1951
By now, most of you appear to have broken that New Year's resolution to write me with news for this column. Either that, or you're sending stuff to Karcher for his tabloid.
From the scant quantity from the College's clipping service this month (two items previously reported), one might even conclude that you're not making the newspapers any more. Either that, or the magic word "Dartmouth" isn't being included in the articles about you.
Abdul Sheikh is by now in the middle of a two-month lecture tour which includes appearances before all sorts of groups from Harvard to Santa Barbara, Calif. Abdul is showing pictures of his pilgrimage to Mecca, which, some of you may was written up in "The National Geographic" a few years back.
From Hill AFB in Utah comes word that Major A1 Sweet, a mechanical engineer in materiel management, has been awarded the Air Force Commendation medal for service at his previous station. Castle AFB in California. At Castle, Al was a project engineer and later chief of the aircraft general unit of the B-52 and KC-152 aircraft operational engineering section. He made significant contributions to SAC's capability by solving several operational problems on both types of aircraft.
Herb Knight has been flying all over the country, ostensibly on business, but I suspect really for the purpose of cementing class relations. He reports seeing Bob andLiz Jackson in San Diego over the holidays and that their family should have a new addition by the time you read this.
Herb also reports that Chicago is apparently irresistible to classmates on junkets. Recent visitors include Dick McFarland. from Minneapolis, Jim Balderston from Philadelphia, and Charlie Breed from Hanover. I was there, too, in January, Herb; but you weren't; and I unfortunately didn't have time to call anyone else.
In January, I also had the good fortune to be back in Hanover for my first Alumni Council meeting. En route, I ran into Boston lawyer Shorty Allison at La Guardia, where he was disembarking for a confab with some New York lawyers.
One change on the Hanover scene which annoyed me no end, for which I blame not the College but the town fathers, is the recent addition of three traffic lights. Their locations, in case you wish to organize a demolition expedition, are the Inn corner, the Post Office and Bank corner, and East Wheelock and Park. While we're on the subject of town, the Bank, Campion's and Putnam's have all doubled the space they occupy since our day.
The Hopkins Center does not ruin the view from the Green, and the view from the Top of the Hop is even better than that from the Inn porch. I can only describe the Center as fabulous. It doesn't look that big from the outside, but it takes well over an hour to make a quick "glance" tour' of the complex. (Don't wander in without a map or a guide the first time, or you may never find your way out.)
The Center has enabled the College to attract top faculty people in the arts who could not be reached before. I listened while one of them, Mario di Bonaventura, conducted the Dartmouth Community Symphony in the Spaulding Auditorium in the Center. The attendance was larger than I had ever seen it for the Handel Society, the orchestra sounded much better than it did when I used to write music reviews for the "Daily D," and the acoustics were magnificent.
Professor Nervi's Field House, now named for generous Nate Leverone '06, is another sight to behold, both from without and within. It's located at the southeast corner of the football field. I watched part of the track meet with Maine, and the then unused half of the building could easily have contemporaneously accommodated a football practice on a full-size field.
Saturday morning, we had the opportunity to see what's happening at the Medical School. The Alumni Council met in the Kellogg Medical Auditorium, which enjoys a building all to itself just east of the hospital. About a hundred feet farther east is the new seven-story Medical School building itself. I'm neither a scientist nor a doctor, but the facilities looked superb to me. By the way, the Med School now has a few female students.
To the north is Strasenburgh Hall, a new dormitory for 80 med students, which was dedicated that morning. I like it. Just east of the Medical School building, construction is well underway on a new library for medical books and related subjects. Between that and College Street will go the Gilman Life Sciences building.
This doesn't exhaust the story on new buildings or renovation of old ones, but Dartmouth is more than buildings. Among others, we heard Myron Tribus, the relatively new Dean of Thayer School. That guy has caught Dartmouth as if it were a contagious disease, and I guarantee you that he is spreading it. What he's doing with the place assures that its graduates won't be outmoded by computers.
I won't spend much time on the dinner in Alumni Hall in the Center "for our undefeated football teams of 1962 and 1925 because I'm certain that it will by now have been well covered elsewhere in this MAGAZINE. But I will say this, I'm even prouder of our undefeated teams of both years because of the caliber of men who played on those teams.
Those men do a lot more than just "toss that football," they didn't take courses like basket-weaving, they weren't bribed into coming to Hanover, and they played ball because they wanted to, not because they had to. I wouldn't want it any other way, and I'm willing to endure the lean years to preserve that quality of man among our players.
That brings us down to today's Dartmouth undergraduates, who more than anything else, make today's Dartmouth. I took seven freshmen whom I interviewed last year to Sunday dinner at the Inn. They are all bright as hell, but equally human. They still make hegiras to Smith, follow the team, out for football when they shouldn't because of a bad knee and then wreck an ankle, and dive in with both feet on all sorts of extracurricular activities.
There are now boys like these in every community, only they're two years younger and juniors in high or prep school. We owe it to Dartmouth to see that these prospects for the Class of '6B know about Dartmouth. I also think that, in light of what Dartmouth has to offer, we owe it to these boys to tell them about Hanover.
The Alumni Council approved a $1,250,000 goal for the Alumni Fund. '5l did its share in making 1962's drive the most successful to date and will, I am sure, do its part in exceeding this year's goal. Head Class Agent Dick Rogers is now busy lining up his teams. When one of them taps you, let's be realistic givers. Dartmouth deserves more than the local fire company. If you have any doubts, I would suggest that you get to know today's undergraduates.
Secretary, „ 2107 Fidelity-Phila. Trust Bldg. Philadelphia 9, Penna.
Treasurer, 3225 Observatory Ave., Cincinnati 8, 0.
