1963
Chris Miller is writing a novel, apparently about Dartmouth College. Chris also is a contributing editor to the National Lampoon, and in that capacity he inserted one of the novel's chapters into the October issue of the magazine. It deals with the Hell Night activities at the "Adelphian Lodge" and, in the estimate of a writer for The Dartmouth, may help to immortalize the Dartmouth Animal.
The Night of the Seven Fires traces the fraternal and infernal odyssey of two pledges, including one who is unable to blow lunch (When did I last use that term?). He is saved from his near-fatal breakdown of intestinal fortitude only by . . . well, read the story.
"The story was an effort to convey the spirit of the initiation," Miller told the "D" in a recent interview. "Crudity was not the important thing; to me it was a lot of fun. I wanted to romanticize the initiation as part of camaraderie and the way young men have fun.
"The house I was in (AD) was a real freaky house and lot heavier stuff than was in the Lampoon article went on while I was there."
Miller, who says his novel probably will be a cross between M*A*S*H and American Graffitti, has been dedicating his life "to the creation of wit and humor" since his graduation from Tuck School in 1966. His ultimate goal is "garnering sufficient money to buy all my Dartmouth friends, recreate Alpha Delta Phi in the center of Central Park, and spend the rest of my life chipping for kegs, listening to the juke box and behaving in a disreputbale manner."
There is yet hope for the Class.
I'll try to do as little damage as possible to this letter from Mike Marantz. Mike has taken up filmmaking and now works for the University of Georgia's television station in Athens. Pete Israelson can do his beach bit; Mike has done WallyButts: Georgia Bulldog, directing, filming and editing the biography of Georgia's famed football coach and winning recognition at the Atlanta Film Festival. Now directing a film on the Georgia artist and educator, Lamar Dodd, Mike in earlier years "functioned as a film editor" in New York for such "diverse and great people" as Bob Dylan, Richard Leacock, and Fred Mogubgub.
On the side, Mike likes to write, but regards that work as private, for "unlike the academic world ... to publish is often to perish in the art of fine writing." He and his former wife are excellent friends, he reports, and they have a "beautiful and completely sane little eight-year-old girl named Julie." Hobby: Karate (presently practicing the Shao-Lin style, Kempo (Shourin Ji Ryu Kempo).
Whatever happened, he asks, to TomWasmuth and Stu Ullmann?
Bob Stephenson has just completed the impossible mission - a guidebook to Boston. ThisIs Boston, published by Houghton Mifflin, sells for $1.95, which is a lot to pay, I think, for getting lost. When he can find the way, he works for the president of the University of Massachusetts helping to plan physical development for its three campuses.
Bill Subin now makes house calls; station house calls, that is. Bill has become the first police legal advisor in Atlantic County, N.J., and is available day and night to counsel police. He also conducts seminars for them to help officers be more precise in their investigations and case reports. I assume this all is in addition to Bill's other work as an assistant district attorney.
To the North, Carl Fogelberg has joined Vermont Legal Aid Inc. in Montpelier.
Pete Andre is living in Annapolis, Md., teaching future Naval officers "the deadly art of calculus."
Bob Barnum has been appointed assistant to the College's vice president for administration, Rodney A. Morgan. Bob has been assistant business manager at Dartmouth since 1969.
John Goellner has joined the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., as a consultant in pathology. John spent the past four years at the clinic's graduate school as a resident in pathology after getting his MD at the University of lowa School of Medicine.
In the radiology department, we're a bit crowded this month: George Parker has become an associate of the Genesee (N.Y.) Radiology Group. And Steve Kardon has survived two years with the Air Force in Biloxi, Miss., and is practicing now in White Plains, N.Y. His wife Nataline is a pediatrician in New York City. They have two sons, David (4) and Brian (2).
Steve Garland has been named an associate professor of mathematics at Dartmouth. He's been on the faculty since 1967 and is a computer specialist and researcher into mathematical logic.
Pete Slavin names names: Among '63s at PhilFisher's Harvard wedding to Laura Gordon on August 25 were Joe Shannon and himself.
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