1940

Double honors were accorded last spring to Bill Mercer for his outstanding leadership in public service as well as in business as president of New England Telephone and Telegraph and as director of several major corporations.

Northeastern University, where he is a member of the corporation, awarded him an honorary doctorate of public service at its 77th commencement, while Suffolk University recognized the positive impact of his "practical idealism" by presenting him with an honorary degree of doctor of commercial science.

Bill, who is also an overseer at Tuck School, was hailed by Northeastern as an "agent of progress." Taking special note of his role as president of the Massachusetts Bay United Way, as well as that of communications executive, the president of Northeastern observed in a citation that "the poor, the aged, the physically ill, and the handicapped have all benefitted from your compassion and sense of dedication."

To fill Bill's cup to overflowing, Suffolk University President Thomas A. Fulham summarized his tribute to Bill in this manner: "Enlightened, creative, and solicitous for the public welfare, you are an outstanding example of the breed on which so much of America's continued prosperity depends."

And about the same time, Gordie Westworth received the highest honor the Dartmouth Alumni Council can bestow when he was presented an Alumni Award and replica of the famed Wentworth Bowl in recognition of his "outstanding service to country, profession, community and college."

In the citation read to the assembled class officers at their annual spring meeting banquet on campus, Don Hemel, then president of the council, informed Gordie, "Your promotions from Army private to major in five years and from bank clerk to senior vice president in 25 years, along with your service to community and the College (sometimes commuting almost 200 miles daily) have earned you the silver crown you wear and the award you are about to receive."

Gordie has chaired the class bequest program since 1966 and has also served Dartmouth as secretary and president of the Greater Boston Alumni Association, member of the Alumni Council, and of the Boston enrollment committee, and area chairman of the Third Century Fund.

In the context of reporting with pride, HughDryfoos writes that while strolling on Fifth Avenue in New York recently a large window display of books in a major branch of the public library caught his eye.

Investigating, he found that the entire window was devoted to the book New York, NewYork, by our Jack Halpern. Hugh, still the good reporter, added that he called Jack and "found that he has turned his hobby, photography, into his occupation. He is currently at work on a similar publication on San Francisco. The photos of New York in Jack's book are really fabulous. Any New Yorkophile should get one for his or her library."

Meanwhile Ed Fritz, down Baltimore way, where he is vice president for student affairs at the University of Baltimore, was featured in a half-page spread in the Baltimore Sun as an exceptional example of the growing number of men "hooked on needlepoint." As befits a scholar turned administrator (he was a professor of English for years), curiosity spurred Ed to take up needlepoint after he saw an advertisement in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE about a needlepoint kit for "broidering" the Dartmouth seal.

Fascinated by the process and its results, he has continued in his idle (?) hours by doing one needlepoint design after another, many now framed and hung about the walls of his house. He is currently working on an intricate Chinese tapestry (the design calls for 291,000 stitches), and he expects that it will keep him busy at least through 1979. The Baltimore Sun writer quoted a needlepoint authority who called Ed's work "outstanding."

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