Gold Pick Axe Award Goes to Ort Hicks Jr. '49

At the class banquet during 1949's reunion, the annual Gold Pick Axe Award was conferred on Orton H. Hicks Jr. as the man whom classmates would most proudly claim as a '49er. Accompanying the award was this citation:

Your undergraduate activities were varied and always well done — Phi Beta Kappa, Rufus Choate Scholar, President of the Glee Club, Dartmouth College Octet, Barbary Coast, Undergraduate Council, COSO, Tennis, Baseball, Vice-President of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity, and member of Casque and Gauntlet — in the vernacular, "a tough act to follow." But you did, and well.

A Master's degree from Tuck School in 1950, and a Master of Arts in Political Geography from Dartmouth in 1956. In between, you were awarded a Danish Government Fellowship for further study in Economic Geography at the University of Copenhagen, and then served Dartmouth as Assistant to the Dean of the College, and a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Geography.

For two years you were Director of Overseas Distribution for Encyclopaedia Britannica Films. Then, in 1956, you joined the United States Information Service and served as Cultural Affairs Officer in the United States Embassy in Oslo, Norway, followed by five years as Executive Director of the German-American Institute in Darmstadt, Germany. Upon leaving that post you were awarded the Bronze Medal of Merit of the city of Darmstadt for your contribution to the enrichment of the intellectual and cultural life of that city.

In September of last year, you were named Director of American House, Cologne, Germany, the position you now hold.

You exhibited great foresight in selecting as your father a member of the Dartmouth Class of '21 who later became a Vice-President of the College. You then followed through by picking a local gal, the former Janet Fox of Lyme, New Hampshire, as your bride, thus providing a brother-in-law in the Class of '58, and in addition producing three children, two of whom are Dartmouth potential - and who knows, the way things are going up here lately, maybe little Victoria will make it, too.

The Gold Pick Axe Award for 1965 goes to Orton H. Hicks Jr., the '49er of whom we say with pride, "He was a classmate of ours at Dartmouth."