Alumni Directory, listing names, addresses and occupational information on all living alumni through the Class of 1960, was published this year. Before this, directories were issued in 1930, 1935, 1950 and 1955. The General Catalogues, containing fuller information on all alumni from the beginning of the College, were published in 1925 and 1940.

IT was the publication of the 1925 General Catalogue which first brought Charlotte into the employ of Dartmouth College. A native of Hanover, she grew up in Dartmouth's backyard in a family which already had three grown daughters when she was born and "wanted no more of same." Charlotte recalls, "My father made the best of it, however, and although I had long red curls, I also had the longest fishing pole and longest pair of skis in town and soon became known as 'Mr. Ford's boy.' "

Her father, Elmer T. Ford, owned and operated the Hanover Hardware Store and also was a Precinct Commissioner and the Fire Chief for the town.

The scent of spruce in the Hanover air still brings back to Charlotte the flavor of the early log drives on the Connecticut River.

"There was a big boom above the Wilder Dam," she relates, "and the river at Hanover would be paved solidly with logs. Before the logs came down, an enormous boatload of rough, tough French-Canadians would arrive and pitch camp at the mouth of Mink Brook. We children could smell the spruce in the air, and we would slip away to the loggers' camp, where the cook would feed us enormous doughnuts. Then, after the logs were packed in solidly, we would take off across the river, dancing from log to log as they rolled and slipped under our feet. We made several such sorties ]before our families discovered what we were up to. My mother soon learned to detect spruce smells in the wind before the logs had reached Orford and until my Dad could assure her that the boom had been lifted she never let me out of her sight."

The little red-headed girl who danced across the logs found herself, after graduation from Simmons College, working in New York City and "enjoying the Gay Twenties to the utmost." Charlotte was in charge of the File and Record Department at the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation on Fifth Avenue and her experiences with Sam Goldwyn's fantastic operation during its heyday merit a separate story.

After four exciting years in New York, Charlotte came back to Hanover in 1924 "with rebellious reluctance" as her father was ill and her mother felt she needed Charlotte at home. She was promptly hired by Gene Clark, Alumni Secretary, to assist in getting out the General Catalogue which was published in 1925. The following year Charlotte was put in charge of Alumni Records, replacing "a middle-aged woman of erratic tendencies who eventually went to a mental hospital and was never heard of again."

The statistical dimensions of Charlotte's accomplishments over 36 years have been briefly detailed already. But behind many an address and biographical fact there is a story of patient, persevering research and follow-up which would be the envy of even Sherlock Holmes.

The first task she set for herself was to find the addresses of the nearly 2,000 Dartmouth men listed as "lost." This was no easy chore as many of these men had been lost for years. However, by diligently checking telephone, city and pro- fessional directories, and by lengthy correspondence with classmates, relatives and friends of a lost alumnus, many of these alumni were gradually located. Over many years the Alumni Records office was able to fill in the gaps and build up its file on all Dartmouth men. Thus today Mrs. Morrison is able to report with accuracy that 42,560 men have matriculated in the undergraduate College since 1769, and that the present 30,800 count of living alumni includes 22,070 graduates, 7,386 non-graduates, and 1,344 holders of advanced degrees from the Medical, Tuck and Thayer Schools, plus honorary and advanced degree holders. No woman has ever received a Bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College, although a handful of women hold the Master's degree.

BUT once an alumnus is found he does not always stay found, for as Charlotte recently told the Hanover Rotary Club, "the ARO has a firm conviction that the chief occupation of Dartmouth alumni is moving at night and concealing all traces of their whereabouts!" Indeed with between 11,000 to 12,000 address changes to record yearly it is small wonder that Mrs. Morrison looks with a sometimes jaundiced eye on her "wandering Dartmouth boys." Many of them, she observes, have a habit of disappearing in the spring during the Alumni Fund campaign and then turning up in early fall as the football season gets underway.

It is a rare day when the Records Office gives up on a man. Indeed, one alumnus who for personal reasons was trying to avoid being traced, finally gave up, sending his address to Charlotte with this note appended - "So sure as your sins shall find you out, so too will Dartmouth College."

It is in this meticulous tracing of lost alumni that one finds those humorous incidents that make the job fun. One of Dartmouth's famous Indian athletes was a member of the Class of 1918 named Walkingstick. "Everybody seemed to remember him," recalls Charlotte, "so we hated to admit we didn't know where he was. He had two Indian traits which were his undoing - he liked firewater and he was a nomad. We lost him for some time and then learned that his wife was living in Syracuse. So I wrote to the secretary of the Syracuse Club and asked him to drop around and see Mrs. Walkingstick. He did, and reported that Mrs. Walkingstick came to the door with a baseball bat in her hand - expecting to see Walkingstick, I suspect. When she learned the man was from Dartmouth she proceeded to use the bat on him. He retreated and we gave Walkingstick up for good!"

Perhaps the strangest case in the ARO files involved the discovery, by a Los Angeles newspaper reporter, of an old man selling newspapers who was surprisingly well educated and who told the reporter that he had attended Dartmouth Medical School, had practiced medicine in New Hampshire, and had even served in the New Hampshire legislature. The secretary of the Los Angeles Club wrote immediately to the Alumni Records Office and, although the man was using another name, Charlotte knew that he was a long-lost graduate of the Medical School who had been a highly respected doctor in New Hampshire. One day he simply walked away from home, leaving behind his wife and two daughters and they never saw him again. After receiving word from Charlotte, the Los Angeles secretary helped the old man, who admitted to his real name just before he died.

Although zealous in its efforts to ascertain the whereabouts of Dartmouth men, the ARO refuses to divulge addresses or other alumni information to unauthorized people. "We are always careful to protect our alumni from bill collectors, amorous women and fellow alumni who we know are always touching their friends for a loan."

ONLY death can remove an alumnus from the active ARO file, and great care is taken to establish the facts on the demise of any Dartmouth man - particularly after a recent case involving a Class of 1929 member. Charlotte tells the story this way:

"A few years ago we received word from a man in Detroit that his son, in the Class of 1929, had died. I wrote the father my best letter of condolence and asked for further facts, which he generously gave me. His son had fallen asleep one night at the wheel of his car and had died in a hospital in Cle Elum, Washington. We published a fine obituary for him in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE and he rested in peace until the Class of 1929 was preparing its 25th reunion book. The man had two Dartmouth brothers and a letter to one of them brought the startling reply that the man was not dead, but to forget about him. We were in a state! It took weeks to find out that our '29 man had personally written the letter killing himself off, using his father's name and stationery. We later learned that our man had psychiatric problems and his doctor told him his difficulty stemmed from the fact that he had been unhappy at Dartmouth. So to wipe Dartmouth out he killed himself off! For his own good and ours, we leave him strictly alone."

While a few men are anxious to forget that they are alumni of the College, there are about 400 men in a special ARO file who claim to be Dartmouth alumni but who never matriculated. These spurious alumni never attended any college and hence, Charlotte says, have no idea of the thorough alumni records kept by most colleges.

But it is not to uncover "frauds" that the Alumni Records Office maintains its vast files. The information accumulated there is used daily by College personnel in their work and is of invaluable assistance to the officers of each Dartmouth class. Here are the letters, notices, news clippings, articles and photographs that tell of a man's life and accomplishments. One alumnus, seeking some forgotten details of his undergraduate days, received a two-page summary of his entire career and wrote back saying, "You know more about me than I do!"

"Your Alumni Recorder is probably the most prolific correspondent on the campus," reports Charlotte, "and she would be happy if she never heard of another genealogist. She has written thousands of letters telling inquiring souls that their great-grandfather (in spite of family tradition) never went to Dartmouth. Or, if he did, sending them all the biographical information we have for grandpa."

CHARLOTTE'S biggest challenge, and the area where she has been most successful in this writer's opinion, is in her relationship with Dartmouth alumni whom the world might call failures. The alumni who end up in prison, in institutions, or simply as "down and outers."

"Because I am a woman," Charlotte writes, "perhaps men tell me things and write me things that they would never tell a man. I have shared the worries and discouragements of hundreds of alumni. The bitter ones I have tried to make a little less bitter; I have tried to placate men maddened by Fund appeals, and I have commiserated with the unhappy men who consider their lives a failure, or whose families have been discouraging. Most of them have never seen me, but I know their bitter lives well. It is always a surprise to them to find that Dartmouth is as loyal to her unsuccessful sons as to the more fortunate."

The same understanding and warm sympathy is reflected in each obituary Mrs. Morrison writes for the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. She has written hundreds of obituaries of Dartmouth men over the years and each has been a personal tribute appreciated by the man's family, classmates and friends.

Important though her contributions to Dartmouth and the local community may be, her greatest achievement undoubtedly will be the guidance and assistance she has rendered to many colleges and universities across America. Just as Dartmouth has pioneered in alumni work, so Charlotte has set the pace in alumni records. Many a college has modeled its ARO along Dartmouth lines and Charlotte has spent hundreds of hours conferring with officials from other colleges on alumni records work. She has been a frequent speaker at regional and national conferences of the American Alumni Council, the professional organization to which all college officers in alumni and fund-raising work belong. Last June at its national conference in Hollywood Beach, Florida, Charlotte was tendered a special "farewell party" attended by hundreds of colleagues whom she has helped over the years.

In 1956 Charlotte delighted her friends by marrying Hugh Morrison '26, professor of art at Dartmouth. She is resigning to be free to enjoy Hugh's sabbatical leave with him;

In the concluding paragraph of her letter of resignation to President Dickey, Charlotte wrote: "One thing I can't bequeath to any successor is the memories of Dartmouth that date back far more than 38 years'— to those days when I was a little girl with pigtails who danced across the river on the spring log-drives and who watched generations of young Dartmouth boys grow up into men. Fond best wishes to all of you, and keep the old place going!"

To this we reply, on behalf of the entire Dartmouth fellowship, "Fond best wishes to you, Charlotte. One reason the old place will keep going is because of what you have given to it all these years."

With her husband, Prof. Hugh Morrison'26 of the Art Department, Dartmouth'sretiring Alumni Recorder relaxes at theircottage at nearby Lake Mascoma.