Alumni Chief Retires This Month

Vice President Orton H. Hicks '21 will still remain active as alumni and fund consultant

IT has been no secret in Hanover that Orton Havergal Hicks '21, Vice President of the College, would be retiring this June because of Dartmouth's policy of mandatory retirement at age 65. Anyone who knows Ort Hicks realizes that age here is merely a matter of the calendar, for he works more incessantly, travels more, and is engaged in more activities than almost any other member of the College's faculty or staff.

Dartmouth's far-flung alumni family, most of whom seem to know Ort personally, might have some concern that his retirement will end his great value to the College in alumni relations and fund raising. But last month's news release about the appointment of George H. Col ton '35 as Ort Hicks' successor had this welcome sentence: "Upon his retirement and as Vice President Emeritus, Hicks will continue to serve the College on a part-time basis as Special Representative of the President in alumni and fund-raising matters."

The "part time" reference caused one administrative colleague to comment wryly, "I guess they mean Ort will now work only 18 hours a day for Dartmouth."

It is hard to realize that Hicks has been at Dartmouth only eight years. Prior to joining the College staff he had spent almost a lifetime in the motion picture industry. Somebody once called him that "mobile movie mogul," and there is little doubt among his associates in Hanover that he moves about both physically and mentally as rapidly as human energy and perseverance permit. Hicks is one of the three top administrative officers at Dartmouth working directly under President Dickey. His areas of responsibility include alumni and public relations, fund raising, public events, and publications. The other vice president, John F. Meek '33, Treasurer of the College, is in charge of financial matters, plant and operations, personnel and related programs. At the same level is Prof. John W. Masland who, as Provost, is responsible for all academic and faculty affairs.

Mobility may be part of Ort Hicks' success, but the most important attribute seems to be that very early in life he "discovered people." He rather than Dale Carnegie could easily have written Howto Win Friends and Influence People. This interest in people came early in life. A native of Minneapolis, Ort attended Shattuck School in nearby Faribault, graduating at the head of his class in 1917 and leading a delegation of six classmates to Dartmouth. He enjoyed Shattuck and since has served it well, in many alumni capacities and currently as a member of its board of trustees.

Hicks came to Dartmouth by accident and coincidence. He roomed at Shattuck with Bill Benton (later a U.S. Senator from Connecticut) and Ort planned to go to Yale with Benton and was accepted there. At the last minute Benton decided to go to Carleton for a year, so Hicks set off by train for the East with another Shattuck classmate, Ryland Rothschild '21, who was headed for Dartmouth.

"We changed trains together at Grand Central Station," Hicks recalls, "and we both got on the next train north. Between New York and New Haven Rynnie persuaded me that I shouldn't get off at New Haven but should go on to Hanover with him and enroll at Dartmouth. So I did. I went to Hanover and a few hours later was enrolled officially as a member of the Class of 1921." Such things were possible in those days.

By the end of the first semester at Dartmouth Ort knew everyone in the Class of 1921 personally. This made him a natural for class president, and he was elected to that office for both his freshman and sophomore years. During that period he joined Phi Gamma Delta and served as Senior Captain of the Dartmouth ROTC, girding up for World War I. Today a photograph of that battalion, over 400 strong, hangs in Hicks' Crosby Hall office, and he is able to identify every man in it.

Hicks started his college career as a scholar, with an all-A (4.0) average freshman year, but then made the fairly common mistake of that era when he decided to "major in extracurricular activities." The fall of sophomore year found him playing varsity center on what was "unquestionably the weakest team in Dartmouth football history." The quote is from The Dartmouth, of which Hicks eventually became associate managing editor. As a member of Palaeopitus in senior year, he was charged with organizing Green Key out of two rather useless sophomore societies.

Ort gives great credit to his mother for his early drive and accomplishments. His parents were separated when he was still a boy, and his mother took a job in St Paul to help finance her son through preparatory school and college.

"The only way I could repay her, he says "was by doing the very best I could in school and college. I thought in those days that you went to college for only two reasons - to get good grades, which I then foolishly confused with learning, and to make contacts. The way I did this was to get to know everyone I could and hope that some of them would be 'good contacts.' "

After receiving his M.B.A. degree in 1922 from Tuck School, Hicks' first job was with the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, and it was there that he met and married Lois Paddock, a graduate of the University of Rochester. The couple have three children — Orton Hicks Jr. '49, and two daughters, Caryl, a graduate of Pembroke, and Wendy, who graduated from the University of Colorado. There are nine grandchildren.

Only a wife of Lois Hicks' versatility and understanding could have kept pace with a man like Ort over so many years. While he has traveled the world as a super-salesman, first for the film industry and more recently for Dartmouth, Lois has reared the family and maintained a well-run household where Ort, upon his return, could entertain friends and associates.

Whenever Ort is in Hanover you're sure to find several "visiting firemen" at 6 Rope Ferry Road, some who have been invited to drop by for cocktails and others who may be staying there as weekend guests. On numerous occasions Crosby Hall colleagues hear Ort, late in the afternoon, calling Lois on the telephone to explain that he's invited a few visiting alumni to "drop by" for cocktails, but that he'll be delayed. "Give them a drink, dear, and I'll be along in just a few minutes." Lois greets the visitors warmly, and when Hicks arrives home soon after, he is likely to have still more guests in tow.

At gatherings of this sort Hicks is at his best. He loves people, makes it a point to find out all he can about each individual. He's done this in Hanover for the past eight years and for better than 25 years at his former home on the North Shore of Long Island.

"I still consider friendship the most valuable commodity in the entire world,' Hicks recently wrote, "and to create friendship one must be liked. It is an unfortunate human truth that we are more apt to like people for their faults than for their virtues. Fortunately I still have a gold-mine of faults to draw on."

He still recalls his early days in motion pictures. "When talking pictures were first produced," he admits, I predicted to my associates that this was just another passing fad. And I've been just as far off in some of my other judgments."

Leaving Kodak, Hicks founded Films Incorporated, and also Seven Seas Film Corporation, pioneering the concept of 16-mm. non-theatrical distribution through regional film libraries. Both companies were distributors of 16-mm. entertainment and educational films to various groups — schools, hospitals, steamships, camps, churches, and similar organizations. During the early days of World War II Hicks also served for a while on the War Production Board in Washington as a dollar-a-year man, then entered service as a Lieutenant Colonel with the Army Signal Corps, in charge of film distribution to the Armed Forces.

Returning to New York at war s ena he was invited by Arthur Loew, son of the founder of MGM and subsequently president of the firm, to organize a worldwide 16-mm. network for MGM. For over twelve years Ort roamed the world — tennis racquet under one arm and a bulging MGM briefcase under the other. MGM overseas executives soon learned the location of the tennis courts in their city.

ORT loved every minute of it. Of course, he still somehow found time for Dartmouth affairs, serving his Class of 1921 as head agent and as class president, doing a hitch on the Alumni Council and serving as president of that august body in 1952-53, then going on the Board of Overseers of the Amos Tuck School.

In 1958 when Hicks was offered the post of Vice President at the College, he went to Arthur Loew, the president of Loew's International, to talk over Dartmouth's offer. Loew's reported reply was, "Well, Ort, it's great for you but I'm not sure it's such a good deal for Dartmouth! You're already working about 90% of the time for Dartmouth as a volunteer. I wonder how much they're paying you to get that other 10% — probably too much!"

Dedicated to both Dartmouth and 1921, Ort Hicks was always on hand for 1921 functions, presiding at many of them. One classmate recalled a large 1921 gathering in New York where Hicks, while presiding, went right around the room identifying each classmate by name and recalling a specific incident about each man. '"But that wasn't all, our reporter added. "I'll be darned if he didn't know the first name of each wife there. I can hardly remember my own wife's name at some of these '21 parties!"

Even at Dartmouth Hicks has kept busy in outside activities, serving on the Board of Encyclopaedia Britannica Films. Along with some 1921 classmates who were planning to retire to the Hanover area, he purchased the old Heneage property and started a housing development, appropriately named the Seven Seas Associates. One of his associates in that enterprise recalled a visit to President Dickey. "I asked Mr. Dickey if, now that I was retired, there was any way I might help the College. The President told me there was one big service I could perform and that was to keep Ort Hicks, in his 60's, away from the tennis and squash courts." Hicks' prowess in tennis and squash is well known. In his younger days he captained the squash team of the Dartmouth Club of New York, and in 1951 he won the Eastern Father and Son Tennis Championship with Ort Jr., advancing to the semi-finals of the national tournament.

"I hate to play Hicks in tennis," an associate once remarked. "He places the ball just out of reach and keeps you running back and forth all over the court while he just stands there. Then you get lucky and blast one past him, and he spends five minutes telling you what a great shot it was and what a tremendous tennis player you are, and all the while he's racking up another two games on you!"

When Hicks became Vice President of the College in 1958 Dartmouth, had already moved into the final stage of its first major capital gifts campaign with a $17-million goal. Ort plunged vigorously into the effort as a principal spokesman and solicitor for Dartmouth, and he's been at it ever since.

Working closely with George H. Colton '35, director of development (and the man who succeeds Hicks as Vice President next month), Ort and his associates on the development staff have raised a total of approximately $70-million over the past eight years. This includes some of the 1957-59 capital campaign gifts, the annual Alumni Fund, the Bequest and Estate Planning Program, the Medical School campaign, corporation and foundation gifts and grants, and several dozen capital gifts for special programs and projects.

Most of these funds, of course, have been directly solicited by Dartmouth volunteer workers, serving in each area, but Ort and his associates have provided the overall planning and counsel, the staff service, and much of the cultivation which has made these resources available to meet the College's growing financial needs. It is no secret that another major capital drive is in the offing connected with Dartmouth's Bicentennial observance in 1969-70. You can bet your bottom dollar (if you have one left after he is finished talking to you) that Ort will be busy on the campaign trail, even though officially retired. In the end Dartmouth will be the beneficiary. That's what the hard work and impressive style of Orton Havergal Hicks are all about.