1921's 55th

For a superlative understatement, call the weather and scenery undramatic. Elm trees, Connecticut River, Balch Hill, and White Mountains provided the weekend backdrop for a theatrical setting, almost Wagnerian. Arriving in seersucker and cotton, men and women longed for bathing suits. Reason enough: the mercury, 95 degrees. Breathless swelterers mopped foreheads. Off with jackets and farewell to formality at the roast-beef and sea-food dinner, master-and-mistress-minded by the reunion chairmen sophisticates, Reginald and SylviaMiner. Then the night with frowning clouds, rumbles and bursts of thunder, jagged probing of the Hanover Plain by capricious flashes of lightning, From Canada, home of Jack andOlive Graydon. Arctic blasts whistled in, and within hours the mercury dropped from 95 degrees to 42.

After the wild night, in the near-frost morning emerged '21ers, teeth clenched tight to prevent chattering. Still in seersucker, men blew on their hands. Still in cotton, women dreamed of woolens and fur coats stashed away in cedar chests. An exception was the tennis pro, florid with Florida sun and lauding Fort Lauderdale humidity, O. J. Auger, sweating in shorts.

During the Friday scorcher Jim Hartz of the NBC Today Show was filming the Dartmouth scene. Somehow, reunion tensions fouled up electrical equipment. Under Paul Zeller the Dartmouth Glee Club kept doffing and donning as one test after another failed to register. With nodding approbation '21ers noted with what commendable reverence the women in the Glee Club sang "Men of Dartmouth." A senior observed whimsically that at one time the words, Men of Dartmouth, so offended the robust ears of female faculty and female undergraduates that "Dartmouth Undying" had to be substituted. By now the robust ears realize that a woman can be a chairMAN without the owner losing her standing as a normal being of the contrary, or, if you please, opposite sex.

Paradoxically, the weekend proved to be neither frigid nor overheated. With perfect June sun shining from a deep-blue New Hampshire sky, the reunion moved along in relaxed and quiet fashion. About the Fayerweathers 40 men and 34 women milled, hands and voices merging in welcomes. Blair Watson ran bygone silent movies, and Ort Hicks, whose memory is quicker and more reliable than a computer, called the names. The Class could view living and departed friends and wives as if they were indeed not one-dimensional and remote but three-dimensional and present. The dead seemed almost as alive as the living. And so it was during the memorial service, conducted with dignity and grace by Bishop Charles Gilson. In another special memorial service after the reunion was officially over, St. Thomas Episcopal Church was filled with classmates, friends, and family, honoring the memory of Ellis Briggs.

In the last 55 years the campus and environs have changed so remarkably that some classmates are still talking about the bus tour to view such easily understandable scenes as the Balch Hill residential area, now filled with homes for faculty and townspeople, formerly filled with homes for porcupines, squirrels, and hawks. Equally fascinating but impressively bewildering were the new buildings enabling the College to keep pace with a world the momentum of which is not slackening: the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, the U. S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, the Fairchild Physical Sciences Center, the Murdough Center involving the Tuck School of Business and the Thayer School of Engineering, the Thompson Arena, and, last and most baffling, the Kiewit Computation Center.

At the Class Meeting, over which President Donald Sawyer presided, one heard a number of statistics, some sobering, some amusing, and some sensationally dramatic as they testified again to the leadership established before and after June 1921. Among all classes ours stands

first in quality and numbers of scholarly, artistic, and important books donated to the Dartmouth College Library to honor deceased classmates. What a small class can do with determined leaders, patience, loyalty, and mutual trust was best shown in the report given by Roger Wilde, who for years has been working closely with Ort Hicks and Tom Cleveland. Thrown on the screen by Blair Watson, the figures appeared almost incredible. In matured bequests 11 classmates have given $306,222. In life-income trusts 19 have given $914,207. In estate-planning gifts, 11 have given $425,868. Summed up, 50 have given $1,646,297. Alumni Fund contributions over the years are not included.

Nor is this all. Since our last class meeting October 11, 1975, in new bequest provisions 22 have given between $500 and $10,000; and five, between $25,000 and $100,000. Three Funding Club members have increased their provisions by $307,000. Now in the process of settlement, bequest estimates in four estates amount to $837,000. A new life-income trust totals $14,000. The most sensational figure of all is $1,000,000, recently pledged, the source of which for the next several months must remain anonymous. The present grand total reaches $4,173,397 from 81 members of the 1921 Funding Club.

The fourscore men and women of the 55th left Hanover with a happy feeling. They see eye to eye with such leaders as Bill Alley, David Bowen (the new treasurer), Bob Burroughs (the new vice president), Harry Chamberlaine (the new president), Ort Hicks, Jack Hubbell, Reg Miner, BillPerry (the new memorial books chairman), Dave Plume (the new reunion chairman), DanRuggles, Don Sawyer, Tom Cleveland, and RogWilde. With their guidance and with the support of a small class, '2lers seem to have faith that the future of a great college is being assured. Yes, indeed, 1921 is small. In September 1917 it numbered only 411 with only 194 surviving in June 1976. With quiet and modest assurance most of them are saying that 1921 reveres the past, takes off its hat to the present, and affirms active faith that its dreams of the Dartmouth future may prove in reality better than its dreams of the past.

CLASS SECRETARY