Alumni Council Honors 1900's Leader

Everett W. Goodhue '00, Professor of Economics Emeritus and a triple class officer as secretary, treasurer and head agent, was honored by the Dartmouth Alumni Council last month when it conferred on him the Dartmouth Alumni Award. At a special January 10 ceremony in the Drake Room, Hopkins Center, the award was made by J. Michael McGean '49, Council secretary, who read the following citation:

A teacher for fifty-four years, half of that time at Dartmouth, an exponent of moral responsibility both by example and profession, always pleading earnestly for a recognition of spiritual values as you voiced profound thoughts about man's future, his rights and responsibilities.

Through the years you have maintained your youthful state of mind, your verve, flexibility, enthusiasm, and interest in things about you - the Dartmouth Outing Club, its trails you hiked, its runs you skied; the daily football practices you watched; the Vermont hills you wordpainted so beautifully - "Ascutney, robed in a dark mantle, raising its head above the surrounding hills with curiously shaped, broken black clouds to the west, their edges tipped with gold by the setting sun and then suffused with a lovely pink afterglow as the sun dropped below the horizon."

You are, as Browning said:

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would truimph.

You have exemplified a deep flowing undercurrent of faith and hope - faith in all mankind and his destiny, hope in the triumph of eternal right over manifest wrong so eloquently said by Whittier and so frequently quoted by you:

Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight, Through present wrong, the eternal right; And, step by step, since time began, I see the steady gain of man:

Through the harsh noises of our day A low, sweet prelude finds its way; Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear, A light is breaking, calm and clear.

You have loved all people and animals too. Never were you guilty of passing by on the other side. You have been ever grateful and always you have found in the expression of gratitude, a life-giving, buoyant quality of thought.

For pupils and peers alike, you often illumed your philosophy of life, with quotations from The Bible, Frost, Browning, and Whittier. Especially you liked Chief Justice Holmes' line in a Supreme Court decision — "A word is the skin of a living thought." You are the only one who can recognize that the principal words of this citation are the skin of your living thoughts, taken from your treasured Christmas letters to the 1900 family. This makes you the first to write your own citation.

For your long and outstanding service in education, for your dedication to the College and your Class, and for your kinship with all life, we are privileged to honor you with the Dartmouth Alumni Award. And, because you are the oldest in years and a member of the oldest class now represented in this distinguished group, we designate you Dean of the Dartmouth Alumni Award Corps.

Everett W. Goodhue '00, Alumni Award recipient, with College Secretary J. MichaelMcGean '49 (left) and Vice President and Mrs. George H. Colton '35.