Tribute to Pudge
These excerpts are from a tribute to the late Lloyd K. Neidlinger '23, given in Rollins Chapel in April by his son-in-law Robert D. Kilmarx '5O.
This is a warm celebration of a life that powerfully touched us all.
Fred Berthold has reminded us that a man should rejoice in his own works - and Pudge Neidlinger certainly did!
No man more enjoyed nor contributed more to intercollegiate athletics. His 51-yard field goal against Harvard in 1922 was legendary and has stood as a Dartmouth record for 56 years - tied but never surpassed. It was no fluke! Many years later, sitting in the dean's office here, someone questioned the possibility of that long a kick. Egged on by his twin daughters. Pudge put on his old felt hat, walked the skeptic to Memorial Field, had him hold a ball, and repeated the kick in his tweed suit and street shoes, without even taking off his hat! And then he turned around and kicked another one in the opposite direction.
He could have been a great coach, but a higher role claimed his devotion. In 1933 President Hopkins called him to be dean of the College, and he joined that grand team of men (now all gone) who, with Mr. Hopkins, so importantly shaped the affairs of the College in those years - Bob Strong, Al Dickerson, and Sid Hayward.
When I talk these days to student friends about Dean Pudge Neidlinger, they usually ask from their present perspective of a complex organizational structure, "Which Dean was he?" - to which the answer, of course, is, "He was the dean!" There was really only one dean in those days, when the dean's influence on the students and the College was profound.
He was the classic heroic authority figure, personifying basic personal values and controlling the affairs of the College and its students by the sheer strength of his person anti the consistency and administrative soundness of his actions. Consummate dignity and rectitude were his - uncompromising, indestructible and undiminishable to the very end.
Pudge made an impact on all of us Dartmouth students of that era. For those in disciplinary trouble, the impact was vivid and intense! For those in need, his capacity and instinct to help was vast. His supportive help to me in the middle of one grim night when I needed it more than anything else, influenced my subsequent choice of career and gave me an early insight into his compassion and deep personal concern that I have valued ever since.
Pudge rejoiced in the satisfactions of influencing the development of students and the pleasures of working with them. I well remember one college meeting at which the appropriateness of a student judiciary system was seriously questioned. Pudge defended it stoutly, observing, "My job is to try to keep the lid on a boiling pot, and I can use all the help I can get from any students willing to sit on it with me!"
For all Pudge's personal impressiveness as dean, the Neidlinger family was an equally important factor in the College community. Their home was always the informal reunion center for returning friends and students, and since they lived right behind the library and spent much of their time outside on the porch or front steps, many students and townspeople knew Marion, Mary, and the twins, Sally and Susan, as well as the dean. In fact, Marion entertained the DOC leadership most mornings over coffee in her kitchen.
The brothers of SAE knew their Neidlinger neighbors well over the years. Susan and Sally were in their house so much they were made honorary SAE's at age 10, and Pudge never hesitated to call up late Saturday night and tell the boys to pipe down. Then on Friday night, August 17, 1951, when we were all having a party at the Neidlingers' before Mary's and my wedding the next day, the phone rang and a voice said, "Dean Neidlinger, we're trying to get some rest over here at SAE. Won't you please be a little quieter!" I think Pudge rejoiced in that call, too.
I have my own special image of Pudge, which I treasure because it's private and yet the evidence of it is tangible and enduring. He loved to cruise, and Mary and I were often with him and Marion on those glorious boat trips in New England waters. Most days had a special beginning as Pudge would get up with the sun, make himself a cup of coffee and then sit in the cockpit with his paints, catching the feel of the day and the harbour in water colors. There was something solid and right and enhancing about the sight through the companionway of that big man calmly capturing beauty on paper in his very special way.
Rejoicing in one's works requires sharing. It's no good alone, for most of us. For Pudge, the sharing was with Marion and that, in the words of the poet, "has made all the difference." Fifty-three years of love and mutual support and fun and adventure and, always, sharing and rejoicing in their family and their life together here in this special place with friends they loved so much.
We won't often again see that sort of partnership in this complicated society, but the base of love and memories built by that relationship will sustain and enrich us all.
A life like Pudge's doesn't end. The things he did and the way he did them and the values he lived endure - in the record books, in his paintings, in his verse, in his designs, in his friends, his wife, his daughters, and, most especially, in his thousands of Dartmouth sons around the girdl'd earth.
