1921
After 26 years of marriage, Werner Janssen, orchestra leader, and Ann Harding, actress, are divorced. In a 30-minute uncontested hearing Miss Harding of Westport, Conn., charging intolerable cruelty, testified that Werner had tried to dominate her life, isolated her from her friends, preferred to live abroad, and caused her to develop an ulcer.
Doug Storer has a nose for the bizarre. In Florida he recently made a picture entitled "Killers and Clowns" with actors and actresses who, though brilliant, seldom play in Broadway theatres. The hero, heroine, and supporting cast consisted of a porpoise, an anaconda, a shark, alligators, rattlesnakes, and a whale called Mopey Dick. Hardly a producer to stop here, Doug is working on a new book containing pictures and stories about amazing-but-true animals. Its purpose is not only to show strange and little known but also familiar animals performing unusual feats of endurance, agility, intelligence, and mastication. Narrow the book is not. The range is from the worlds largest and taciturn insect to a stream-lined and loquacious porpoise; from a ferocious but kind lion, to a timid lamb, his friend, from a chilopoda, which has 173 pairs of legs, and, though blind, can see well enough to kill its prey with poisoned claws, to a shark with boy-scout tendencies, willing to accept food from a human hand and to leave the hand intact. Nor is Doug himself narrow. He will make another trip around the world and concentrate on zoos, aquariums, and aviaries specializing in the grotesque.
Other twenty-oners am mobile. Take Celia Sonnenfeld. When Ted catches cold, she packs his bags and sends him off in bachelor style to Puerto Rico. Returning, unable to conjure up a sniffle, Ted packs Celia's bags and whisks her off to Florida for golf, swimming, and relaxing - but led goes too.
Tony and Martha Gates are planning on Ireland and Southern Spain. Disappointed in the Canaries last year, they enjoyed Madeira particularly. The American Export Line took them to Cannes, Nice, Monaco, Naples, Genoa, Casablanca, Gibralta, Barcelona, and Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Jerry and Helen Cutler, following their avowed intention of getting away from Adrian, Mich., more often, spent a couple of weeks in Florida in February and left last month on their round-the-world journey.
Francis Hickman spent Christmas on an island visited by only such out-of-the-way travellers as Bob Wilson, Ellis Briggs, and Ike Chester: Elba. Then Francis moved on to Sicily and spent the last couple of weeks of a two months' European stay in London.
Bart and Kaddie Bartholomew flew to San Francisco to listen to the wedding bells of their son Bob '59 and Sharon L. Deming, Feb. 9. From Scandanavia earlier had sounded nursery bells. Dr. Polly B. Feigl (nee Bartholomew and Ph.D., Math, University of Minnesota) gave birth to Kurt L. Feigl in Sweden Jan. 30. Eric, husband and father, at the University of Goteburg is engaged in medical research for space flight and the physiology of the heart.
In Hanover during February for interviews with Tuck School students, HiltCampbell flew away to Caracas on business, which coincided felicitously with a carnival. Hilt retires Sept. 30, 1964 with plans beautifully flexible. He and Mildred will spend more time in Canada and visit new places.
The sympathy of 1921 goes to LinkMiller whose wife, Mildred, died Feb. 11.
Jim Smead, retiring this month from the Springfield Hospital, was praised by the trustees for his 35 years of devoted service and awarded a silver plate. Hanover 1921 men may see something of him, for his daughter Martha Ellen ("Moppy"), no longer at Johns Hopkins, is living with her husband in Windsor, Vt., where he has a position with the Cone factory. Once settled, Moppy may be scouting about for a laboratory job at the Hitchcock Hospital, Hanover.
Economist and Secretary of the Appropriations Committee of Union Carbide, Bord Helmer still yearns to buy a good, inexpensive hydrofoil boat or VTOL plane. He wonders whether he may not be the last first-time grandfather in 1921, now that his Betsy has a daughter, Lisa Blair Nickerson. His other attractive daughter, Marinda, is doing distinguished personnel work on Parents Magazine, a nifty way to use a B.S. in Education. After seven years of devoted service on the Greenwich Board of Education, Burd, Bord's wife, is taking a breather. Bord's Scotch cook once described skiing as "a stern sport," and Bord has quit it for tennis.
It was '21 up at Lakeside Inn, Mount Dora, Fla. From Maitland and a new house, Ken and Eloise Thomas drove over to lunch with Roger and Caroline Wilde. For 11 years Tom and Olga Griffith have been wintering at Lakeside, and Tom has built up a reputation as a fisherman, ardent and skilful. He slips out of a back door and returns some hours later from St. John's River with 21 big shad, among them some lady shads filled with you know what. Then Tom sweet-talks the chef, and something grilled and appetizing emerges from the kitchen at dinner time. Ken and Tom had not seen each other since undergraduate days, and Roger had seen Tom only once, at the Prexy Hopkins dinner in New York some years ago, although as roommates at KKK they saw each other every day. Roger and Caroline introduced Ken and Eloise to a favorite Wilde and Nels Barker sport, bird listening and watching, around Lake Dora where several pairs of Florida jays, also called scrub jays, never seen elsewhere, are a particular delight. Tame, these birds fly to an outstretched hand offering friendship, but they prefer sunflower seeds. Want to hear Roger at his most eloquent? Ask him about his new Bell-Howell with the 200 mm. telephoto lens. Chan and LornaSymmes may have heard him Belling and Howelling when the Wildes visited them at Siesta Key after visiting the Thomases at Long Boat Key.
You retiring? Ask Don Smith about benefits. Six months after he did, he felt 100% better. He and Prue are heading for their beloved Boothbay Harbor this summer. Their daughter Jean, married to Larry Murphy, a teacher at Fay School, is adopting a second baby, to be a companion to her adopted son, Marshall Donald.
Rollie Batchelder is receiving congratulations about his son's promotion. A product of Tuck School '57, George did so well with the American Enka Corporation that I. I. and T. persuaded him to go to work in the subsidiary Suprenant where as Director of Sales and Marketing he watches over 21 (splendid number, that!) offices throughout the United States as they market products manufactured in Clinton.
Skinny Moore is interested in Colby College, celebrating its sesquicentennial this year, for his daughter Tina is a sophomore on the Dean's List. Patty, 15, at Wellesley High is making her daddy happy also.
In Look, Newsweek, and U. S. News and World Report, Kemper Insurance ran a full-page color advertisement which read: "Though you no longer see handwritten endorsements on our policies today, putting the personal touch in insurance is still our policy. We call it Kemper Care." The cut showed an old-fashioned nib pen with a cork finger-piece, an old-fashioned insurance policy filled out in longhand, an old-fashioned inkwell, and down in the corner this information of interest to 1921. OUR FIRST POLICY - RITTENHOUSE & EMBREE CO., CHICAGO. Bill Embree, of course.
Secretary, 33 East Wheelock St. Hanover, N.H.
Class Agent, 6 Ross Rd., Scarsdale, N.Y.
