1918

A toast, gentlemen, to our gallant "Baron"George von Kapff, who in his inaugural year as our Head Agent got results surely confounding to our prophets of gloom, anonymous and otherwise, and overcame the once-in-a-hundred-years handicap of competition from solicitors for a Century Fund. In brief, we're proud of you, George. The entire class salutes you and your team of dedicated assistants. Seriously, if I may say so, I take our Alumni Fund achievement as significant evidence that, disturbed as we may be about some of the more violent manifestations of youth's current dissent and rebelliousness, we have not lost faith in our College and theirs. Nor have they, 99 44/100% of them. Proof of this I find in letters still trickling in from '68 men - "'round the girdled earth they roam" - letters gratefully acknowledging receipt of "The College on the Hill." One in April from Jack Noon '68 in Greece. In May, Russell Chapman '68, graduate student of botany in the University of California, thus ends his letter: "Though of a generation that scorns sentimentality and finds it easy to be cynical, I am admittedly moved by your thoughtful gift exemplifying the Dartmouth fellowship, and for it I offer my gratitude to the men of the Class of 1918." In August via our own Chuck Palmer came the most recent. After quoting thanks from a certain graduate student at Princeton named Charles Palmer Benedict '6B, who calls himself "one-half of a grandson-grandfather relationship 50 years apart," Chuck pays this tribute to the anonymous donor or donors of the book: "Whoever thought up and carried through this project did a great service to many men of Dartmouth, past and present, at a time when devotion to our 'small college' is much needed."

Last June, the weekend of Commencement our classmate Marsh Leavitt and hisMabel were in Hanover. Why? To see their son John Weston Leavitt '69 - that's right: not grandson, son! - being graduated from the College and commissioned in the U.S. Air Force, wherein he also gained "The American Legion ROTC Scholastic Excellence Award for outstanding academic achievement in 1969." Of this latter honor modest John had not told his parents, who first learned of it when they read of it in the program of the Commissioning Ceremony.

Our Hanover summer was something less than placid - simply because this is 1969. The summers of 1919 and 1929 and even 1939, as I remember them, were relatively somnolent as, with the undergraduates' departure, upon the plain settled the peace that passeth all understanding. Not these days, though. Commencement and the Bicentennial were hardly over when Hopkins Center started its busy summer program: drama amateur and professional - a topnotch "Othello" I saw twice —; music: classic and contemporary symphony, chamber, and mod; ballet; films of notable merit; and more excellent entertainment than I can now recall. Not that I patronized everything, any more than a resident of New York sees all or does all. Grateful indeed was I to be living in the quiet Vermont suburb of Norwich. Especially when coeducational Summer School refilled Hanover and the College, its dorms and its tennis courts, golf links, and playing fields, as well as its classrooms and its library. One enrollee was Bob Fish's grandnephew, a bright prep school senior named Roy Perry, here for a single, high-powered course - hours daily - in Spanish. I called upon him, and when our conversation turned, as it naturally would, to the presence of girls at Dartmouth, I with poker face assured him that in our monastic days, his Uncle Robert's and mine, the College without girls was much better. "Better?" exclaimed Roy in puzzled astonishment. "Better for what?" I retreated.

When Summer School was over, Alumni College began. That done, there followed a truly quiet interval, which just now - early September - is ending. This morning I saw the lawn in front of Robinson Hall crowded with scores of starry-eyed '73 freshmen overloaded with camping gear, assembled for the start of their pre-matriculation White Mountains reconnaissance guided by upperclassmen chubbers.

But in that quiet interval I just mentioned - September's first week - the now cagey old gentlemen who were drunken juniors when we were still pea-green freshmen - I allude of course to the Class of Sixteen - these cagey old boys, I say, picked very wisely I think for their fall reunion September's first week, when Hanover isn't crowded, so neither is the Inn, and as yet there's no football hysteria. I've much enjoyed quiet visits with Sixteen friends rocking away on the Inn's front porch. You can probably read all about their reunion in Rog Evans' column this month or next. I speak of it here with the thought that while, yes, we Eighteeners are still young enough to endure the rigors of reunion-cum-football-peerade, the rigors - let's face it - are rigorous, and, well, don't hoot me down, let's ponder September's calendar for 1970. What's that? I catch by telepathy from Cliff Daniels a message that says, "Our Pow-Wow's in line with all that." Right! But the Penn game in Hanover on 11 October and the one down at Harvard on the 25th are now in the forefront of our autumn thoughts. Tom Shirley's mimeographed communication, q.v., and the Binghams' newsletter, q.v., give directions and details as to how to join the crowd.

For a closing, somber words. Our numbers are lessened, and memories, gratefully cherished but only memories still, replace the living presence of each of our four classmates who died this past summer: DaveSkinner on 7 June, Don Scully on 17 July, Tay Cook on 7 August, and Red Wilson on 28 August. Under In Memoriam their obituaries will be found in this or the next issue of the MAGAZINE.

We would also here record our shock and sorrow at the sudden death on 17 June in Phoenix, Ariz., of Ellen Duke, the widow of our late Colonel. Her body now lies next his in the Hanover Center cemetery, whereBarr, Blandin, and Booth represented 1918 at the service of her interment.

1917 past and present officers: (l to r)Mott Brown, president; Don Brooks, exsecretary; and Duke Howe, secretary.

Secretary, Elm St., Norwich, Vt. 05055

Treasurer, 45 Rip Rd., Hanover, N. H. 03755