1916

The trek is on. Encouraged by northeastern weather, our Balmacaan list of seekers of the sun, doubtless incomplete, include: the Dingwalls to Bermuda; the Mensels and Lowes to Sarasota; the Gowards, Streeters and Ralph Mendall also to Florida; the Wolffs, Docks and prospectively the Parkhursts to Arizona and/or New Mexico; and the McKenzies, plain South.

Yet CharSie and Edna Brundage, hardy people, were at Hanover for the weekend of Winter Carnival and, hardier still, for sampling John's slack salted herring. In early February also, John Butler and his son, Ebb, on from Utah, were about to take several grandchildren - or perhaps the latter were taking John and Ebb - to the old Vermont farm for a week of skiing. About the same time, we were in Worcester, where the Marbles topped off their New England hospitality by laying on an overnight mantle of new snow, so slippery that it was chancy coming off their hill. And by the time you get this, Gran and Ruth Fuller should be resettled in New Hampshire. Welcome back to the North Country!

Can anyone believe that Bill Brett has become a total social loss, as he asserts? He says that his Washington consulting work in industrial financing still keeps him from adding Mondays to the weekends they like to spend at their island place in Chesapeake Bay. But if you follow me, he occasionally makes it on Thursday.

Ruby and Elizabeth McFalls must know that the upset which kept them from their 50th reunion in Hanover and Wellesley last June spelled disappointment also for their many friends. But as Ruby philosophizes, "that's the way the cookie crumbled." Their better fortunes include having Elizabeth's mother with them at 92, their three sons on the Coast - one each in Riverside, the Bay Area, and Seattle - and the many attractions of La Jolla as a retirement home. As Ruby sums them up, they include "small-town in size and spirit yet close enough to San Diego and Los Angeles for big events. We garden, golf twice a week (sometimes with Verge Rector) for the waistline, enjoy music and interesting drives in the mountains." It is good to hear of Verge too, even indirectly.

Mrs. Stan Lyman, Mrs. Llew Howell, and Ralph Mendall have written their appreciation of the Class' expressions of sympathy. But let Ralph speak for himself: "I have never seen such loyalty as shown by the Class of 1916. You will never know how much it meant to me when I came out of the funeral home to find three classmates and the wives of two of them waiting to greet me."

Would that our professed friendliness could_ have done more for such classmates, especially for those like Sanger Richardson, whose passing at Danvers on February 12 we now have regretfully to report. When you read his obituary in the In Memoriam section of this or a later issue, you can sense how much the caring of one couple meant to him for fifty years, even our Class news, especially when invalidism overtook him.

Won't each of you, now, check through your address list and take it as a personal responsibility to look up and proffer the hand of friendship to any classmate in your vicinity, indeed to any old friend or room- mate who has long been silent wherever he is, especially to those who are living alone?

And if your name hasn't appeared in these notes for some time, try writing yourself. It won't hurt - much.

Secretary, 2-C Swarthmore Apts. Swarthmore, Pa. 19081

Class Agent, 50 Rugby Rd., Manhasset, L. I., N. Y. 19050