1921
Because of Jim Smead and Bob Burroughs, planters of trees, the United States is greener, but the 1921 Tree Man Extraordinary is Bill Lies, who since 1935 has planted no fewer than 1,000,000 slash pine trees over 25,000 acres in Georgia. For 25 years Rotary International has honored him as the First Pine Tree Farmer. Properly elated, in December Bill will use some of his oldest trees to produce kraft liner board in the world's potentially largest machine, and he will receive the first piece of liner board produced by Southern Land, Timber and Pulp Corporation. Many admirers call Bill "the Hardest Working Loafer in Georgia," because he retired in 1949, but not to a life of leisure. His biggest job is President and Director in a multi-million dollar smelter and refinery for pig iron, but he finds time for an industrial development corporation, a motel, a minerals and mining corporation, a very large pulp and paper company, and an investment corporation. Bill has one regret. As the only member of 1921 in all Georgia, he has persuaded no classmate to join him in this still important American frontier.
As Director of Education, Springfield Hospital, Jim Smead is challenged - and happily. He supervises 44 house officers, all M.D.'s, two thirds from foreign countries, one fourth women. Living in the country near Shelburne Falls, he thinks nothing, even in winter - and such a winter! —of a 90-mile round trip by car to Springfield each day. He and Dot attended the annual meeting of the Board of Managers of the Ryder Memorial Hospital in Puerto Rico where - listen to this! - they raised the uailv rate from $3.50 a day to $5.50. In Humacao Jim looked up Homer Cleary, but missed him.
Europe first for teen-agers or the U.S.A.? Red Kerlin said decisively: America first. When Red died, Rowene vowed to carry out his wishes, cost what it might in money and effort. In 1960 she drove Martha and John through Jasper Park and the Rockies and spent a week at the dude ranch of Boband Florelle McConaughy. In 1961 her speedometer registered 8,000 miles: the Grand Canyon, Santa Fe, Dallas, Oklahoma, Kentucky horse farms, the children's birthplaces in Ohio, Red's old home in Cleveland, a Kerlin family reunion in Kokomo (home of Ike Chester), Chicago, the Bad Lands, the Black Hills, and Pikes Peak. At Christmas they cruised to Hawaii, the home of Pud Walker and Ted Merriam. In 1962 it is to be New York, New England, and Dartmouth. In 1963 mother, daughter, and son head for Alaska. Europe later will be up to them, but she is flirting with the dream of Venezuela and Angel Falls.
Another dream is being realized. Bill andTeeter Alley have told Stanley Orcutt just what they want for a Hanover house. Haland Doris Braman helped them nail John Wilder, the contractor. As Vice President of A. E. Ames and Co., Inc., 2 Wall Street, Bill was hardly busier than he is now in retirement. He introduced his successor to important customers in the Middle West. Clarke Bassett and Gene Leonard honored them with a luncheon. Bill missed Pick Ankeny and Rynie Rothschild, but he talked to Roger Wilde on the telephone. It was not until the middle of February that Bill found himself clear of major problems in tax work. Letters poured in, a hundred or two, and he set himself to answering them in long hand, ten a day. By February 3 he had only 37 more to go. Then the Alley cleaning woman quit, and Teeter gave Bill a fine assignment: General Manager of the Alley Homestead with take-out pay of $13.60 a week.
Moving is always such sweet sorrow - and joy. Leigh and Crete Tracy have said good-bye to old friends in Pelham, New Rochelle, and New York and hello to new friends in Canterbury, N. H., where they have now settled in for country living in their home, Traceridge, thirteen miles north of Concord on Route 38. Thus they are fulfilling a long cherished dream to settle down with Leigh's twin brother Olin and his wife Amy, a native of Canterbury.
So often men from away pull up stakes and move into New England. Con Beattie is a man with a difference. He has sold his Old Town, Me., house and moved out to Florida via the Veterans Hospital in Togus to which he was confined with the heart attack which bowled him over just before Christmas. Now in the Section 3, Veterans Administration Center, Bay Pines, he is looking about. He likes flowers, and Florida produces them all year, not Maine. One of Con's best friends is his cello, and he may play with small orchestra groups in the state more famous for sun than fog. Con is proud of his daughter Joan, mother of three sons and a victim of multiple sclerosis, who aids sufferers fight what she fights. Her husband Bob McLaughry '44 is now associated with Norman Stevenson '05 in the insurance and real estate office of A. B. Gile Company, Hanover.
Cory Litchard, for thirty years General Agent of the Massachusetts Life Insurance Company's Springfield Agency, has resigned to devote full time to Pension Associates, Inc.
Frank and Barbara Livermore recently spent two weeks at the Caneel Bay Plantation, St. lohn, Virgin Islands, bought by Laurence Rockefeller in 1956 and now offering de luxe accommodations, gorgeous scenery, white sand beaches, superb swimming and snorkeling. In February they chose the Lauderdale Beach Hotel right on the Atlantic where they found congenial guests and a luxurious table. Then they moved on to The Cloister, Sea Island, Ga., where they ran into Jim Campion '28 and his wife. Not even Tree Man Extraordinary Bill Lies will be surprised that some of the talk centered not on slash pines and Georgia but on white pines and New Hampshire.
Secretary, 33 East Wheelock St. Hanover, N. H.
Class Agent, 6 Ross Rd., Scarsdale, N. Y.
