1916
STIRLING WILSON:AN APPRECIATION
Commander Francis Stirling Wilson, U.S.N. Retired, veteran of both World Wars, with a heritage dating back to the Revolutionary War, with forbears on both sides in the Civil War, was intensely American. Stirling came to Hanover with an inquiring mind, which Dartmouth developed to the point of forever asking why. When Stirling reasoned he was right he could be a minority of one, or among the majority. The Faculty and the Administration were aware of this in our day. Stirling, on his own, went over on the Ford Peace Ship in 1915, the story of which he wrote in his interesting style in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE in 1960.
Stirling's intensity and loyalty were carried over into every organization or activity in which he was associated. Stirling loved his native Washington. He loved his Class of 1916 and all his classmates, and he loved Dartmouth. We of 1916 have sensed his love through his Balmacaan Newsletters, which he had written for many years. Their worth was recognized by the College with a Citation in 1961, naming him the Newsletter Editor of the Year.
Stirling's God-giving talent was for writing, whether it was poetry (he wrote the ode for 1916's Commencement), his news reporting (witness his Newsletters), or his creative humor, which we devoured in the Jacko, and much later, the Barbershopper Magazine, "Harmony," in which he wrote a monthly humorous article under the name of Professor Wilson.
You could add another deep love - barbershopping. He sang a splendid high tenor. He was a Director of SPEBSQSA Inc., the initials of that long named organization, the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America. He wrote lyrics for songs which Society members still sing. It's no wonder he was for years one of the certified judges of the Society.
But there are two phases of our beloved Stirling which envelop our heart. He was a lover of peace, although a ready fighter for the right, a warrior; it's so true that the real soldier or sailor is a lover of peace. And Stirling suffered innumerable physical ailments in silence. He was invalided out of the Naval Service in 1954 with a bad heart condition, to which were later added a temporarily arrested case of cancer and other physically debilitating disorders. Only his family and nearest friends knew of this situation. Of one thing I was sure - Stirling Wilson - American, Dartmouth man, fighter for the right, warrior, peace lover, writer and songster would go out with his boots on, and a song in his heart. What a heritage he has left to his beloved wife, Betty, his two daughters, Peggy and Janet, his son, Stirling, and his grandchildren. JACK ENGLISH.
Our classmate, Don Wallace, whose obituary appears in the In Memoriam section of this or a subsequent issue, was not known to many in the Class. He left at the end of our freshman year, later graduated at Harvard, and did not continue his interest in Dartmouth. His wife writes me that at the end of the War he was sent to Oxford, where he helped organize and train baseball teams.
He had retired from his position at the Stewart Indian School only a brief time, when he died suddenly at Carson-Tahoe Hospital, of an occlusion, while waiting for an examination in the x-ray "department.
The Class expresses its sincere sympathy to Mrs. Wallace and to Don's stepson, James Stoddard, who also lives in Carson City.
Our Promenaders: John and Elsie Stearns sailed from Boston on January 25 on the "S.S. Saturnia" for Sicily and a three months' trip around the Mediterranean. They expected to spend a month in Sicily before visiting Athens and some of the Greek islands. I have it on the authority of RogEvans that they will be back in Hanover for the Potato Festival around April 15. John's potato planting party is one that '16ers eagerly look forward to. ... Lou Cutler sends me a card from Barbados. She and Sam are on a sea-safari cruise on the S.S. Brasil. Art and Caroline Conley and DickParkhurst were at the dock in New York and report that they got a fine send-off. They have been down the east coast of South America and as I write this they are on the east coast of Africa. Lou confided that Sam was positively devastin' in his white dinner jacket, and that she is keeping him under close surveillance. ... In January Fletch and Marge Andrews set sail from New York on the "S.S. Caronia" for a trip around the world. ... George Harding Smith came back to New York from his home in France in December to visit his two daughters, his sons-in-law and his seven grandchildren. He expected to return to Europe on March 18, ...Ken Stowell writes from San Francisco that the little old house in which they had an apartment has been "eaten up by a clam bucket on a sixty-foot crane," that they have not been able to find another apartment to their liking, and so they've decided to go traveling. They expect to be in Normandy in late spring and hope to see George Harding Smith. Since they will travel until fall they will not be at their summer home in Friendship, Me., this year.
I regret to learn from Ed Knight Jr. '44 of the death of his mother, Lucile Paxton Knight, at Charleston, W. Va., on January 11. Our classmate, Ed, famous raconteur, died five years ago.
As I close these notes word comes from Jack English, who, with Kay, is spending a few months in Florida, of the Memorial Service held for Stirling in the Methodist Church at Ormond Beach, on Sunday afternoon, February 16. Jack writes that the service was impressive, the music superb, and the eulogy, pronounced by the minister, the story of a blithe spirit. Your Secretary hopes to have a more detailed account of the service, and the eulogy in full, in the Newsletter. He will close these notes with the lyric poem which ended the eulogy the poem, prophetically, was written by Stirling himself.
See the river winding where the willows bend, There are memories binding, there's my journey's end.
Evening shadows falling, summer days must die. Heart to heart is calling as the dark comes nigh.
While the stars are gleaming, while our hearts entwine, Old Potomac's dreaming, and all its dreams are mine. I am coming home, Love, to where the willows bend; . By the shining river, there's my journey's end.
Secretary, 7 Swarthmore Pl., Swarthmore, Pa.
Class Agent, 411 Lafayette St., Salem, Mass.
