1921
Walt and Mary Lundegren, '21 experts on Iceland, can tell you about Thingoeller on whose plains the Viking chiefs met about 900 A.D. and formed the first Althing, or Icelandic Parliament, and about the hot springs of Geysir. Lava plains on which nothing grows except moss and a few sheep cover one-fifth of the island. Treeless moun- tains bristle with low-growing vegetation or naked rock. Only eleven years old, blue-eyed, blond-haired, fair-skinned boys and girls, handsome and healthy, drive tractors on farms during vacation. Aged 13 and 14, they labor on docks and roads, run messages for bank and insurance companies in Reykjavik or in the public parks cultivate massive gardens of pansies, snapdragons, marigolds, and calendulas. In the homes of Betty's and Ottar's friends, Mary and Walt were impressed by walls lined with books, water colors, and oils concentrating on landscapes with mountains changing color because of shifts in sun and shadows. Though Reykjavik has a population of only 80,000, it supports no fewer than 40 bookstores. Fruit, vegetables, pickles, jams, and mayonnaise cost three times as much as in' the USA, but milk, fish, lamb, and bread are good and inexpensive. Whiskey runs high, $8 a fifth; gin, $7. Fishing fees are costly, $20 a day minimum outside the city and $1O for only six hours within city limits with restricted numbers and times booked solid for the 90-day season. But, shades of JohnSullivan, Roger Wilde, and Dana Lamb, what salmon! Icelanders love outdoor swimming pools, and each town has at least one. The air may be 50, but subterranean hot springs, filled with sulphur and minerals, marvellous for baking out the ills of old age, permit in adjoining pools warm water and water too hot for an American. Shower baths run piping hot, with cold as a refreshing, teeth-chattering climax. The Lundegren children, Betty and Ottar Thorgilsson, live in a penthouse atop a 13-story apartment house with spacious windows and a six-foot-wide balcony running around, with a superb view of the city, harbor, and mountains.
Sitting down at a sidewalk cafe in Athens, Greece, Phez and Dorice Taylor of Sun Valley struck up a conversation with another couple. You have guessed it. Yes, a small world. They were Dr. and Mrs. James E. Cavanagh, Dartmouth 1929 of Northampton, Mass. For the Taylors it was a big world: Hawaii, Japan, Hong Kong, Bangkok, India, Kashmir, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Italy, England. Scotland, and Idaho.
Frank and Barbara Livermore sail again on their favorite ship, Caronia, from New York, Jan. 28. A perfectionist, Frank has arranged for the same luxurious cabin, the same astute Balmoral Restaurant table steward, the same cabin steward and stewardess, the same chief bar tender, and the same valet and bootblack. Foreign faces and foreign landscapes are Frank's cure for his arthritis.
Newell Smith, out of the reach of telephones, suggests that you look him up at Cane Bay, St. Croix, where he is helping Ginny to a full recovery from her July heart attack. Newc Newcomb, over his, is planning on a full schedule in his lawyer's office.
Guy Wallick is giving attention again to 1963 and 1964 travel plans, interrupted, alas, by surgery for a spinal fusion. When pain continued five months after the operation, doctors tried a nerve block, which backfired and put him back in bed. What cheered him was a 13-month visit from Betsy, his daughter on from Istanbul, Turkey. Now located in Rome, she and her Italian husband have invited Guy and Ken for Christmas and extensive traveling about' Italy.
With a big birthday coming up, Ted Sonnenfeld, thinking naturally of Celia and Marcia and Dr. Bill Scharfman, has invited them for a four-day razzle-dazzle in New Orleans. Later he and Celia go along to St. Thomas or Palm Beach. Ted wants to make sure that Celia has some change from her work as volunteer public relations expert at the Albany Medical Center Hospital with 800 beds, 2000 employes, and 5000 problems.
Sherwood Bowers of Manchester, Conn., retired in reverse. After a lapse of 38 years he returned to college. Following the development of his 42-acre farm as a residential area, he decided in the 1950's to apply for law school, but, without his Dartmouth A.8., he could not get in. So he put in three semesters at the UConn to graduate in 1958. After a year at the UConn School of Law, he took courses in government leading to an M.A. in Political Science, which, he hoped, would fit him to become a government researcher or administrative assistant in town or city management. Born June 2, 1899, he has faced tough competition from men aged 25 to 30 with youth, a master's degree, fulfilled military obligations, and five to ten years experience in governmental work.
This news may interest Don Smith, who, retired from Greenfield Tap and Die, is serving on a seven-man committee studying town government structure in Turners Falls. Sherwood has also tried to improve Manchester, and on the Manchester Board of Directors to save the town money in the construction of new schools.
Here's an idea, Phil Noyes's. Write your roommates and pals of 1917, silent these 40 years and more. Results? Amicable replies from Ben Rassieur '22, John Herbert, and Warren Homer, but silence, presumably temporary, from Hugh Cruikshank.
Ralph Steiner whose left eye is a painter's and whose right a photographer's remarks that sunsets from his summer place (and Caroline's) on Monhegan Island, Maine, have 1812 overtones.
Grandfather of 17, Hugh Penney, aged 75, the oldest man in our class, is minister at the West Acton Baptist Church after in- terim service in Dedham. He is enjoying his new home in Acton Center.
Allan Kernan continues to function as Secretary of the Seneca Building & Loan Company, for a good reason. He is irre-placeable, and it is easy to see why. In Tiffin, O., he has been Council President once and Mayor no fewer than five times.
What happens when a promising football man, six feet tall, 200 pounds, goes to Dartmouth, runs into scholastic trouble, and transfers to Wabash? He joins the Marines and heads for Hawaii. Such has been the experience of Lee Tebbetts, stepson of Randy Childs. Inside information: After Dartmouth, Wabash was dull.
Retired two years ago from the lithograph business, Stan Gorham spends as much time as possible in Vineyard Haven where he boats and fishes and hopes that '21 men on the Cape will telephone him and arrange for a tour of the island with emphasis on Northern Pines hospitality.
Mike and Myla Doran do their traveling vicariously. Bob '57, an electronics engineer, put in a month recently for Sylvania, and Dick Lowell, Pat's husband, a civil engineer, spent the summer in Africa.
Doug Storer, chock full of exotic animal lore, figured largely in Charlie Rice's Punchbowl, This Week, recently. In Finland a man has to have a license to drive a reindeer and must wear sun glasses. The most deadly animal is not the lion or tiger but the Cape buffalo of South Africa, which has killed more human beings than any other animal on earth. To equal parakeets which eat 100 times their own weight each year, a man would have to eat 45 pounds of food a day.
Secretary, 33 East Wheelock St. Hanover, N.H.
Treasurer, 2728 Henry Hudson Parkway New York 63, N.Y.
