Alumni Awards

The joint dinner of the Dartmouth Trustees and Alumni Council, in Hanover on January 15, provided the occasion for conferring the Dartmouth Alumni Award on two distinguished graduates of the College. John B. Kenerson '28, retired executive of the. Boston publishing firm of Ginn and Company, and Ralph N. Hill '39, Vermont author, were the men honored. In presenting the Alumni Council's highest award, Dero A. Saunders '35, president of the Council, gave each man a small replica of the silver Wheelock Bowl and read the following citations:

JOHN BODGE KENERSON '28

During each of the last seven decades there have been one or two members of your family at the College. It all began with grandfathers Kenerson and Ryder, members of the Class of 1876, and followed by your father at the turn of the century. There are few such successions. Truly, yours is a Dartmouth family of which the College is proud.

The Kenersons are real steady folk, not given to moving about and trying something different. Following two years of learning about textbooks through teaching at Lyndon Institute, you joined Ginn and Company. Your father and grandfather had been officers of this leading textbook publishing firm from which you retired after 36 years as field representative, officer, and director. Dartmouth, Ginn, and the Kenersons have been long-time associates.

Your activities in the community and in the College have been outstanding. You were a Town Meeting member as well as a member of the Town Advisory Committee, vice-chairman of Senior Living, a director of the Francis Ouimet Caddy Scholarship Fund, president of the Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and president of your country club, probably the toughest job of all. You are a trustee of the Cardigan Mountain School and a director of two business concerns.

Dartmouth counts among her blessings your support of her effort to stay in the forefront of education by being a member of the Alumni Council, by serving on the Enrollment Committee, and as Class Bequest Chairman, Assistant Class Agent, Class President, and president of the Dartmouth Alumni Association of Boston.

In recognition of your continuing service to the College and your community, we are proud to give you the Dartmouth Alumni Award.

RALPH NADING HILL JR. '39

Ralph Nading Hill, an artistic historian who writes to illuminate and not to impress, we salute you.

Whether you call them contrary or cantankerous, your refreshing writings about Vermont characters and men of character explain how they behaved, thought and dealt effectively with climate and geography and went on to shape permanently countless institutions elsewhere. You are one of Vermont's illustrious men of character.

You, always as Vermont as maple syrup, have told the New England story in numerous books and articles and have been trustee of the Vermont Historical Society, the Shelburne Museum and Champlain College, and Senior Editor of Vermont Life. You were President of the Shelburne Steamboat Company, operators on Lake Champlain of the SS Ticonderoga which, largely through your efforts, is now a "showboat" at the Shelburne Museum.

You began serving the College as an undergraduate musician, actor, newspaper editor, and author of a prize-winning play entitled—for which belatedly you are forgiven—"Meddlesome's Spring Song." Without full beard, cloak, dagger or any of Mata Hari's characteristics, you were a counter intelligence officer through four World War II campaigns in Europe before becoming a member of Dartmouth's Alumni Council, the Board of Proprietors of TheDartmouth and the Advisory Board of the Alumni Magazine.

With pride the College awarded you her Honorary Doctorate of Letters in 1964 for the historical and literary qualities of your writing, with special mention of TheCollege on the Hill, the first full-bodied popular history of Dartmouth. Since then you have written the superb DartmouthPortrait as performed by the Dartmouth Glee Club and script for The WheelockSuccession which was a memorable component of the great Bicentennial Celebration on December 13, 1969.

In grateful recognition for three decades of dedication to the College and your singularly distinctive works in her behalf, we give you the Dartmouth Alumni Award.

Alumni Award winners John B. Kenerson '28 (left) and Ralph N. Hill '39 (center)congratulated by Alumni Council member William H. Morton '32. '