1948

After so many years it was a great pleasure to hear from Dick Ruggles, Minister of the Second Presbyterian Church on Hampton Blvd. in Norfolk, Va. Dick reports he saw Phil Johnson in New York a year or so ago and was contacted recently by engineer Jim Hughen when the latter visited Norfolk to inspect some local bridges his company was building. Dick also reported he returned to Hanover the Sunday after the Princeton game, the right time to be in New Hampshire "when the fall colors were at their peak of beauty," and he enjoyed visiting the Bressets who own Lou's Restaurant where Dick himself and Dick Flynn had worked when it first opened during the '48 undergraduate years.

Thanks to Bobo Russell we learn that RussCarlson has finally terminated his bachelor days. Russ and the former Nann Collins were married on October 18 in Warners, N.Y., just outside Syracuse. The new Mrs. Carlson graduated from Syracuse University in 1948, obtained her Masters from Cornell, is a system consultant and president of a computer consulting firm. Sounds like Nann has been as busy as bank president and former head class agent Russ. His classmates congratulate Russ and wish the Carlsons the fullest happiness in their future lives together.

Apologies to Ed Curtis for losing the notes I made during our phone conversation last June. Ed lives with his family here in Florida at Hollywood where he's in professional financing activities. He has three sons, two respectively at the U. of Tennessee and at Gettysburg, the youngest still in high school. Ed has visited Hanover fairly often since leaving The Plain, including the 1958 and 1967 reunions, and reports that his old fraternity, Gamma Delt, needs an outside coat of paint. He has seen or heard of such nearby fellow '48 Floridians as JackMahoney, Dwight Burley, and Pete Swinscoe, the latter "of large beard and hair thin on top."

The Alumni Records Office in Hanover reports that 52 members of the Class of 1948 either now have or in the past have had sons or daughters at Dartmouth. To me this seems an extraordinarily high proportion, representing, as it does, 12.0% of our Alumni Fund class scoring base of 434 members. Barney Hoistington,Walt Baker and Fran Hummel have each had two offspring enrolled as undergrads. By the end of June this year 24 sons of '48 fathers had already graduated from the College, whereas 31 undergrad sons and daughters are presently student body Dartmouth men and women. Ten are seniors, seven are juniors, eight sophomores, and six freshmen; twenty-three are men, eight are women. The honor of being the first '48 to have a son or daughter attend Dartmouth belongs to Jack Barry, believed now living in Towson, Md. Jack's son, John J.Ill, was of the Class of 1970.

As '48 news is thin this month, am taking the liberty of nostalgically looking back to a portion of life in Hanover as I knew it as a boy. Quite a few '48s and near-'48s had the good fortune to grow up in Hanover where, due to Dartmouth'a presence, life was interesting and exciting. One of the great pleasure of this pre-college life for us was the tremendous amount of informally organized sports activity which developed among us townies from the time we were very young right through our years in Hanover High. This self-organized activity took the form of choose-up teams in almost every sport one can name, through every season of the year. It developed into East and West teams representing the two sides of town divided by Main Street/Rope Ferry Road. This loose organization among Hanover's youths became further formalized when, in about 1940, Max A. Norton, then Bursar of Dartmouth and father of Johnny Norton '50, provided to every participant out of his own pocket T-shirts with the team names thereon, a most noble gesture. This was followed, among other things, by East/West hockey games between the periods of the Dartmouth hockey games in Davis Rink, a source of mirth and laughter for the Dartmouth undergrad spectators of those days.

One of the fields utilized for some of the contests was the fairly large open space between the tennis courts on East Wheelock St. and the hockey rink. Touch football and baseball with a tennis ball were prominent among the games played on this grass field. At other times, the Clark School field (now covered by dorms) or the Dartmouth facilities at Chase and Memorial Fields were unofficially appropriated, particularly in the summertime when the College was not using them.

Among the participants in these events over the years were such later '48 stalwarts as Wilcomb "Hot Dog" Washburn, John "Woody"Wood and Colin Stewart plus non-48s such as John Washburn '45, Don "Casey" Barr '46, Don Page '47, Jack Sargent '49, Mike Choukas '51, Jimmy Cavanaugh '51 and my two brothers, Andy '51, and Herb '52.

Homemade tennis ball baseball was played on a rough grass diamond on the aforementioned hockey rink field with homeplate located near the tennis court fence. The idea was to knock the tennis ball, which moved with bullet speed when hit, into the brick sidewall of Davis Rink to obtain tremendous ricochets requiring speed and skill to retrieve, or, preferably, over the roof for an automatic homerun. The only case of the latter that I ever saw was one awesome, towering shot Wid Washburn blasted so far over that high roof it may be still travelling today. In that gang Wid was some kind of hitter.

Of perhaps at least nostalgic interest to the '48 participants was a highly organized and tightly rivalled game of tackle held one late autumn afternoon in about 1941 on the Dartmouth soccer field just off South Park St. There had been a big build-up for this particular game, so both East and West were out in full force. Although not precisely Miami Dolphin-like in quality, the action was intense, and neither team scored throughout the first 55 minutes or so. Finally, late in the game, the East pulled out a zany fleaflicker that had been secretly practiced beforehand. After some improbable reverses and hand-offs in the backfield, the ball reached 48's Colin Stewart who faked and then tossed a beautiful little loft to a lone East man (I believe it was Johnny Wood) who had sneaked behind the draw-in West. Woody grabbed the pass and madly outran everyone to the goal-line for the only score of the game. This maneuver apparently destroyed the West's morale because in the next encounter between the two teams the East again squeaked through, this time by a narrow 109 to 0 margin. (Some of the West's boys may have been no-shows). Good fun.

Today Wid is an historian of highly developing professional reputation (his writings have appeared in various publications), Colin in an architect in the Denver area where he can still enjoy his penchant for skiing (he was a member of the U.S. Olympic team at St. Moritz in 1948 and has a house at Vail), while Woody is with a large paper company in the Boston area (after having passed several exciting and dangerous years in other sections of the country as an undercover narcotics agent). All are reportedly married to beautiful women and are the fathers of numerous offspring. (The blame is mine for any inaccuracies in the above fond reminiscence).

So much for now. Don't forget to pass me your news so your friends and classmates can know what you're doing.

Secretary, Gulf Oil Co. - Latin America Box 910 Coral Gables, Fla. 33134

Treasurer, Apt. 3-H, 7300 Blvd. East North Bergen, N.J. 07047