Miss Minnie Crosby of the DCAC
The Unforgettable and Irreplaceable
HER career has been quiet; her work, efficient; and her influence, far reaching. They have dramatic overtones. Slender and short, Miss Minnie Crosby has towered over the sturdiest and tallest male athletes at Dartmouth. For 42 years as a sort of executive officer under four quite different graduate managers of athletics (Max Norton '19, "Rip" Heneage '07, Bill McCarter '19, and "Red" Rclfe '31), she has been a driving force in Alumni Gymnasium known to hundreds of undergraduates and thousands of graduates. Call her something else: accountant, supervisor, stabilizer, adviser, time-table, weather vane, historian, librarian, encyclopedia. If you wish to be technical, her title is Secretary to the Director of Athletics.
But her most appropriate title is Miss Dartmouth Athletics. Before, during, and after the farewell luncheon at the Outing Club, June 25, the theme song from admirers present and absent was, "Without our Minnie, the DCAC will never be the same."
In one sense it will be the same, for the job must go on. "Job" is misleading, for there are hundreds of jobs: ticket applications, season co.upon books, complimentary tickets, Carnival tickets, managers' mail distribution, locker keys in gym and varsity house, padlocks, tennis court reservations, Field House Charms (for men with three letters or two in major sports), D certificates, stopwatches for six sports, cash advances for trips, itineraries, equipment refunds at season's end, purchase requisitions, sports records and the yearly binding of them, alphabetical card files of D men, deceased D men lists, Athletic Council minutes, budgets, scorecards, and committee reports.
At that farewell luncheon Red Rolfe traced Miss Crosby's career over more than four decades. She started work in 1921 as a secretary in the Chemistry Department and Medical School. When Max Norton became Graduate Manager of Athletics, he persuaded Minnie to go along with him. There she remained to create what Red Rolfe was pleased to call "one of the finest sets of athletic records of any college in the United States." In a three-column picture, centered, front page, the Valley News showed her, still slender, pretty, and smiling, with three of "her boys," who as students were team managers under her guidance: John Meek '33, Vice President and Treasurer of Dartmouth College; Irving "Snuffy" Smith '41, Associate Director of Athletics; and George Colton '35, Director of Development, Dartmouth College.
Minnie likes to reminisce. An excellent training ground for future businessmen, the DCAC developed one truly precocious. Though heeling for the DCAC, he held 26 different jobs during his four years in college. He worked eight hours a day and studied in his non-existent spare time. Some seniors like to luxuriate and enjoy the autumn foliage, the winter snow, and the spring flowers, but not this man. Look at his jobs in his final year: waiter at Commons, laundry collections, Nugget ticket-taker, publicity, umpiring, New York Herald Tribune delivery, clerk at registration, checker at examinations, special worker at Thayer, furniture salesman, and plaque salesman. One is hardly surprised to learn that this jack-of-all-trades, Lester M. Nichols '40, is still a jack-of-all-trades: writer, lecturer, public relations expert, tank infantry battle expert, Army press officer, fund raiser, authority on press photography, assistant to a college president, executive secretary of the Kentucky State Hotel Association, and sports promoter.
Minnie admires Karl Michael's patience waiting decade after decade for his new swimming pool as Warner Bentley did for his Hopkins Center. There was the exciting day March 3, 1938 when Glenn Cunningham full of scar tissue in Alumni Gymnasium broke the American indoor track record for the mile run in 4:04.4. (Word had come to him that the Dartmouth boards had amazing, perhaps unique, elasticity, and it was true.) The first great breakthrough, according to Ellie Noyes, this performance had a stunning impact on the whole sporting world of the sort we today would feel if someone should run a 3:45 mile or pole vault 17 feet six inches.
Jess Hawley with a cigar in his mouth always dictated simple and monosyllabic English, but Bill McCarter, once an English professor, preferred a cigarette and complicated and polysyllabic sentences five and six lines long which always came out all right. But he could be terse. His fame as a witty and paradoxical speaker at conventions and banquets still lingers. Minnie regrets that Bill did not live to write the history of Dartmouth athletics from 1923 to the present. (Pender's ended in 1923.)
In 1925 when Dartmouth had an undefeated team, football tickets were prorated and speculation was forbidden. Max Norton traced two for the Harvard game sold for $50 to a Boston doctor who had given them to his chauffeur. Perhaps the chauffeur would have been unfit to drive in Boston traffic if not allowed to cheer the Big Green.
But the Gym is not Scotland Yard. It furnishes files not for criminals but for athletes, and the files are the product of hard work, careful checking, friendly cooperation, and intelligent attention to details big and little.
Such virtues centered in Minnie are suggested in the letters and telegrams read at the farewell luncheon: Charles Bartlett '27 (Boston lawyer): "Long record of patient and faithful service." Bill Batt '6O (Indianapolis engineer): "With a lump in my throat, I say so long." Red Blaik (football coach): "Minnie . . . affectionately remembered as Miss Dartmouth Athletics." Eddie de Courcey (trainer): "I wish that Wonderful Little Lady long life and happiness." John Dickey '29: "You quietly personified the kind of devotion to Dartmouth that has made the noisier male version known throughout the world for his loyalty." Jack Hubbell '21 (V. P. of Simmons Co.): "One of the most loyal, friendly, cooperative persons imaginable." Sumner Kilmarx '22 (New York interior decorator): "Just one element has remained constant through all those years: the presence, character, and personality of Minnie Crosby." Pudge Neidlinger '23 (former Dartmouth Dean): "Your long service to DCAC. . . Dudley Orr '29 (lawyer and Dartmouth Trustee): "... a record few are privileged to achieve." Howie Sargeant '32 (President of Radio Liberty, American Committee for Liberation): ".. . from my earliest days as a freshman heeler, I have known you as friend, wise counsellor, and the teacher of the true spirit of Dartmouth athletics."
