1916

As the old year rings out, let me thank the scores of you who so kindly remembered us with Christmas cards, and with personal messages more generous than past performance merits. Looking ahead, I warmly wish for each and every one of you a happy, healthful and rewarding New Year and assure you that from here on even brickbats will be welcome — if you will send with them some sharable news. Please. Thank you.

Our sunbirds are already winging south. As yet only the Gowards, Gumbarts, Mensels, Nickersons, and Shanahans have admitted they have gone or are going to Florida temporarily to join our nine more-or-less permanent residents there. Around January 10, however, when additional suspects have had time to respond to follow-up cards, we hope to send to at least twenty such classmates the Florida addresses of all in order that they visit each other as they travel about, or perhaps stage one or two regional fests. If any of you sneak down without telling us, anyone there on the list can give you the picture. That well-known Malibu sprinter Dan Coakley asks: "Why not California?"

On the Burnhams' card from lazy Guadalajara, Aline wrote: "Mexico is marvelous right nowwarm and sunny. Perc is doing just great, getting lots of sleepalso playing Hearts every afternoon in the patio." Hearts? Jim and Ruth Coffin spent the holidays at Atlanta with their son's family. Edand Marjory Craver's card colorfully pictured their fine family of 25 by their tree. Gran Fuller apparently was among the 140 at the annual holiday luncheon of the New Hampshire Seacoast area, staged this year for some 25 candidates and fathers. RalphGeorge was on a Shriner group trip to Hawaii.

With Ralph Mendall's card came an article from the local Gazette picturing him and another officer being honored August 28 at a banquet arranged by the directors and management of the Middleborough (Mass.) Trust Company. The occasion marked the retirement on September 1 of both men, at 75, from long service with the bank. Ralph's was a "second career" of fifteen years, as teller. The attendance of 76 included bank officers and directors and their wives, Trust Company employees and appropriately at the head table with Ralph, three of his five children. The gifts to him included a Dartmouth rocking chair and a camel saddle hassock. Congratulations, old center-fielder, now you can put your feet up.

At the time of our Princeton weekend in Hanover, the Shanahans were making a tour of Ireland. They returned in time to attend the Harvard game, however, and thought- fully were welcoming Al Houle's widow Eleanor to Manchester, where she recently moved to be near or with her daughter.

Mrs. Carol Mahoney Chase and Mr. William Jackson Soule (Rod's and Audrey's son) announced their marriage on Saturday, October 26, 1968 at South Freeport, Me. Felicitations to all.

Two couples who have deeply appreciated the letters so many of you have sent them are the Les Campbells (Box 428, Averill Park, N. Y. 12018) and the Karl Shedds (161 Milledge Heights, Athens, Ga. 30601). Karl's and Polly's cheery Christmas letter said their son Don's family of four and his parents-in-lawall from Atlantawere with them for Thanksgiving. Don brought along his projector and thrilled them with colored pictures he recently took on a month's trip to Australia and New Zealand with a party of twenty fellow-specialists in park and recreation work. That must have been a treat, for, from all my wide Foundation travelling, southern Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand stand for Eden-on-earth.

Somehow the following was not quoted last month from a good November 10 letter from Shorty Hitchcock: He had just driven himself up to Pasadena for a big annual dinner of Southern California members of the Continental Insurance Companies' 25Year Club, and breakfast next morning with his #1 Grandson Tom Hitchcock and his wife. Shortly afterward #1 Son Rob and his wife drove Shorty down to Reem Field below San Diego to see their Lt.(j.g.) #2 Son Bob fly in with his squadron of twelve big Navy helicopters from the USS Carrier "Bennington," 350 miles out, land, and taxi in column past their Admiral. Now picture Great-grandpa while the pilot grandson sprinted across the field to his wife and their own son John, age seven months; also while son Bob later and skilfully drove our patrirch the hundred-odd miles home to Orange in ninety minutes. No wonder Shorty stays young.

The December note about the USS "Shaw" episode in WWI prompted two testimonials to the quality of Ed Riley. Shorty wrote that, just to do something different, he and Ed occasionally "hooked freights" on geology trips, as to a Vermont marble quarry where their guide brought them to a beam about 10"x10" that had to be crossed to complete their trip. "What light there was seemed to be out," said Shorty. "I always had a phobia of high places. Ed preceded me across the beam and where it seemed to sag a bit decided to make it act like a springboard. Fortunately I kept my balance and finished the quaking trip across. On the far shore the guide spoke harshly to Ed and said the depth below that beam was some hundred or more feet to jagged chunks of marble."... Of the Shaw incident itself, Dick Parkhurst recalls "Ed was on the bridge at the time and once told me he slapped the steel side plates of the 'Aquitania' as she sliced the 'Shaw' in two directly in front of him."... To that, I could add that Big Ed had great loyalty, too.

This month we have with sadness to report the death of Doug Gordon's widow Katharine on August 28, 1968. Since Doug's passing in 1962 she had continued to live in Centerville, Mass. We know of no immediate survivors.

And on December 9, at University Hospital in Minneapolis, we lost one of our most widely and deservedly respected classmates: Horace Fishback of Brookings, S. D. To Margaret and her rare family our deepest sympathy is extended. Our In Memoriam notice, most appropriately being written by John Butler, will appear in this or a later issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE.

My monthly trip to Worcester one windy zero day in early December was made extra pleasant by having Phil Nordell aboard. He usefully spent the afternoon and the next morning swapping valuable old lottery tickets with the American Antiquarian Society. A short visit with Hobey Marble found him at home and in good fettle again, and on our way back, in their gracious home at Fieldston, we had a half-hour with the Butlers.

That same week nice Sally Gammons had Edna and me down to Wilmington, along

with May Tucker and the Wilmintgon relatives she was spending the week with. Great news from Ken Stowell: "I'm really in good shape now. I hope that by January I'll be getting my exercise on the golf course again, and that I'll see you in Hanover in June and 4-6 September."

Burt Lowe says that he and Fred Smith are cooking up a New York dinner around Washington's Birthday. If any of you outlanders are to be in or near New York at that time, see John's February BALMACAAN for details of time and place, and join us there.

Secretary, Box E, Swarthmore, Pa. 19081

Treasurer, Singletary Ave., Sutton, Mass. 01527

Bequest Chairman,