1921
Marvelous is the resilience of retired 1921 men. Vice President of John Hancock and President of the Class, Reg Miner answered an SOS call from Logan Airport on a winter evening more suitable for Swiss Saint Bernards than for Caribbean visitors. Two frantic Cuban women and two small girls, all incapable of understanding English, needed instant help. Fluent in English, Reg knows only five words of Spanish, ; Caramba! (Gracious me!) and ;No lo quiera Dios! (God forbid!), hardly tactful under the circumstances. He persuaded a Spanish-speaking couple to drive him to Boston in their station wagon, collect the Castro fugitives, and deposit them in the Wellesley Hills home of a kind lady. She kept them bedded down and fed for a week while Reg furnished an apartment, clothing, furniture, food, heat, gas, electricity, toys, and good will. After three weeks of fruitless job hunting for them, he put them on a bus for Brooklyn where they could be near friends and relatives, who took over in a torrent of gesticulating Spanish.
Resilient also is Borden Helmer, full of new excitements: house, job, outlook. After 24 years with Union Carbide, he retired Feb. 1. Eight days later he was elected treasurer of Cooper Union, a college specializing in engineering on Cooper Square (or Astor Place, if you are a New Yorker). It boasts of three buildings, 1300 regular students, 1800 extension students, financial problems, and a new treasurer.
At the 40th Annual Banquet of the Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce recently, cently,some 500 persons clapped when Norm Crisp, physician, former Dartmouth football coach, and Chairman of the Board of Education, was named Man of the Year. Nashua is also honored by a new building to house the professional office of three physicians: Dr. Norman W. Crisp '21 (father), Dr. Norman W. Crisp Jr. '49 (son), and Dr. John E. Crisp '53 (son).
Feted also were Mason and Mildred Dickinson by the Department of Military and Air Science, UMass, at the picture-handing ceremony of Capt. Walter Mason Dickinson in Dickinson Hall. A regular army officer and native of Amherst, Capt. Dickinson, Mason's heroic ancestor, before entering West Point in 1876 attended Mass Aggie. A veteran of the Indian Wars, he was Professor of Military Science at Mass Aggie 1892-1896. He was killed in action 1898 in the Cuban War.
Bake Baker has presented the College Archives with a letter by a physician and clergyman, Gardner S. Brown, written in 1831 when he was an undergraduate, Class of 1834, to Philanda Simonds, his cousin, in which he expressed anxiety about the state of her soul, and his. Reading between the lines, one realizes that, really worried about another young girl, he was sounding out Cousin Philanda not about the young girl's soul but about her heart. Sally, Bake's wife, a social worker, places children in adoption, supervises them for a year, and completes the adoption in the probate court.
Carleton McMackin has written little music lately, but he has finished his book about the Maine of his youth. The first chapter pleased the editor of the Boston Sunday Herald so much that he gave Carleton a handsome check and will publish it soon under the title "Going Down East." Carleton and Roxy are wintering on the Delmarva Peninsula, Md., a neck of land including three states, a region devoted to raising broilers, grain, melons, and fruit. Laurel is an old-fashioned town where people you do not know say good morning, hold doors open for you, and smilingly wave you across the street rather than run you down in their car. In the great, blizzard Laurel had 26 inches of snow, the worst in 100 years. With farm families isolated, all pregnant women immediately started to have labor pains, and the Governor had to call the National Guard.
Bill and Linda Spencer, still titillated by their West Indian cruise on the Gripsholm, a beautiful ship with excellent food, accommodations, and entertainment, favor St. Thomas, improving under our control, and Curagao, where the Dutch, neat, straightforward, and honest, lived up to their reputations as businessmen. A likely candidate for further Bill-Linda outings is Barbados, that coral island, British, of the Lesser Antilles.
Bill Marcy, however, prefers Montego Bay, Jamaica. In a rented house staffed by a good cook and a laundress, he enjoyed February, the Caribbean, and golf. Returning to Buffalo to endure March after a fashion, he packed again for a spring cruise on the Spencer Gripsholm to visit Spain, France, and England where Bill's daughter, her husband, and two children live.
Don Smith loves lobsters, but not even Prue could undermine his firm stand against over-indulgence in Maine. In Camden and East Boothbay he cut down on his usual quota because they are so scarce that restaurant prices have soared. Don is better pleased by another rise, his son-in-law's. Larry Murphy, on the faculty of Fay School, Southboro, has been appointed assistant Athletic Director with an appropriate increase in pay.
Nelson Smith, still teaching at the Columbia School of Business, in anticipation of his retirement in June 1967 has moved from Bronxville to Madison, Conn., convenient to the Yale Bowl, about 18 miles east of New Haven. He speaks of pleasant visits from Bob and Ros Loeb, Hugh and Betty McKay, and Dud and Helen Robinson.
With a small woodworking shop in his Concord basement and eight grandchildren, the demands on Dick Rolfe, retired banker, are tremendous. He does a large volume of business with no profit.
Vice president of Hearst Magazines for Marketing and Research, Harry Chamberlaine retired Feb. 28. His most recent assignment was the development of Buenhogar, Latin American counterpart of Good Housekeeping. Long active in the magazine industry, Harry has served as Board Chairman of the Periodical Publishers Association and treasurer of the Publishers Information Bureau. One of his toughest assignments was supervision of Popular Mechanics' eight international editions.
In 1919 Tracy Higgins, Bob Loeb, and Ralph Steiner skied to the hotel in Lebanon for Thanksgiving dinner. Tiring on the return, Ralph remarked that he was not the man he once was. "No," said Bob, "and you never were." In 1966, feeling older at times than all of us, Ralph offers to 1921 Schopenhauers filled with saturnine senility another bon mot by Bob. Reading about Vietnam, Ralph was reminded of a walk with Bob one night. Ralph said, "I can't see my hand in front of my face." Out of the dark came a Loebism, "Who wants to?"
Ralph is pleased about his stepson, Bill, the grandson of William Allan Neilson, onetime President of Smith College, and son of Caroline, Mrs. Steiner. After eye-fatiguing lucubration at Yale resulting in a degree magna cum laude, Bill is now responding to Oxford pedagogy. His tutor suggests a few books, but hardly expects Bill to wear out his eyes, because the books, the tutor suggests, may not be worth much. Different though modern Oxford may be from the casual Oxford of Franklin McDuffee, who chose not to take final examinations for a degree but wrote a poem extolling Michelangelo, which won the Newdigate Prize, Oxford still relies on plenty of sherry and port for the right sort of academic stimulation.
Secretary, 33 East Wheelock St. Hanover, N. H. 03755
Class Agent, Box 764, Hanover, N. H. 03755
