1921
Harry Mosser continues his oenological studies. About his favorite Riesling, Piesporter Goldtropfen Spatlese, he may exclaim, "Queen of the Moselles! What delicacy and fragrance!" A recent visitor in Japan, Harry will Ripley you into a believe-it-or-not about "good Japanese wines," but he is significantly silent about sake, for he knows that this "rice wine" is actually a still, uncarbonated beer, produced from steamed rice, with starch converted into sugar by a special yeast. Slowly fermented, though given little or no maturation, it is 24 to 28 degrees proof, really intoxicating, hardly to be compared to your extra-dry martinis 6 to 1, icecold. Served warm, sake is sweet with a bitter after-taste. No, Harry so much prefers Riesling to Pinot, Traminer, Muscat, Sylvaner, and Chasselas that he speaks well even of a Japanese Riesling.
"Bit and Ike - they look alike." Or used to. With two-syllable surnames beginning with C, Burt Chapman of Minneapolis ("Bit") and Alden Chester of Maiden ("Ike") roomed together in 12 Mass. But not really alike. Bit parted his hair in the middle and Ike brushed his pompadour. Wayzata Burt has entertained Kokomo Ike at The Inn, Rancho Santa Fe. Another '21 friendship stays green. Once of Bismarck, Gene Leon ard took Burt to three of the four world series, and now Burt is looking for a suitable gift for the one he calls his "patron, the man who has everything." They play golf together, jockey for strokes on the first hole, keep honest scores, and do right by each other at the 19th. Burt engages in rapturous praise when he talks of The Inn, ran by Wes Hadden '41, its annual Dartmouth dinner (green ties de rigueur), and golf tournament, which pro- duces some fabulous shots by Pete Kelsey '25, father of the Episcopal priest in Hanover, Rev. Preston T. Kelsey II '58.
The sympathy of 1921 goes to Rolandand Jand Jessie Batchelder, who lost Bob Siegars, their only son-in-law, killed in an automobile accident and buried in Shelburne, Vt.. on Roland's birthday, Dec. 4. A staff sergeant, one of the first to fight in Korea, educated as an electrical engineer at UNH, he worked for General Electric in Burlington. Jessica, his wife, mother of their three sons and a daughter ranging from 12 to 6, is an occupational therapist at the Vermont Rehabilitation Center in Burlington.
Cadet White they call him in the Dartmouth Army ROTC. The son of Stan White, he is making his. father happy. As Cadet Lieutenant Colonel, Jonathan, Student Commander of the Mountain and Winter Warfare Detachment, directs the activities of 60 cadets in mountaineering, skiing, winter survival, counter-guerilla and insurgency tactics, and small-unit operations in overnight bivouacs. Cadet White will be commissioned in June. He is DKE. Our Stan was Cosmos, fraternity brother of Jim Smead, Otis Severance, Dave Plume, Gus Perkins, Walter Henshaw, Hal Braman, Allen Brailey, and Ken Bean.
After their 63-day European sojourn. Jerry and Helen Cutler remember with particular vividness the delicate marble columns of the Alhambra, Granada, and the El Grecos, Toledo; Schonbrunn in Vienna and Mozart by candlelight in Salzburg; those gems of medieval towns Dinkelsbühl and Rothenburg; and the wild rabbit running in front of their bus on Unter den Linden in desolate East Berlin. They would like to compare notes with Harry Mosser about Alsatian wines in Strassbourg. In search of new stimuli, the Cutlers fly this month to South America.
An up-and-down peregrinator who cares little about mere miles and kilometers, Connie Keyes is in a class by himself. Within 180 days he viewed the top of the world from the Jungfrau, a peak in SW Central Switzerland, 13,668 feet high, and the bottom of the world from the Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, 348 feet deep. Unspoiled by European color, Connie marvelled at the emerald green pool and lime deposits in Big Room, half a mile long and 400 feet wide.
Pete Bailey has a feeling for color also. He dislikes all shades of Duluth snow, white, grey, blue, or yellow, and is heading for Florida to check on reports that it has more sun than Southern California. Retired Dec. 15, he spent Christmas and New Year's with his Air Force son Bob and his ten (10) children. Just to prove openmindedness, Pete may point north for New England in May.
From the Squam Lakes Club, soon to be open winter and summer, Jim Dodge issues a challenge. "I hereby proclaim myself as the first 1921 great-grandfather. My grand-daughter Sheila gave birth to a baby boy in Barre, Vt., July 6, 1965. All disputants should furnish Giovanni Gregge, Head Genealogist, Box 925, Hanover, with certified names and dates. Photographs with the four generations are particularly desired."
Sev Severance will retire next June from teaching but go back to work immediately for the Plymouth County Teachers Credit Union of which he is treasurer.
Joe Folger, happy in Nantucket, is unhappy that he missed in Hanover WarrenHomer whom he came to know and value when Homer was studying law and he, romance languages at Harvard. Joe has added German for recreational reading. With his binoculars he watches shore surf, crows, hawks, and gulls. One day some 300 Canada geese flew right over his head. They were heading for Washington and John Sullivan whom they wished to torment. Starlings in huge flocks settle on wires for some sort of a meeting. Joe remarks that they are purely local birds, and, like the Boston lady, don't go anywhere. "Why should we travel? We're here already." He recalls a Dartmouth cocktail party. Someone asked him where he came from. "From Nantucket," the questioner exclaimed. "People go there. They don't come from there." Joe told him that he had been coming from and going thither for 300 years.
"Limited" is the word Tom Staley uses to describe his 1965 activities. He has cut his farm way down to only 50 purebred Angus cattle and 290 steers. He produced only 15,000 bushels of corn, 12.000 earmarked for steers. His travels have been "limited." In the spring he motored a trifling 3,500 miles through Tennessee, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. In the fall he almost convinced himself that he was no Missouri stick-in-the-mud by driving 9,512 miles through the Pacific Northwest and the Canadian Southwest. His summary: "Worthwhile."
Ellis and Lucy Briggs are sailing from Florida this month on that aristocratic Portuguese ship which underwent some plebeian handling on her maiden voyage. Opponents of the administration hijacked it. Briggs destination: Lisbon where Ted '56 is Second Secretary of the Embassy after duty in Washington, Bolivia, and Berlin. Nature lovers, Ellis and Lucy hope to return to Hanover if not in time for trailing arbutus at least for toadstools and poison ivy, but they may linger abroad until autumn, for poison ivy does not achieve its full beauty of foliage until after their leaves turn red and invite city dwellers to pick armfuls to take home to their chldren.
You had better not miss this one: the Mid-Winter Frolic of 1921 and 1920 at the Highway Motel, Concord, N. H., March 12. Cocktail hour at 5, superior. Dinner at 7, superior. Overnight accommodations, superior. Company, superior. The master of ceremonies will be Al Foley '20; while the speaker (also showing films) is to be that Amazing-But-True Doug Storer, traveler extraordinary, photographer extraordinary, wit and man-of-the-world extraordinary. If it proves true that you do not attend, your friends will raise incredulous eyelids and exclaim, "Amazing."
Secretary, Box 925 Hanover, N. H.
Treasurer, 12 W. Mystic Ave., Mystic, Conn. 06355
Bequest Chairman,
