1930

Numbers aren't the prime consideration in staging a Glorious Golden Gathering, but they help. By the end of January there was evidence that both the number of returning classmates and the total people attending, including 25 widows, will break existing records established by 1929 and 1925. The final count is in the hands of active regional committee members, but don't wait for their call; send your acceptance to Dick Bowlen in Walpole, N.H. One of the reunion program chairs is Bob Blanchard, who is working on a slide and movie presentation. If you have films you would like to share, address him at 590 Bowsprit Lane, Longboat Key, Fla. 33548, telephone 813/388-1098.

Looking backward: We didn't have snowmaking equipment to assure that a campus sculpture would be on display for Carnival. We weren't laid back, computerized, impacted, subject to double-digit inflation, or aware that there was a Third World. But we did have toast sides, a jug of cider on the window sill, CollegeHumor, and Paul Whiteman. And we had the beginnings of lasting friendships, none better documented than by Al Dickerson in his tribute to Eddie Jeremiah 36 years later.

"One of Jerry's fine qualities is a certain quality of candor and directness. Soon after he came back to Hanover to coach in 1937, he revealed to Bob Strong, then director of admissions, that his ultimate goal was to be a combination hockey coach and director of admissions. However, he started his admissions career quietly, in the role of part-time adviser, consultant, and helper.

"When I wound up in the admissions hot seat, another of the great Jeremiah qualities came to the fore his magnanimity. Did Jerry let it rankle that after all of his on-the-job training, some rank outsider had copped the plum? No, indeed. He just started out helping me. By definition, the prime qualification of the great coach is being a good teacher. Jerry is a great teacher. Admissions people keep talking about things like rank-in-class, verbal aptitude, mathematical aptitude. Jerry pointed out that this was a very limited way to look at the promise of college candidates. It left out of account a lot of other aptitudes. For one example, skating; for another, stick-handling. I should carry the message back to the College Board: there were grave omissions in their test battery. 'You guys in the Admissions Office go at everything the wrong way,' he said. 'The first thing you ask for on Form 1 is a photograph. What kind of photograph do you ask for? Head and shoulders. Why, you can't even tell whether he's wearing skates.'

"That spring when, beleaguered and bedraggled, I had alienated most of my friends and God knows how many potential benefactors of the College, who but Jerry in all his generosity could offer consolation: 'I will nominate you for rookie of the year,' he said.

"Ralph Manuel '58, a nice young guy in the admissions office who played baseball under Jerry, was watching Jerry knock out grounders to his infielders. The third baseman muffed three chapces in a row. Jerry leaned on his bat after the third one and called to Ralph, 'He's not a very good glove-man, but he's got a 700 Verbal.'

"Those were the hard times of those warm winters, when Jerry phrased immortally his yearning to play natural hockey players on artificial ice, rather than vice versa. Jerry likes to project himself as the simple barefoot boy skates; but who of us can forget the photograph that Jerry got taken of himself by a very competent photographer, testing out back-hill beaver ponds for November ice thick enough for his skaters to practice on? After this picture was widely published, Jerry's artificial ice was inevitable."

Carol and Carll Buhler's son Rob is a senior in high school. Carll participates in church work and telephone pioneers activities, and, because he lives in Cutchogue, L.1., he is a fisher, clammer, and crabber.

Is Bill O'Brion retired? "In addition to serving as advertising representative of Yankee's New England Business and the MaineSportsman, the Chamber of Commerce has asked me to represent their Greater Portland magazine. So my days are well and profitably taken up, with a lot of traveling around the state, but not too demanding, and completely flexible time-wise. Had a busy summer at my cottage in Friendship, including visits from my son Bill and my California daughter Gay and her three youngsters."

Grif Griffin, one of nine members of the delegation from Tabor Academy in our class, lives in Marion. Before retirement he served as an officer of both the Wareham National and Wareham Savings Banks.

For a ski magazine writer preparing a feature story on the Suicide Six area near Woodstock, what better source than Dick Bowlen, who has skied there for more than 25 years and confesses that "there was one time when I stopped halfway down the Face and just stood there with my knees shaking like crazy."

Don't miss it: June 6-8. The class picture will be taken on the steps of Webster Hall on Saturday, June 7, at 10:45 a.m.

"1930 up" fOR THE 50th! OUR GLORIOUS GOLDEN GATHERING JUNE 6TH, 7TH, AND 8TH, 1980, AT HANOVER. OF COURSE

56 Jennys Lane Barrington, R.I. 02806