1932
Not the least of the highlights that marked the New York Alumni Association dinner in March was the presentation of an Alumni Award to Howie Sargeant. The citation read by Alumni Council president Dero Saunders '35, ticking off his contributions to the Dartmouth cause and his career achievements, wowed the nearly 900 alumni and wives filling the Commodore's grand ballroom. Later, when we remarked to Howie on the sheer cumulative impressiveness of the data set down in the framed document he was holding, he recalled Adlai Stevenson's definitive word on such encomiums: "It's great stuff if you don't inhale it."
Howie is the third member of the Class to receive an Alumni Award, which is bestowed for "long and effective volunteer service to the College, with distinction in career and community activities given secondary consideration." The others were Carlos Baker in 1967 and Carl Ward in 1970. Why word of the award to Carl in California last year did not get to your correspondent is a cause for complaint that we are making to the Proper Authorities.
In addition to Howie and wife Dorothy, those at the '32 table included Buzz and Helen Burrows, Mike and Skeeter Isaacs, Bill Morton, Bob Reinhardt, and lay Whitehair. We were pleased to have Ronald King '74, a member of the Glee Club, provide a bit of age leavening.
Jim Wakelin, who served President Eisenhower as assistant secretary of the Navy for research and development, has been appointed by President Nixon to the post of assistant secretary of the Commerce Department of science and technology.
Dr. George Hahn, physician, teacher and researcher in obstetrics and gynecology, was installed on January 20 as the 110th president of the Philadelphia County Medical Society.
As we go to press, Bob Ryan is due to return to Broadway on April 21 in what the New York Times calls the "monumental role" of James Tyrone in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night." For Bob, the New York revival with himself in the lead is the realization of an aspiration born when he saw the original production and kindled when he played it in England.
Chuck Owsley writes from Youngstown: "My daughter Irene is having a very active—socially, and I trust, scholastically—junior year at Dartmouth. She is spending next year in India, and I imagine is hoping that by the time she returns, Dartmouth will have gone full co-ed and that she will be able to get a Dartmouth degree. This will probably turn off some of our contemporaries, but I must say I would be delighted."
Art Allen sums up the retired in Hanover life in one word—"great." He keeps busy with work for SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives), helping the sailing team, study work for the town selectmen a little fund-raising, track meet officiating, and attending a multitude of concerts, lectures, and athletic events, while "Debbie finds more musical activity than she had believed possible."
Joe Fanelli sounds a positive note from Washington: "Mary and I find personal peace and contentment while we learn that long hair and a beard do not necessarily mean irresponsibility. With three happily married children, we hope for some grandchildren. We see and enjoy the friendship of Ben and Dorothy Burch and Margo and Dick Cleaves."
As does Chuck Housel (whom we knew as Chuck Cunningham at Hanover) from Prosser, Wash.: "Completing my thirty-fifth year in education and my twenty-seventh as a junior high principal. It has been very rewarding work, and I hope to go at least another five."
Russ O'Brien writes from Princeton of an active Princeton-Hanover axis, two O'Brien sons having been graduated from Dartmouth during the past decade. "All our family," says Russ, "are enthusiastic about the new regime—John Kemeny et al. It's most refreshing to hear our Princeton friends enviously sound off about Dartmouth capturing him!"
Gus Zimmerman, a transplanted ex- Princeton resident, postals from Bellefon- taine, Ohio: "Next trip to Hanover will be to see my son graduate. Living in Ohio a new experience after spending previous life on east coast. No sailboats in the corn fields."
Whip Walser sent us a real pretty card—a Canaletto—from Venice, where he was en route from the Paris Agricultural Equipment Fair to another at Verona.
From Florida Jim Whiton writes a variant of the retirement story. A year ago Jim "scuttled my desk" at his stock brokerage office in Denville, N. J., "shed pretty much all the possessions and attachments that I had acquired (and vice versa) over the previous 50-odd years, and went to live on my 33-ft. cruising auxiliary sailboat," cruising to Maine, then to Florida. Jim continues: "If anyone wonders how I can stand so much leisure after being busy busy busy for 35 years, he should try it himself. There's been less leisure in the past 10 months than I used to get in 10 days. If it isn't some little improvement project, it's repair or maintenance. Or meeting new people, or riding a new highway on my come-apart bike, or ... So I'm a dropout. And glad of it."
Just as we get here comes the mail, in it a bulletin from Hanover telling that the Great Ackerberg has the Class off and running in the number one spot in our heat of the Alumni Fund Green Derby (Classes of 1926-32). It is no news that "desperately" is the word for the way the College needs our help this year. Good to know we have early foot. Let's front-run All The Way.
We send you good cheer as we wind this up on our natal day, and endorse PingFerry's non-endorsement of sexagenarianism.
Secretary, Orchard Hill Road Westport, Conn. 06880
Class Agent, 919 Monroe St., Evanston, Ill. 60202
