Thayer

Dave Miles MrE'71: "I am still employed by the University of Alabama Medical School and working full time on a methodology to evaluate the impact of a new health care delivery system. We are currently in the data collection phase and my responsibilities are mainly research, design, and administration. Soon I hope to concentrate on the application of 'Operations Research' to the evaluation of the delivery system providing I can remember what Prof. Stearns C.E. '38 taught me.

"We have gone native and live in Moulton, Ala. (pop. 2300) on seven acres with a catfish pond. We have been reasonably well-received considering that we (1) are not Baptists (2) are Yankees (3) do not shun demon rum (4) don't get excited over Auburn or Alabama football teams. This part of Alabama never repealed prohibition and it is a 100 mile drive to the nearest liquor store; you are successful only if you can avoid the Sheriff on the way back."

Jim McNamara Mech E'49, writes that most of his interesting remembrances of his Thayer days are better told over a cocktail than on the printed page. He is president of the Fabri-Glass Co., which manufactures glass reinforced plastic products and formed-insulation in Moline, Ill.... "business could be better."

John S. Wheaton Mech E'61: "The years since graduation have been very interesting, and my engineering education at Dartmouth played a large part in making them so.

"I began with three years in the U. S. Army Ordnance Corps as a missile test officer for the Pershing surface-to-surface system and the Nike-X air defense system at White Sands Missile Range.

"After leaving the Army, I returned to Pasadena, Calif., to be project engineer on a cryogenic system, a nose cone that carried liquid helium which allowed the freezing and capture of particles through a column of air at very high temperatures.

"From there I moved to Hawaii and was involved in a number of ocean engineering projects, the principal one being project director for the establishment of undersea habitats off the island of Oahu.

"Then I returned to Stanford Business School graduating in 1969. Since that time I have been associated with Dillingham Corporation in Hawaii and presently hold the position of director of corporate development. This function involves me with the acquisitions and mergers, as well as establishing new fields of endeavor for the corporation. Being here in Hawaii and seeing the developments of the Pacific Basin is most fascinating.

"I also am involved with the company's relationships with the financial community which finds me in New York from time to time. One of these trips, I hope to visit Dartmouth and see firsthand all of the many changes that have taken place at Thayer School. I have heard many fine things.

"We have a son, two years old, and are enjoying him, Hawaii, and the Pacific a great deal."

Bruce'Barber TT'59: "For the past ten years I have been employed in various capacities with the American Electric Power Service Corporation in New York City which renders engineering, technical, accounting, financial, managerial and other assistance to its system operating companies. For the past two years I have been assistant vice president of finance, and associated with over 20 different security issuances involving excess of $1 billion of capital. Our department also performs financing capability studies in connection with utility rate cases and prepares some aspects of economic project analysis and maintains relations with the financial community.

"Although George Taylor's career will soon be ending, society will continue to benefit from this man's work for decades to come as his former students apply basic methods of analysis learned in his classroom to the engineering decisionmaking process. One can merely speculate at the millions of dollars in savings to business, industry, and ultimately the public, which will be achieved in the aggregate by his former students through the continued application of various techniques taught by George Taylor to identify the most economically advantageous alternatives.

"George Taylor's classes were always interesting. His course material combined the right mix of sophistication and simplicity to make a complex subject comprehensible in. the minimum time.

"His door was always open to students, not only in connection with the course work, but he supported individual initiative and development. Through his aid and suggestion, I was encouraged to expand a regular course paper for submission to a national competition where I had the great honor of receiving first prize. However, I was not the first or only George Taylor student to achieve this type of distinction.

"I wish to convey my best wishes to George Taylor on his forthcoming retirement."

Mark H. Totman BE'72: "I will be working for Turner Construction Company, location unknown at this time."

"Being an undergraduate at Dartmouth and being able to take the wide range of liberal arts and other courses combined with the more practically oriented engineering courses is about the best educational system in my opinion."

"Being a fifth-year student is a totally different experience than any undergraduate year. The opportunity to know the faculty on this basis is something that I feel should be established at an earlier time, but I really do not know how this could be accomplished. The Wednesday afternoon coffees are a start."