1940

In the North Country, it's snowtime when the thoughts of most of us in the area turn, not to cabbages and kings, but to skiing and things out-of-doors, with more and more learning the physical and aesthetic delights of cross country.

Prime example is Gary Allen, who co-hosted for the Gunstock Nordic Association the U.S. National Nordic Combined Championships which brought the nation's top Nordic jumpers and cross-country runners to Gilford for three days late in January.

Indeed, the state-wide daily for New Hampshire pictured him at the base of the Gunstock Ski Area's 70-meter jump with an array of the awards made at the championships, and he looks every bit like the "man of the mountains."

Gary who, when he isn't running ski meets, is teaching math at the Gilford High School and also running the youth skiing program there in both Nordic and Alpine events. Maybe there is in the ranks of those youngsters another Penny Pitou Zimmerman, whom Gary tutored in skiing early in her career. Later she went on to win two Olympic Silvers.

And when he isn't running ski meets and coaching new generations of youngsters in skiing, he takes a skier's holiday and goes skiing - for recreation, as he does regularly with IkeWeed, one of his former roommates at 8 School Street and later a business partner years ago in Gilford.

Like Gary, Ike also is totally engaged in teaching young people what he loves most next to skiing - and that is woodworking. As director of workshops at the Hopkins Center, he presides over magnificent facilities there for wood and metal working, and jewelry making.

The woodworking shop alone, which he personally directs, attracts more than one third of every Dartmouth class at some time during its four years in Hanover. He knows because he has to log each woodworker through" the shop's safety course as a prerequisite to use of the equipment. The shop is so busy with undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty making everything from paddles and canoes through flutes, oboes, and guitars, to every conceivable kind of furniture, that Ike now has to wear ear coverings resembling a pilot's earphones, just to protect his hearing from the constant whine and buzz of the mechanized equipment.

The combined talents of Ike and Gary seem to have been passed on to Ike's son Tyke '71 and former co-captain of the Dartmouth Ski Team, whom Ike visited over Christmas in the Rockies. Tyke, who last summer helped At Merrill build a new cabin at Hell Gate in the College Grant, is now coaching nordic skiing at the Aspen Ski Club.

Ike also reports that he spent New Year's Day with another former School Street room- mate, Joe Huber, who is selling for G.E. out of Burlington, Vt., raising sheep on his "spread" in nearby Williston, and goats at a farm he also operates in Starksboro.

As a fun way to get the adrenlin moving, Atwell Smith recommends building a house of one's own design. That's what he and his wife, Marge are doing in Birmingham, Miss, and calls it "an experience no one should miss." He also reports his younger daughter Jan was graduated from Indiana University in June and in September was married.

Claude (Hank) Birkett compacts a lot of life in a concise communication of just 14 words from Rochester, N.Y. He writes: "Divorced, remarried, two grandchildren from first, four stepchildren. Still alive."

Speaking of daughters marrying, many who were at the Reunion last June may not have realized that Bob and Didi Gensel made it to reunion the day after their daughter was married in Garden City, Long Island.

Not too many of us wind up with our homes featured in Holiday magazine, but such has been the case for Jordan Van Cleeve, whose condominium vacation home in the elegant development at Quechee, Vt., earned that magazine's encomium of Holiday House. The article containing the fact that the fastidious editors of Holiday had focused on the Van Cleeve "castle" took a while to reach us. The story actually was published last March, but it still seemed worth reporting. Of course, those few classmates who returned early for the pre- reunion weekend at Quechee know all about why Jordan's home and setting was chosen.

Mori Harwood (Morris S.) has been named associate agency secretary in the Agency Contracts Department of Masachusetts Mutual Lifs Insurance Company. Classmates will remember that he earned an MCS from Tuck with distinction in business and joined the company in 1941. He served in the Navy from 1942-46. Mori is a member of the Dartmouth Club of Springfield and the Wilbraham Tennis Club and makes his home in Wilbraham. In the post-Watergate political era, it seems that even old school ties can get well laundered and aired in the Congressional quest to assure that every fact of the lives of top U.S. administrators are beyond reproach.

Among those caught in this cross-fire during the Congressional examination of Nelson Rockefeller '30, prior to his confirmation as Vice President was Tom Braden, nationally syndicated Washington columnist and long-time friend and associate of Rockefeller's. As one of those listed as having received business loans from Rockefeller, Tom found himself the subject of special attention from The New YorkTimes. Time magazine, and other publications, even though there was nothing illegal about the transactions and all the loans had been repaid.

A nostalgic note from Jack Fitzgerald marks the passing, for him, of two charming Beacon Hill customs. Jack for years has walked to work from his home on Irving Street in the heart of the "hill," a practice that has led happily to regular curbside reunions with classmates. Now he writes, "My routine has changed. I no longer walk to or from work and hence will not see as many people." Therefore, he mused, the only people he sees occasionally now in his usual travels are Jack McDonald and Paul Dyer. He mentioned that he and Stet Whitcher used to "review the Armistice Day parades together for several years," implying that that custom, too, is no longer observed by them.

Wes Coding hears a good one at 1939 fallreunion. George Hanna appears on thetelling side, Bert McMannis between.

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