Upward with Cliff

For 39 years before he retired in February, Cliff Sanborn of Enfield had been smoothing the way for outdoor types in Hanover and the Dartmouth community, with velvety golf green, level ice, or an easy ride to the top of Oak Hill.

Sanborn started working for the College in 1936 as a member of the grounds crew at the Hanover Country Club. Two years later, he joined the Occum Pond maintenance crew, tending the ice for team and recreational skaters. In 1943, he began running the Oak Hill ski lift, first overhead lift in the country.

Times have changed a lot during his years of service: the J-bar hangers seem a little antique next to the sophisticated equipment at posh ski resorts, but they still get a lot of use from Dartmouth undergraduates, high school teams, and area children learning to ski. And it's been a while since the golf course was kept in trim by scythe and hand mower.

Primarily a mechanic and maintenance man, Sanborn recalls most vividly splicing in a new piece of cable on the lift one day and part of a night in 1946, when the temperature dropped to 30 below. "It was surely cold enough," he says, hardly overstating the case.

Cliff Sanborn remains on call to help out occasionally at the Country Club, Occum Pond, or Oak Hill, and he's keeping busy with his home repair shop. Meanwhile the Sanborn family collectively is pushing toward a century of service to the College. Cliffs younger brother has already chalked up 40 years - with some to go - and his son 15 years, on the Country Club crew.

Speaking of skiing and the hard-core outdoorsmen who remain at its beck and call, Howard P. Chivers '39, manager of the Dartmouth Skiway, reports that a long-time customer, Dr. George Taylor was on the slopes 72 of the 87 skiable days this past season.

It was only an average season for him well below his record of 1968-69, when he skied 102 of the 107 days the facility was open. An attending physician at Dick's House, Dr. Taylor is 73 years old; he's been skiing since 1915.