1934
It’s too early in the season to plead for news, but do any of you more experienced brethren have any advice for new grandfathers. Seems too soon to be moving the rocking chair and slippers into the corner by the fireplace.
In celebration, we’ll finish off this chore on time, hoping the likewise ageing corpuscles of ye ed can stand the shock. For this is a lovely month to write a column what with the news piled up so high, and all.
NAMES IN THE NEWS, for instance ... a Brockton, Mass., paper head reads “Dr. Sweetser to Teach in Ireland.” Which in itself is a shock, too, for what would the likes of someone from over here be doing trying to teach over there where they al- ready know it all. But it soon clears, “A study of Helsinki, Finland as one example of a rapidly-developing urbanized and in- dustrialized European capital will be con- ducted by a Boston University sociologist who has received a one-year Fulbright grant to teach at the University of Helsinki. Dr.Frank L. Sweetser will be accompanied by his wife, Dr. Dorrian A. Sweetser, assistant professor of social science at the Univer- sity’s School of Nursing”. . . from Hartford, Conn., the Cushman Chuck Company an- nounces the election of Richard W. Banfield as president. Dick had been president of Motch & Merryweather Machinery Cos. in Cleveland since 1956. Prior to that he was with Niles, Bement, Pond of West Hartford where he started as special apprentice in 1935, and when he left for Cleveland was executive vice-president.
Richard E. Gould has been appointed purchasing agent for the Dyestuff and Chemical Division of General Aniline & Film Corp. with headquarters in New York. Dick has been assistant purchasing agent. He has been with the corporation since 1937. . . . Robert M. Williamson, general agent for the Connecticut Mutual Life In- surance Cos. in Rochester, N. Y., is new president of the New York State Association of Life Underwriters. A chartered life un- derwriter, Bob is only the fifth Rochester man to head the association since 1919. He began his insurance career with Connecticut Mutual in Chicago in 1939, and with time out for four years Navy service, has been with them as assistant general agent in Den- ver from 1948 to 1951 when he became general agent in Rochester. . . from a New Haven clipping comes the announcement of the appointment of H. Theodore Gregory as instructor in the English department of Quinnipiac College. Ted previously was di- rector of testing at Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven.
Bill Sleek ’3l, who as manager of our fresh- man basketball team watched over the free- wheelers of that club with as much of an eagle eye as was nec- essary after Chick Evans got through, still helps out with a clip from the Cleve- land Plain Dealer, “Robert C. Palmer and Donald W. Fra- ser (’35) have been elected vice presidents of Central National Bank of Cleveland. Both were assistant vice presidents in the commercial banking department.” Bob and Mary live in Euclid and have three chil- dren. JThe eldest, Bob Jr., is Dartmouth ’62.
A Boston Globe feature which we hope is still timely when this hits print tells of Perk Bass and his campaign for the U. S. Senate. Perk hired a school bus from the town of Peterboro and outfitted it with sound equipment, a helium tank to blow up campaign balloons, and lollipops for the kids. He planned to visit every community in the state before the primary in which he faced three other strong candidates. As crew for the bus he had as second-in-com- mand his wife, Katherine, and the five Bass children, Alex, Kitty, Bill, Charlie, and Posy.
Another interesting feature story this time from the New Haven Register titled “Bedeviled Mankind Still Laughs,” has a very scholarly looking Bill Cahn, free-lance public relations man, author-editor of non- fiction, and an authority on American com- edy, expand on the theories he holds in his book “The Laughmakers” which is a pictorial history of American comedians. Bill’s thesis "Laughter is as necessary as the air we breathe. People have a need to laugh and a subsequent need for someone to make them laugh.” Sounds fine to me and besides he deplores sick humor which sounds even better. Bill has three new books coming out this fall.
Maybe we missed something during the summer, but it seems from the address changes that Art Grimes is now at Mc- Cann-Erickson House in London and Fritz Mosher is staff director, Committee on For- eign Affairs in Washington.
Also in Washington is Tom Beers, vice president, National Geographic Society but more important than that the writer of a letter which just missed our deadline last issue, “Each year we have what is loosely called an executive meeting of the Class in Hanover, but after last weekend, which I spent with a lot of fathers and their Mount Holyoke daughters, I think we might sched- ule a similar meeting for South Hadley in May. It seemed that every place there were Dartmouth faces, a surprising number of them being ’34’s. Susie and I ran into JoeFurst and his daughter. . . . Dr. Bob Smith, whom I saw twisting the light fantastic with his daughter as I was groping for a seat. . . also Dr. Bill Fischbach from Cincinnati, whom I saw through the crowd.
“We proved again that college weekends in the springtime are lots of fun, but somehow considerably more strenuous than I remem- ber them from my own trips to Hamp and South Hadley.”
That “loosely called” executive meeting of the Class is this year in Hanover just about the weekend before this hits the light of day, but I hope you were there.
Other similar items of business we can do something about. As a warm-up for re- union next spring, or as a matter of fact just for the hell of it, our very able reunion chairman Gillie Gilmore has promoted BillEmerson into joining with representatives of other classes, less distinguished than ours and whose numbers are at the moment un- important, in planning a joint operation at the Harvard-Dartmouth Game. We Bos- tons who so seldom meet, perhaps only be- cause our busy social whirl between the Museum of Fine Arts, Filene’s basement and Jake Wirth’s so rarely coincide, should make the most of this opportunity to join hands under the banner of Dr. Emerson’s elixir for the over-tired and down-trodden.
Secretary,12 Berwick St. Worcester 2, Mass. Treasurer, 120 Broadway, New York 5, N. Y.
