1951
Santa Claus doesn't always wait for Christmas Eve. I'd like to start off this month by saying thanks from all of us to a guy who made possible the reinstitution of an old class custom with a new verve. But to keep it a surprise, I've held off on exoressing our appreciation until now, when all of you (except for a handful who are absconding from creditors or as to whom the Post Office goofed) have received our March 1963-February 1964 class contem- porary birthday card.
"Pinky" Pfaff was seduced into doing both the art work and the copy. We remembered his talents from those days when he used to draw cartoons for, pardon-the-expression, Jacko. (I'll probably get my mouth washed out with soap the next time I get together with my old friends from the Daily D) ,
Any card contains some unused white space, and I've tried to put that on our class birthday card to use to solicit news about classmates who haven't been heard from (in terms of getting their names in this column) for some time. This brings up a subject on which I think it's about time the record was set straight, namely, which names go in this column (and the Class Newsletter) and why.
Well over a year ago, I spent a weekend going through a stack of old ALUMNI MAGAZINES, which were creating a fire hazard in my apartment, to see just who had been written up and when. The results were astounding to me in terms of the number of men about whom nothing had appeared since at least the fall of 1957, which is as far back as I looked.
On occasion, I have heard that some classmates have expressed the opinion that the only men who got coverage in this column or the Class Newsletter were personal friends of the class secretary and newsletter editor. This I can assure you is a bunch of hokum. To paraphrase the New York Times' motto, "All the news that fits, we print."
Maybe you should know where our news comes from. In my case, the College sends me monthly copies of press releases it receives from corporations, educational institutions, etc., with respect to classmates and also of newspaper articles from a clipping service. In both cases, the magic word "Dartmouth" has to appear in conjunction with your name, or the item doesn't get picked up.
Second, we try to scrape it up ourselves. Charlie Breed sends you a postcard when you move. I've taken my summer floating reunions and tried to extract some through notes on our class birthday cards.
Third, and most important, the news is volunteered —by other classmates, by others we happen to know, both alumni and non-Dartmouth acquaintances, and finally by some of you about yourselves. Writing Charlie or me unsolicited about what's happening to you and your family does not brand you as an egomaniac.
Your classmates with whom you spent four of the happiest years of your life are interested in what's become of you. I can vouch for that because I've been deluged by inquiries about other classmates during the course of the floating reunions. If you haven't seen other classmates for a while and don't have the benefit of a PR system, we'll never learn about your life unless you tell us.
Having given the "sermon of the month" in the hope that you will shed your collective modesty and help us make this column one which reports on all of the class, I think I'll unparaphrase the New York Times motto.
Al Karcher is, I suspect, beginning to regret his abdication as Newsletter Editor and his present lack of a forum in which to snipe publicly at me, well knowing that I can't take the gloves off in this staid column. Much of our correspondence doesn't quite measure up to the standards of the Times. One of these days, perhaps we should collect the missives for publication and sell the compendium under the counter for the benefit of the Alumni Fund.
Karch wrote me in "Januery," enclosing two developed pictures (which he knew I wouldn't use) and two negatives which he said "should reproduce very nicely in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE." At first, I suspected that the negatives were obscene and this was simply a plot to get me locked up when I tried to get them printed.
Fortunately, this was not the case. The Daily D departed from Times' standards some years back when it started carrying "Pogo." Charlie Widmayer can loosen up, too, and print a picture which Karch claims "was made in conjunction with the 1964 Olympics [missing comma] for which all of us were considered."
Karcher is, by the way, supposed to have something to do with Kodak's New York World's Fair exhibit. If you are out in the hinterland, why not plan to bring your family East for the Fair in June 1965? Then you can swing North to Hanover for our advanced 15th Reunion on the same trip.
We recently heard from Jeff O'Connell, who repatriated himself from lowa last fall to serve as Associate Director of the Automobile Claims Study at Harvard Law School. Come this fall, Jeff will re-expatriate himself to the Mid-West as Associate Professor of Law at the University of Illinois in Urbana.
In the meantime, John and Joan Greenwood moved for the ninth time in ten and a half years of marriage from Chicago to Fullerton, Calif. John is with the Fullerton branch of United California Bank, and Joan teaches at Orange State College in Fullerton. This closeness to home must be the reason for John's statement: "Believe it or not, neither the smog nor traffic are quite as bad in Southern California as their reputation."
"Red" Balaban is one of those kind souls who responded to my birthday card note. Putting what he has to say on top of my last summer's visit to "Whitey" Hand, I'm beginning to suspect that the handful of our classmates who returned to the land may be having a lot more fun at it than us city slickers. Here's what "Red" had to say:
I am still at Lookout Plantation, Route 2, Bonifay, Fla. (Panhandle), raising registered Angus cattle and feeding steers. I have managed at different times to be president of the Florida and Tri-State Angus Associations. In 1960, we showed the Grand Champion Angus bull and female at the Florida State Fair, and bred the Grand Champion steer in the Fat Stock Show. This has never been accomplished by a breeder before or since. As a matter of fact, we haven't come close in any of these departments since. Over the hill at 34, I still haven't discovered how to make money consistently in the cattle business or to climb barbed wire fences without tearing my clothes.
As for diversions, I got a job playing banjo and singing in a local beer joint (the county is dry) for $10 a night (one night a week) and all the beer I could drink. Lately, I am working Fridays at the Dothan, Ala., Elks Club, at a substantial raise in salary, but without the fringe benefits. I think that I was better off before.
Our family is still five. It includes me, my wife Mickey, who teaches special education in the country schools (at a salary that exceeds mine), and sons Michael, 11, Steven, 8, and daughter Rachel, 5.
The Jim Robinson ('51) family of Chattanooga, Tenn., sings a Yuletide tune.
Secretary, 2107 Fidelity-Phila. Trust Bldg. Philadelphia 9, Penna.
Treasurer,THOMAS M. PORTER 2422 Vista Terrace, Cincinnati 8, Ohio
