Plainfield

The mid-winter meeting really took off this year and before we knew it, it had become the mid-winter meeting of the Ivy League clubs in this area. It started back in October before the Princeton game. We called Gordon H. Walsh, President of the Princeton Club of Plainfield and Vicinity and discussed the possibility of having a get-together the night before the game. It was decided that the amount of time left to organize such a meeting was so little that its success would be questionable. Everyone agreed, however, that such a meeting should be made the prime target for 1961.

Last month when Princeton was planning their mid-winter meeting, they found that Dartmouth had signed up the Park Hotel in Plainfield for the same night. From then on, the snowball really started rolling, picking up all sorts of things on the way. It came to rest on Friday night, January 27, when Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale joined Dartmouth for the first "Ivy League" smoker ever held in this area.

Kirby Fowler '56, Chairman of the Club's Program Committee, ran the show and together with Gordon Walsh of Princeton, turned out a stellar performance. After introducing the various club presidents present, Walsh of Princeton, Rushmore of Yale and Wright of Brown, Lou Wilcox '23 of Dartmouth announced that although Princeton and Yale had won the football games last fall, Dartmouth had won the Ivy League Smoker, having more members present than any of the other clubs.

"The Daydreamers Quartette" of the Queen City Chapter of Sweet Adelines, Incorporated, entertained with numerous selections. They would still have been singing at midnight had they not run out of songs. It was hard to determine who had the most fun, the "Daydreamers" or the Ivy Leaguers. "Jean Baptiste," in the person of Ross McKenney, wowed the assemblage with his inimitable French Canadian dialect stories. He also described his role in the D.O.C. program and some of the extracurricular activities of the undergraduate members in times of emergency or disaster in the north woods. The questions from the non-Dartmouth groups present attested to the interest he aroused. The "Revelers," a singing team of ten men, predominately old Whiffenpoofs and Nasoons completed the program. Their final number, a satire on male glee club singing, brought down the house.

It was the consensus that such meetings should be held more often and possibly this was the" first of a series of joint meetings which may, in time, become a tradition.

Ross McKenney, woodcraft adviser to the Dartmouth Outing Club, was the guest speaker at an Ivy League Smoker held January 27 at the Park Hotel in Plainfield, N. J. Shown with him (1 to r) are Kirby Fowler '56, program chairman; McKenney; Lou Wilcox '23, president of the Tri-County Dartmouth Club of New Jersey; Gordon Walsh, president of the Princeton Club, and Murray Rushmore, president of the Yale Club.

Secretary, 912 Central Ave., Plainfield, N. J.