THREE SENIOR EMERITI: GEIGER – LORD – GOODHUE

We have already in this column discussed the emeriti professors resident in the area - about 50 of them by count - but some of the townsfolk, wondering just how arduous retirement is, have been speculating as to how long we old-timers will hang on. I have pointed out that it may be for quite a spell and in support of this contention I would call special attention to the three oldest emeriti in our midst - 94, 87, and 86 respectively with, incidentally, several more in the 80's. All of the three seniors happen to be Dartmouth men, which gives them a good start. All three joined fraternities at Dartmouth, all married, and all have led relatively peaceful and temperate lives. Two are Yankees, one a middle-westerner.

We begin with the one who tops 90 by nearly five years, William Frederick Geiger, the only surviving member of the Class of 1892, and now also the oldest living graduate of the College. Bill was born in Peoria, Ill., on a winter day in January 1870, and after graduation went back home. He started as a teacher and coach in Peoria and then spent about ten years as high school principal in Quincy and East Aurora. He continued as principal on the west coast in Seattle and Tacoma and moved up to the superintendency in the latter city in 1912. He remained in that post until 1931 when politics got hot and Bill returned to Dartmouth as Professor of Education. He retired in 1941 but was called back during the war years and taught an additional four years until re-retirement in 1946 at the age of 76.

Bill was married in 1897 to Laura Meyer, who died in 1958, and had two sons and two daughters. At Dartmouth Bill was a member of ØBK, of KKK, and C & G, and was awarded an honorary M.A. in 1922.

During his long public-school career he was active in community affairs, in such doings as the Chamber of Commerce and Public Library boards, and the Congregational Church.

He still enjoys cigars and his daily walk. This past summer he was at his own home by the Connecticut, in Lyme, N. H., with the company of one of his daughters and her husband, Joseph Piazza '29. He still enjoys callers and" retains that active interest in life which keeps men going. In recent years he has closed the house in winter and stayed with one or the other of his daughters.

Our middle emeritus is the only native Hanoverian in the lot. Frederic Pomeroy Lord '9B was born in the old home on College Street, about on the site of the present Steele chemistry building, on December 28, 1876. He was the son of the renowned Professor of Classics, John K. Lord '68, and grandson of Nathan Lord, President of Dartmouth from 1828 to 1863. It was natural that Fred, after a tour at St. Johnsbury Academy, attended Dartmouth. He lived at home, for reasons of economy, but joined DKE for social life, and graduated with ØBK rank in 1898. After teaching a year in the Fitchburg (Mass.) High School, he made one of the important decisions in his life — that he wanted to study medicine - and won his M.D. at the Dartmouth Medical School in 1903.

The practice of medicine took him west to lowa where teaching at the University of lowa led to a second important decision - that he preferred to teach medicine rather than practice it. And so it was in the Corn State that he began what turned out to be a long and distinguished career in the teaching of anatomy. While in lowa he married Lydia Mather, at Springdale in 1908. A son of this union continued the Lord tradition at Dartmouth by graduating in 1936.

Naturally the Hanover tug was strong and when Dr. J. M. Gile '87, the Dean of the Medical School, invited Fred back home, he responded with alacrity. So began his long teaching career here until stopped by retirement in 1947. During this period he was a very busy man, adding to a heavy teaching load, service as president of the New Hampshire Medical Society and active affiliation with a wide variety of professional groups, both anatomical and ornithological.

In this brief story we must not fail to mention Dr. Lord's famous bicycle, now a prized possession of the Hanover Historical Society. In the summer of 1897 Fred and his fellow townsman, Charles Proctor '00, took a bicycle trip in Europe. They brought their bicycles back with them and Fred rode his high-saddled machine around town until 1961, when he decided that after 64 years he had had enough wheeling.

Dr. and Mrs. Lord have over the years been gracious hosts to a large number of friends, with "tea at the Lords" - a regular feature of their life for fifty years - a most pleasant and memorable experience, and one which for many invites frequent repetition. They winter now in Dunedin, Florida, close by Fred's brother and sister, Laura Scales, Litt.D. '39, and his cousins, Steve Chase '96 and Fred Chase '05 - also old Hanover boys.

The youngest of our group is Everett Walton Goodhue '00. Some would attribute Everett's happy longevity to the fact that he is a combination of Cape Cod and Vermont, with birth on St. Patrick's Day 1878 in West Barnstable, Mass., and boyhood in Vermont. His father served as a Congregational minister in both states. In the old Vermont tradition Everett remembers when in Westminster West the husky town blacksmith was the only Democrat around and hence a fine target for ribbing by the boys - including Everett.

After graduation from Dartmouth, where Everett was a member of Chi Phi, he enjoyed a College fellowship to make a study of the situation of newsboys in Boston, carried on with Boston's famous South End Settlement House as a base, and leading to an earned M.A. from Dartmouth in 1905. In the meantime he had taught a year at Montpelier's Methodist Seminary and started a teaching career in economics at Colgate University which extended from 1903 to 1920. This was followed by a year's teaching at Cornell and then a long tour of duty in the Economics Department at Dartmouth from 1921 to 1948. In 1911 he had married Mary Taylor in Hamilton, N. Y., and it is pleasant to record that they still live happily together.

One amazing thing about Everett is that after official retirement from Dartmouth he continued for another eight years at The Principia College in Elsah, Ill. He went for one year and, like the man who came to dinner, then stayed on, compiling the unusual record of 54 years of active teaching.

Upon his re-retirement in 1956 Everett and his wife returned to an apartment in Hanover and still continue to enjoy life and the many rich offerings of the Hanover community. Chase Field is close by them and in at least three seasons of the year furnishes them open country with the added dividend of a lot of athletic activity by proxy.

An interesting group — these long-lived emeriti - and I am sure the towns-folk join you all in wishing them long continued health and joy and wishing us younger retirees some equal measure of good fortune!

William F. Geiger '92, Professor of Education Emeritus, who will be 95 on January 23, now has the distinction of beingthe oldest living graduate of the College.