Bequest Program Grows

ALTHOUGH the substantial Hart bequest is one to be received in the future, bequests actually received by the College in the first ten months of the fiscal year 1961-62 assure that this will be one of the top years in Dartmouth's history for this form of financial support.

New bequests as of April 30 totaled $745,867, and only four times previously have new bequests exceeded that figure — in 1927-28, 1940-41, 1957-58, and 1959-60. Moreover, the College so far this year has received $547,162 in additional realizations from bequests of earlier years, making the ten-month total $1,293,029.

Taking into account $105,411 in gifts subject to life income, $59,661 in gifts credited to estate planning, and $121,385 as income from trusts in the hands of others, a grand total of $1,591,983 can be credited to the Bequest and Estate Planning Program through April 30.

The impressive growth of this entire program was reported during the Class Officers Weekend by H. Sheridan Baketel Jr. '20, president of the association of class bequest chairmen, and by Ford H. Whelden '25, executive secretary and active director of the program in Hanover. A recapitulation of the past ten years shows that for the five years from 1951 through 1956 the average annual receipts from bequests was $371,708 and from the total program $635,022. In the later years through June 1961, the bequest average had risen to $1,303,296 and the total program average to $1,816,718 -a level that the current year promises to maintain.