1899

I'm glad to come back to the '99 column for a while, and share with other magazine readers the long and the short of it - such as Long Jim Richardson and Ikey Leavitt once were, or, maybe Bones Woodward and Herbert Watson. I'll not take up here the long pull and the short pull of the Alumni Fund for 1968. That's not the primary function of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. Separate explanation and appeal will come to us all not long hence, and I bespeak now your most thoughtful consideration of that matter, but that discussion is not the primary business of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. Rather for us now is the news of the folks of Ninety-Nine. Most of you know that Mays and my son George and Amey bought a part of our homeland in South Newbury, N.H. Well, Amey has been taking a winter course in summer living, "Garden Planting Design" at the Horticultural Society in Boston. Sounds rather formidable to me, but she's not bothered at all by the topics, "Textural Interest," "Plant Groupings," and "Earth Modeling." And she's "ready to start digging!" "All power to you, Amey!" say I. "I'll be up sometime and see how you and George" are doing. There may have to be a bit of thawing first."

Pitt Drew's widow Mabel has a different kind of problem, - "To travel or not to travel?" She's done a good deal of it since Pitt went, but the appeal this year seems weaker. She writes "All my friends are departing for the winter, and daughter Caroline keeps at me to go with them, or by myself. But my attractive home and everything for my comfort look good to me this year. My house is on Caroline's and Rowland's place and they are wonderful to me. They, or their men, look after my car, go for my mail, bring my paper, get my cream, butter, chickens, and all the vegetables in the summer. I may not see them for a day or two but they are always there." Mabel went up from Rhode Island to daughter Sally's in Chestnut Hill for Christmas, stayed a week. "Driving through Boston I felt like a stranger. Caroline's daughter and husband have bought a lovely place on Marblehead Neck and I spent a night with them. All Sally's children are grown up and married or away except son Jay who is nineteen and at Brooks School in Andover. He took his old grandmother to the movies!" Oh, you didn't say, Mabel, when you studied that old picture of Pitt, whether you decided any of the youngsters show any resemblance to him.

With deepest affection and sympathy from everyone in the big Ninety-Nine Family we have to report another break in Walter andFlorence Eastman's family. They lost Jerome when he went "Across" in the 40's. The following letter from Jerome's sister Carol just before Christmas tells the story: "To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die. Lest you have not heard, Frank Palmer passed away at 7:30 o'clock Saturday evening, December 9, 1967 in his home in La Grange, 111. Frank and Carol were watching television while waiting for their daughter and son-in-law to arrive for a game of bridge. He suddenly gasped and was gone. There was no pain. Carol wanted you to know about Frank and to have this card which she and Frank made and addressed during her convalescence from recent lung surgery."

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