1902

After much urging, Phil Thompson has finally consented to submit another of those entertaining "Then and Now" articles for which he has become famous, and not only with contemporaneous classes. They are valuable source material for future historians of the College. It is here quoted in full.

"What happened at Cambridge last fall, when our Dartmouth football team gained so spectacular a triumph, could not have been dreamed of as possible in our day.

"THEN, our chief athletic rivals were Brown, Amherst, Williams, and Wesleyan, and the great football game of the year was the one against Brown. Our coaching staff in football was small and tough, and our head coach, who was not skilled in diplomacy or 'parlor talk' greatly offended the Harvard coaches by referring to our game in Cambridge as 'just a practice game.' The football squad was small, not more than 75 men trying out for the team. Baseball was then the most popular sport at Dartmouth. Later, Cornell became our great rival, and finally we started a new era by defeating Harvard at the opening of their new stadium. It was many years before we defeated Yale. I joined a group of four other Dartmouth fans from Maine, who swore that we would go to New Haven each fall until the Dartmouth football team defeated Yale. For seven years we traveled to New Haven, and all we saw was one tie, 21-21. Finally, we had our desire, and I am ashamed to say, we returned with pieces of the Yale goal posts.

"NOW. In the past years, all is changed and we are equal to the best in the Ivy League. The past two years, our great rival has been Princeton, but Yale, Cornell, Harvard, Brown meet us as equals. Our coaching staffs have been headed by gentlemen of the highest character, efficient and respected by friend and foe. Our football squads are tremendous and when they stream on the field at pre-game time they look like an army corps. The crowds who attend the games are often of capacity size, while baseball at Dartmouth seems to attract only a scattering few. Football is the grand spectacle. May it long remain at Dartmouth in the spotlight to which it has attained."

It is necessary to report the recent death of Ethel, the widow of our Bob Estabrook, in Plymouth, Mass., after a painful illness, on Jan. 16, 1965. They were married July 28, 1921 in Brookline, Mass. Bob retired from the executive committee of New England Tel. and Tel. Company in 1945 and moved to Duxbury, Mass., soon afterwards. He was much interested in the work of our our classmate, Dr. Bob Smith, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. "Esty" died in 1958, in the same hospital in Plymouth as his wife and almost exactly seven years earlier.

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