Bicentennial Year Begins June 14

To help mark the formal opening of the Dartmouth College Bicentennial year, alumni in all the classes that were graduated fifty or more years ago will return to Hanover this month as an addition to the usual reunion schedule.

The fifty-year Class of 1919, as well as the Classes of 1899, 1904, 1909 and 1914, will be back for Commencement Weekend, June 13-15. Then during the next three days, June 16-18, all the other classes from 1898 through 1918 will gather for a combined Bicentennial Reunion. The latter group of alumni and wives, expected to number about 250, will have a special Bicentennial Reunion Dinner on Tuesday evening, June 17, with Allen R. Foley '20, Professor of History Emeritus, as guest speaker. For some other events they will join with the Classes of 1929, 1938, 1939 and 1940, which will be back for regular reunions during the first half of Reunion Week. The 25-year Class of 1944 will hold its reunion the second half of the week, at which time the Classes of 1959, 1963, 1964, and 1965 will also return to the campus.

During the Commencement Weekend, the Class of 1919 will receive the honors traditionally accorded the fifty-year class. An attendance of more than, 100 is reported, and all will be on hand at the Commencement luncheon on Saturday, June 14, to hear Dr. Robert M. Stecher '19 of Cleveland deliver the Fifty-Year Address.

The alumni in Hanover during the three-day Commencement period will have the added attraction of being present at the events launching the Bicentennial Year. The official opening of the anniversary "year" extending from June 1969 to the fall of 1970 will be an outdoor ceremony at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, June 14. Lord and Lady Dartmouth, who are coming from London to be the honored guests of the College during the Commencement period, will unveil a bronze plaque recording the occasion of their visit. Only once before since the founding of the College has an Earl of Dartmouth visited the College named 200 years ago for the 2nd Earl. That was in 1904 when the 7th Earl, accompanied by the Countess of Dartmouth and their daughter, Lady Dorothy, were here to lay the cornerstone of a new Dartmouth Hall after the original had been destroyed by fire. The present Earl of Dartmouth, the Rt. Hon. Gerald Humphry Legge, is ninth in the line of Legges who have held the title.

Lord and Lady Dartmouth and other College guests will witness a Dartmouth Fanfare on Saturday night, a joyous occasion when trumpets, clanging bells, a torchlight parade, fireworks, and a giant balloon will all be part of the sort of celebration an institution should be permitted to have when it reaches its 200th birthday. They will also attend the outdoor Commencement exercises at Baker Library on Sunday morning when the College's 199th graduating class is awarded degrees. Dartmouth graduated its first class in 1771 and is the only one of the Colonial colleges to have an unbroken succession of graduating classes since its founding. The Revolutionary War forced the temporary closing of the other institutions.

The 1969 Commencement Address will be given by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller '30 of New York. The other principal address at the exercises will be delivered by President Kingman Brewster Jr. of Yale University, alma mater of Eleazar Wheelock.

The Earl and Countess of Dartmouth, shown in their London home will be guests ofhonor during Commencement weekend which opens the College's 200th anniversary.