Inn Greeters With a Window on the Green

CHARLIE Balch is getting to be like a lot of the old timers. When he gets his copy of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, he turns to the back. "I always flip to the obituary section first," he says, "because I want to see how many of the old friends are no longer around."

Charlie Balch is not, in the strictest sense, a Dartmouth man. Yet there are those who'll tell you he's as much a part of the College as the brigades of vice presidents over in Parkhurst Hall, the small gatherings of ought-whatnots who savor old memories and maybe a brandy in the Hanover Inn, and the most exuberant of freshmen out to prove that the spirit of the old place has not, in fact, gone the way of class pipes and class canes.

He's the slender, white-haired gentleman who performs the Hanover Inn bellboy duties with another venerable character on the Dartmouth scene, an Irishman named John Dempsey who speaks with a brogue that 25 years in Hanover hasn't compromised.

Together, they've probably met more Dartmouth men than anyone alive with the possible exception of John Sloan Dickey. And together, they have as much affection for the College as the most devoted old Green. "I stand up for Dartmouth wherever I go," says Dempsey, who left Ireland for Hanover in 1950 and has been a Hanover Inn bellboy ever since.

Dempsey was born on a farm in County Tipperary and came to the United States because "life on a farm is not all sunshine." He chose New Hampshire because he had an aunt who lived in Hanover, and he decided to stay around because, he says, "I liked the boys here - they're a bunch of nice, clean-cut boys and I liked to see them around the campus."

Dempsey's seen a lot of changes from his window on the College at the south end of the Green, and he's not so sure he favors coeducation. "I'd much prefer to see Dartmouth a boys' college," he explains. "I think it would be a lot more fun for the boys to wait for their girl friends the way they once did. It used to be a lot of fun watching the boys waiting for their girl friends and showing them around the College."

He finds the New Hampshire winters severe and helps pass the long season by attending basketball and hockey games. "We don't have hockey in Ireland, but our game of hurling is a lot like it. I've taken in all the games I could possibly take in. Sports, you see, are my life."

The man from Tipperary doesn't regard the Dartmouth alumnus as a particularly demanding customer, but he does prefer dealing with members of the older classes. "The older classes are gentlemen," he says, "and they're easy to please. But the younger classes aren't as nice. They grew up in a different era, I guess."

Dempsey's days in Hanover are numbered. Soon he's going to return to Ireland. "I'm going to go home and never come back," he says. "I'll drink some good Irish beer. No matter where you go or how old you are, home is still home, and I'm going to live out the rest of my days there."

For Balch, New Hampshire is, and always has been, home. He is a Lyme native who will mark 30 years at the Inn this month. A graduate of the first class of the hotel school at the University of New Hampshire, Balch spent a few years working on his father's farm because poor eyesight prevented him from enlisting during World War II.

Then the war ended and he went looking for a job at the Inn. "They asked me to straighten out things with the bellboys," he recalls. "I never left. My vision kept deteriorating. There are lots of things I can't do but this is one thing I can do."

After 30 years at his post in the Inn lobby, certain faces are bound to become familiar. "You get to know people pretty well after that many years," he remarks.

"I can tell you about whole families - kids, married daughters, hometowns, anything. There are kids whose parents I knew when they were students.

"What I really enjoy," he says, "is seeing the real old-timers who have been out of school 65 years or more and who are in good enough shape to come back and enjoy football games and class reunions. Some people are so loyal to the College they come back several times a year. So you get to know them."

Balch has carried the luggage of a wide range of celebrities, including Marian Anderson, Artur Rubinstein, and most of the Rockefeller family. And he's served nearly every Presidential candidate in the New Hampshire primary from Norman Thomas and Harold Stassen to George McGovern. Even Richard Nixon "stopped and passed the time of day."

But Balch isn't very impressed with political figures. "Politicians are politicians," he says. "The local guys who run for office will come in here before an election and be friendly and shake everybody's hand.

"Then they'll come in two days after the election for lunch or something and they won't even look at you."

Charlie Balch (left) and John Dempsey at their regular post at the Hanover Inn.