1940

As far as I know, few '4os were in Hanover for the Holy Cross football thriller earlier this fall, and fewer still probably read the program feature about "the best guarded secret in the history of Dartmouth intercollegiate athletics."

Lest the secret remain such to most '40s for another 40 years, I think it worth re-telling, particularly because it involves three classmates directly, the rest of us indirectly.

According to correspondence recently rediscovered in DCAC files deep in Alumni Gym, the undefeated Dartmouth football team of 1937 was invited, on the strength of its 8-0-2 record, to play in the Rose Bowl on January 1, 1938, against the University of California. The bid was tendered by Robert G. Sproul, then president of the University of California, but unofficially in a private letter to Ernest Martin Hopkins to ascertain whether Dartmouth would accept if formally invited.

President Hopkins graciously yet firmly declined on the sound grounds, later incorporated in Ivy League rules, that a post-season game so late in the semester could seriously handicap the players in their academic work. As a result, of course, the invitation remained unreported for 40 years.

Had the invitation been accepted, however, among those who would have made the trip to Pasadena were three '40s who as sophomores made the '37 team - R. H. "Soup" Campbell,Bill Hutchison, and Whit Miller. Several members of that team were in the stands for the Holy Cross game as guests of DCAC, but only Big Bill of the '40 trio was present.

Art, golf, and vacationing were more on WhitMiller's mind than football when Walker (Ike)Weed met him in Aspen this summer. Ike had taken a little time off from teaching Dartmouth students woodworking to do more of the same at the Anderson Ranch Craft School in Snowmass near Aspen, and he reports that Whit, whose talents include sculpting, seemed to have plenty to do working with the Aspen Arts Council while vacationing there.

Ike, a veteran of the 10th Mountain Division, also noted regretfully that he had missed a reunion in Aspen of that famed Army unit, which numbered many Dartmouth skiers in its ranks, because he was off climbing whenever he had free time. He particularly regretted missing historian Page Smith, who he heard was there from the West Coast to relive some of those World War II days with the 10th Light. Ike did meet Bob Armstrong, who has become an ardent woodworker and who had come to the ranch craft school from his home in Charlotte, N.C., in order to take the course after Ike's.

Another traveler is Bob "Moose" Stearns, who left his lumber and other businesses in Minnesota for a juant east, where he looked up his old roommate, Joe Huber, now living in Williston, Vt., and then visited Ike in Hanover for their first get-together since graduation.

Gary Allen's Herculean achievements in rebuilding the Gunstock area ski jump in one of the finest facilities in the East is being recognized in two ways. Firstly, the Gunstock jump has been selected as the side for the FIS tryouts this winter to pick the U.S. jumping team for the international championship meet in Finland. Secondly, Gary, who has also been the sparkplug of the highly successful children's ski program there, has been invited to take a key role in managing the jumping events at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics in 1980.

Bob Williams (Dr. Robert F.) who has been a physician at University Hospitals in Cleveland for more than 30 years, was honored earlier this year at its annual meeting by the Greater Cleveland Hospital Association. Special note was taken of his many contributions at the Hough-Norwood Health Center, where he has been president of the board.

Cecil Moore, commenting on his transfer to Los Angeles to be managing director of the southwest region for Pan Am, also looked five years ahead, when he figures he'll be thinking about retirement. Then he plans to move to the San Diego area - "the garden spot of the world." Coming from a man of his travels, that's high praise indeed. But he wanted to report that until that time home is at 47 Seaview Drive. South Rolling Hills Estates, Calif., and that he'd be delighted to hear from any '40s in the area.

In a commentary so good it was reprinted in Currents by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, syndicated Washington columnist Tom Braden rebuked critics of college education, particularly those concerned with the declining relative financial reward returned by an A.B. today.

"A college education ought to have nothing to do with making money," wrote Tom. "It ought to have to do with understanding, with learning to think in a certain way, with arousing curiosity, with satisfying it, with perception of values and judging among them.

" 'What's the difference,' somebody once asked Aristotle, 'between an educated and an uneducated man?'

" 'The same difference,' he replied, 'as between being alive and being dead.' "

10 Heneage Lane Hanover, N.H. 03755

'40's Dartmouth FreshmenFather Son or Daughter William Duncan Polly