1921

"As an older couple in modest circumstances," Jim and Sally Wicker hope to repay in some measure the benefits given them by the society in which they were born, lived, and flourished for the past 75 years. Their projects may indeed gain nation-wide recognition during the Bicentennial Year. 1. Jim provided the seed money to promote the Visual Arts Center for Oakland and the East Bay. The 300 struggling artists now involved may be doubled by next year. 2. To accommodate theatre, symphony, and ballet Jim donated a capital sum for the Paramount Theatre of the Arts, 3,500 seats at a cost of $2 million. The location is central, the acoustics perfect, and parking for 2,000 cars no problem. The capacity house of 3,000 is continually sold out. 3. Jim paid all costs for the purchase and installation of a plaque to commemorate the United Nations Flag Pole in the Jack London Square, Oakland, on the 30th anniversary of that organization. 4. Jim is providing further money for the International Children's Art Festival with the bicentennial theme "My Country 200 Years Ago." 5. In Hanover Jim stimulated with a generous capital gift the new Howe Library costing $900,000, invaluable for non-college and townspeople and children timid about entering the Dartmouth College Library. Jim's philosophy is that he hopes "in a small way to influence some of my antecedents to be more outgoing with their worldly goods while they still enjoy good mental and physical health." "For me," he says, "the dividends are tremendous."

Florence Barker acts on her philosophy, complementary to Jim's. "Don't sit down or you may freeze that way," she says, and she keeps involved. She skis cross-country, works two days a week at the State Hospital, and escorts her children and grandchildren to Europe each year. Her most challenging activity may be in transcribing textbooks for blind students ranging from the fourth and fifth grades to post graduate candidates. At dinner a while back with Ann and Tom Staley during his annual Rochester physical they spoke admiringly about Nels' contributions to science at Mayo's. Before he lost his sight he belonged to 12 medical organizations, and his bibliography ran to nearly 200 items.

Beatrice Seegal is on the same wave length. "There is a constant urgency to researching a subject like cancer," she writes. An M.D., she is attempting to add to the scant information about the role of immunological responses play in cancer development. Classmates and thousands of students recall with unlimited appreciation David, as Professor of Internal Medicine, Columbia University, with enormous gifts and dedication as teacher; David, authority on epidemic disease; and David, director of various research teams. Nor do they forget the dramatic role he played as poet and wit after his retirement.

Mobile is the word for Furb Haight. For the 17th year in a row he will wave farewell to New Mexico and bounce up at the Harvard-Dartmouth game next autumn. Three times he has gone on cruises aboard the Norwegian ship, the Royal Viking Sea, and he has a reservation on it for Alaska next June. He had an unusual thrill on his recent cruise as the Royal Viking Sea was serenely sailing through the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. He watched the crew at night with courage and expertness rescue 600 passengers of a French cruise ship that had run aground and in a rough sea called for help. How active domestically is Furb? It was Mary who dug, raked, and harvested the Haight vegetable garden, but Furb flexes his muscles in front of the TV, relaxes them on the cocktail circuit, tenses them up at bridge sessions, and passively carries on monologues at Dartmouth luncheons at home (Dartmouth men are locally nonexistent), and plays weighty roles as president of the Lions Club and president of the Winter Sports Club.

A brave man, Doug Fay does not dare saunter out at night in New Orleans because he was mugged three times in 1975, each time by three armed Blacks. Twice he lost everything, but not three times because on the last occasion he carried nothing. He confesses that he still has his millionaire tastes. He yearns for New York restaurants, because even the best in New Orleans enjoy inflated reputations and excessive garlic. He rejects the local newspaper and reads The Wall Street Journal, listens to classical LP's mixed with nostalgic 1920 and 1930 numbers, solves the most difficult crossword puzzles, and drinks the choicest liquors. He winters on the Gulf Coast, favors Biloxi, and summers in Colorado where he has two sons. "Figure this," he writes. "One son married the divorced wife of the brother of his own divorced wife."

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