1970

Rome - Headlines in a dozen languages announce the Vietnam cease-fire agreement here this morning. By the time these words flicker by on the coated stock of the DAM, we shall have seen whether some sort of Pax Americana is indeed in the offing. If so, it will offer at least relief, perhaps even hope, to the many of this class who, when forwarding details of personal and passing events, have appended the simple wish, peace.

In that spirit then let me pass on the news contained in several Christmas cards from friends which have arrived in the city of Caesar Augustus. (And which have restored to civility the ball-point of this pen, two months ago found sullen and cynical - stresses of "the road"; apologies all around.)

ZPG apparently hasn't penetrated the heartland of Indiana. In Columbus, Alan andSusan Tuck have a red-headed daughter in tow, Blakely, born last August. Alan is now manager of industrial and marine market planning at Cummins Engine; enjoyable, he reports, but the traveling is a burden. Meanwhile, just a few miles away down a dusty country lane Henry David Koenig and cabin-mate Carole will go Walden several better come May with a little home-brewed bundle of nature's own. My thanks for the kind words from both hearths.

From Stow, Mass., a cute card clearly the handicraft of Mark and Linny Hebenstreit. Whatever occupies them these days, it is undoubtedly conducted in that spirit of "peace and good cheer" which is .their Christmas message.

Dick Whitney and wife Karen are indeed in St. Louis, he a third-year medicine man, she a dietitian, if I make out Whit's prescription scrawl. He indicates satisfaction with new additions in Hanover, observed over the holidays, top billing going to the coeds and the new surface of Leverone. Can't have one without the other, eh Whit? From the same source word that SteveLeary teaches school in Norwell, Mass., and has a one-year-old son; John Barry is up to year three at Downstate; and Walter Hinton reads the law at Northwestern until June.

The new year brings with it also the revitalized stylus of Paul Gambaccini, part-time Oxonian, part-time writer in the Rolling Stones' London orbit. The talented quill dances like a butterfly, stings like a bee: "Well, the Alumni Rag, as always, gave me more laughs than the last three months of Punch, William Rogers, and the BBC Top 40 combined. Apparently great people like Kemeny, Reiser, Prince, and their ilk are doing fine things, yet the Rag is filled with pathetic protests from alums who can't get it into their heads that the College isn't theirs any more, that it's being run in the best interests of the current students. Times change, my elderly friends, and so must institutions. If any of my friends in the D administration think this has been written under the influence of some evil weed or Joan Baez music, let me assure them that it has been typed under the influences of a plate of spaghetti and my old Gene Pitny records, all of which had corrupted me long before I rode the train into WRJ on April 1966."

... And that, friends, begins to seem like a long, long time ago - can we still remember?

Secretary, 3105 W. Queen La. Philadelphia, Pa. 19129

Treasurer, Oakwood at Park Bryan, Ohio 43506