1921
Some men feel let down after a party. But not Kent McKinley. He was so excited that he nearly suffered a coronary. Wearing black pants, black shirts, and black masks, four white gunmen invaded his luxurious Sarasota home in July and stuck two guns into his ribs. With neckties they bound his feet and hands and laid him on a couch. About to be gagged, Kent, with remarkable sangfroid, told the thugs that because of a coronary weakness a gag might kill him. They would then face first-degree murder charges. Respecting the law, they desisted. Three ransacked the upstairs, and one kept watch over Kent. With how much loot they escaped, Kent could not determine at the time because at the time his bedroom and Marj's were so messed up. In March Kent suffered a $90,000 loss when burglars made off with jewelry and furs, later recovered. In June a burglar alarm scared off intruders. A better burglar alarm, Lord Chumbley, a large pet bulldog, might have planted white teeth in black trousers, but he had died in June on a plane flight to the McKinley Buffalo home.
When four years ago Carlton Van Cleve sold his house in Norwalk, Conn., and moved to Mt. Dora, Fla., full of sun, lakes with fish and bathing beauties, and conviviality, he made minor news. Many classmates head for Florida: Bill Owen (Boca Raton), Skinny Moore and Joe Schultz (Clearwater), Red Stanley (Daytona Beach), Bill Keys (Deerfield Beach), Charles Kouns (Delray Beach), George Reynolds (Jensen Beach), Ken Thomas (Maitland), Al Youngerman (Miami Beach), George McMillan (Nokomis), Al Catteral and quick-witted Kent McKinley (Sarasota). Where's Doug Storer? Van makes major news because he and Mary cannot stand Florida heat and humidity and cannot forget New England autumn coloring. Present address: Fawn Lakes Country Club for Retired Persons, P. O. Box 397, Manahawkin, N. J. 08050.
Roger Wilde is not without hobbies. His latest is ferns. An expert, he mounts them on white sheets of paper and even slits the stems to examine them under his microscope. He tests common beliefs: that spleenwort is so named because of the alleged efficacy in curing diseases of the spleen; that an infusion of the roots of the Common Polopody cures melancholy and prevents fearsome nightmares; that the royal fern can heal wounds and mend broken bones; that the male fern is a vermifuge; and that maidenhair spleenwort can make new hair grow on old bald heads. But ferning is really minor. His major concern is .for the Forty-Sixth Reunion, June 12-14, 1967. He has sixteen women working for him and seventeen men, all carefully selected for their ability to give you maximum pleasure.
You love travel, but you dislike driving at 70 on equally spaced ribbons running for hundreds of miles through soft-drink advertisements and neon lights. Now hear this about Vance Clark. At the north rim of Yellowstone Park a ranger hauled him by jeep into back country where with a 400 mm. telephoto lens Vance took some "decent" pictures of moose.
In Hanover to show his grandson John Keys the beauties of Dartmouth. Bill Keys glanced nostalgically at the Phi Delta Theta House looking about the same as it did in 1917. His thoughts dwelt happily on LorinGoulding and Tom Norcross, Pud Walker and Ralph Ruder.
Carleton McMackin has written a book about early Maine when without refrigerators, radios, TV, and electric lights, people could have fun. The place: Pemaquid Point; the years, 1901-1907. The settings: tops of trees, woodland clearings, rocky coves, and tide pools. The characters have individuality and color. With a Santa Claus beard a milkman, bent over double, totes his milk in pails and tin cans. Before entering the cow barn, another milkman gives his hands a good washing and just as he begins to reach for the first cow's teats spits on his hands. With a white moustache and a white goatee a widower taking a bride regains his youth by using his daughter-in-law's toothbrush to dye his moustache and goatee jet black. Three days before the wedding the whiskers turn a vivid purple. The daughter-in-law is angry that she must buy a new toothbrush. The bride is scared blue of Bluebeard.
David Seegal, Clinical Investigator and Consultant on Epidemic Diseases, has written more than 200 "Verses Reverent and Irreverent," under the subtitles: 1, Not too serious. 2. Wafts and Aphrodite. 3. Mutterings in Academe. 4. Queries to Jehovah. 5. Waxing and Waning. 5. Right Honorable Values. Not entirely candid, David remarks that his poems are so primitive that he would be flattered if his pen name were Grandpa Moses.
Lawyer and sonneteer. Bill Fowler is revising a couple of hundred sonnets written during the past 40 years.
Ben Tenney, who missed medicine so much that he has gone back to work two days a week for Connecticut Department of Health, writes on technical topics and now has developed a larger ambition.
Dana Lamb can hardly believe that JohnSullivan during ten days on the Ste. Marguerite could kill only a 19-pounder and a 14½ -pounder. Explanation: mercury a sweaty 85 and 90 every day.
An expert on economic relations between government and business in regulated transportation agencies and public utilities, Nelson Smith has opposed strongly proposed legislation creating a multi-billion-dollar Federal electric bank. On behalf of the Edison Electric Institute, before the House Committee on Agriculture, he made a statement running to 40 typewritten pages with footnotes, bibliography, and statistical charts. Nelson believes that the bills under consideration are not needed for service, now nearly completed in rural areas. A Federal electric bank, Nelson said, would encourage wasteful duplication of facilities and encroachment of Rural Electrification Administration borrowers upon markets adequately served by investment-owned companies. Because of lost taxes and federal credit, taxpayers would suffer. Congress could no longer exercise effective surveillance over future plans and capital outlays.
Like many retired 1921 executives, PickAnkeny cannot be called retired, and he is. almost as busy as he was with Hamm Brewing. He is still active as president of United Properties in St. Paul, a real estate and finance operation. With Gene Leonard he plays golf almost every week. With outrageous modesty they try to break down morale on the first tee. They boom their drives down the center, never say shank out loud, line up their putts, and do everything right. Result: 90's, not 80's. Ask Rynie Rothschild.
The reason why Harold Braman had to leave Abe Weld's party in Bradford early was that he had to count the money at Norwich Fair, no small assignment as it amounts to more than $2000 mostly in pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. Later with un- wearied fingers he continued work on his 16-room apartment project. He is building it in his cellar with power tools. He expects full occupancy when he puts it up some 15 feet in the air strung between two maples. It is a bird house. Tenants will be purple martens, each of which can devour 15,000 in-sects in an evening. Can you multiply 32 by 15,000?
Do you crave retirement on an Atlantic island 14 miles long and 25 miles from the mainland? Joe Folger can give you the word about Nantucket, flat and sandy, with cranberries, heather, and wild roses. Winters? When it was 26 below in Hanover, it was. a warm 9 above. Snow: negligible. At Surfside, his home, little herbage could survive winds. Surf: fiercer in late summer than in winter owing to tropical hurricanes. Opportunities for self-improvement are unlimited. The ivory tower is the attic, reached by a hoistable ladder and well stocked with classics in various languages and genealogical charts of hundreds of Folgers who kept desiring and a-siring all over the whaling world.
Secretary, Box 925 Hanover, N. H.
Treasurer, 12 W. Mystic Ave., Mystic, Conn. 06355
Bequest Co-chairmen, AND ROGER C. WILDE
