The Council's Highest Honor

THE joint dinner of the Board of Trustees and the Dartmouth Alumni Council in Hanover on January 13 was the occasion for honoring two of the College's graduates who have had distinguished careers and have also given many years of devoted service to Dartmouth.

James D. Landauer '23 of New York City and Ford H. Whelden '25 of Norwich, Vt., were recipients of the Alumni Council's highest honor, the Dartmouth Alumni Award. The awards were made in Alumni Hall of Hopkins Center by Council President George I. Davis '28, who presented the recipients with small replicas of the silver Wheelock Bowl and read the following citations:

JAMES DITTMAN LANDAUER '23

From being a towering center on the Big Green basketball team you have since gained, during your absence from the Hanover Plain, a reputation as the promoter and developer of towering centers in midtown Manhattan. Simultaneously, as you have expressed it, "Dartmouth has occupied an increasingly important place in my daily interests." As Chairman, Governor, and Board Director of countless real estate boards and bureaus you are recognized as an outstanding authority on commercial property throughout the Eastern Seaboard.

In 1942 you interrupted your business career voluntarily to accept the challenge of organizing and administering the Air Force Cadet Training Center in San Antonio, Texas, where, according to the citation accompanying your Legion of Merit Award, you showed "unusual professional ability, sound judgment, and competent leadership." This center reached a peak strength of over 30,000 cadets, in training at twenty different schools.

You served as vice-president and director of two leading real estate firms before forming your own corporation in 1946. In the two decades since this has burgeoned into a nationally recognized operation. A great accomplishment has been the completion and development of the Pan-American Building, the world's largest commercial office building.

In Dartmouth affairs you have been Secretary of the Alumni Association of New York, and were named Dartmouth Club Secretary of the Year in 1953. You have been President of the Alumni Association of Westchester County, Vice President and Secretary of the Dartmouth College Club of New York, President of the Dartmouth Alumni Council (1964-65), and are now a member of the Bicentennial Executive Committee. You were Class Agent for four years, founder of the Board of Overseers of the Hanover Inn, and one of its charter members since 1951.

For contributions to your profession, and your continual interest, service, and love of your College, we delight in presenting to you this Council's highest honor, the Dartmouth Alumni Award.

FORD HOPKINS WHELDEN '25

During more than half of your years in finance and administration you have devoted full-time energies to Dartmouth College. You have been founder, in 1951, and builder of the Bequest and Estate Planning Program, which may come to equal and surpass in terms of financial value all other programs which serve to enhance the College's corporeal wealth.

At the brash age of 35, you established yourself as an organizer by creating a new church community, with edifice, in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. The church historian has written that in this project "you never faltered, nor deviated from the vision - using the judgment and wisdom of a senior statesman."

World War II called you into active service in the U. S. Navy as a commissioned officer. This was followed by your move to New England. Already you had shown your strenuous love for your College, having been Alumni Fund Agent for Michigan, President and/or Secretary-Treasurer of the Dartmouth Club of Detroit for eleven years, member of the Alumni Council tor six years, and Secretary of the Class Treasurers Association for four years.

Since 1935 you had been an advocate of a bequest program to provide for a "growing" Dartmouth, as an adjunct to the Alumni Fund, which guarantees the "living" Dartmouth. In 1957 you were appointed Executive Secretary of the program. Since then more than $17,000,000 in bequests, life-time gifts, and life income agreements have come to the College. On two occasions you have received citations for this work from the American Alumni Council.

In the activities of your famed Class of 1925, you have broken all records as Class Agent in the Green Derby, Tribal Sweepstakes in the Capital Gifts Campaign, and alternately have been Class Secretary, Treasurer and President over a fourteen-year period. You have edited eight annual class reports, written various class histories, and been the recipient of reunion awards and the James B. Reynolds and John H. Davis Trophies. In 1962 you were the first alumnus to receive the newly created award for Class Bequest Chairman of the Year. In modesty you said, that while none of these was of earth-shaking caliber, you dearly cherished them personally.

When told recently that you would be honored by us this evening, you wrote a one-line valedictory in this statement: "And now I will really say - 'this is the end of life I sought.'"

Modesty, thoroughness, persistence, loyalty. These attributes, which you have bestowed so generously among all of your undertakings, are of the essence of your success - and because of these you are entitled, without reservation, to receive, summacum laude, the Dartmouth Alumni Award.

Council President Davis citing Ford H. Whelden '25 (r).

James D. Landauer '23 (l) as he received his award.