1934

This morning I woke up full of beans for writing this column, loaded with plenty of notes a out what's been going on with everyone. One thing was missing, though a super-subject to stir the trooPs UP with in paragraph one.

Then the day's mail arrived, delivering the cassette of highlights from our 40th and 45th reunion shows. Like the fellow in the joke, I should have known what the show was like, because I was in it. Even so, I could hardly wait to open the package and play the tape.

Isn't it something? Impresario Stan Silverman can burst with pride all over again. And so can Alan Hewitt for his professional counsel as well as his masterful performance, Bill Scherman for em-ceeing the name-that-tune quiz, Barbara Smoyer for her glamor-filled male fashion show, Gail Raphael for his delightful song parodies, Jack Gilbert for his artistry at the piano, Moe Frankel for his fun-filled 20questions, and Art Moebius for a superb reading of Dick Campen's freshman letters home.

The gems of June 1979 registered like yesterday, but I had almost forgotten the 1974 show: Hewitt recounting our "hardships" on the Hanover Plain, a lovely taped greeting from Ann Hopkins, Raphael's magnificent tribute to Scherman and Bill's response, and my own Hanover Squares with the Phi Betes (StanSmoyer, Sam Carson, and Em Day) jousting with the Jocks (Moe Frankel, Dave Hedges, and Phil Glaser) and winning only because of Glaser's hilarious insistence that the answer to every other question was Al Baldwin, including who was our favorite movie actress back then.

I don't know about you, but I found the invitation to send a check for five dollars to Class Treasurer Ed Brown, to help defray the costs of the tape and mailing, irresistible, and did so forth with. You're reading this two months after I wrote it, but it's by no means too late if you forgot to do it before and still want to.

From Bill Scherman's newsletter, as well as from other correspondence, I note that the saga of '34 in Florida continues apace. All over the Sunshine State are taking place not only reunions of roommates for the first time since graduation (Sig Stern and Perry Gilbert) but encounters between guys who hardly even knew each other before (Dick Campen and BenPiatt).

I'm happy to tell you about some more Florida meetings. George Cogswell, wintering at Juno Beach, wrote that Dottie and NickNanos, of the same post office, hosted George and June" together with Gerry and Fred Robbe at the Nanos domicile. And that he ran into Josie and Charlie Sutton at another social. Charlie, he said, is president of the River Bend Condo Owners Association. About himself, our old class secretary related that in February he spent ten days in the hospital with phlebitis but that it seems to have been put under control and he's back at golf, which must prove that it has been.

It isn't only Florida. Andy Donaldson said that he and Nancy ran into Janet and WittMcConnochie last fall in the Bahamas, into Perkins Bass and his wife on the Dartmouth Egypt trip, and into the Dick Houcks recently right there in Minneapolis. "We are both well," Andy concluded, "working on our golf and doing some sailing. We plan to take the train next summer across Canada and on to Alaska."

Homage continues to be paid to the distinguished members of 1934. As proclaimed by a release from Ithaca, a major symposium on plant and animal evolution was presented at Cornell last November "in honor of Harlan P. Banks, the internationally known paleobotanist who retired last year from teaching at Cornell (New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences)." The communication went on to say that "Professor Banks has traveled the world investigating the origin and early evolution of land plants. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fulbright Research Scholar, and a Fellow of Clare Hall at Cambridge University. His gift for teaching won him the State University of New York Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching." In Harlan we most assuredly have another classmate to be proud of.

Walt Crandall had a letter not too long ago from Stan Bloomfleld. Stan had conscientiously complied with Walt's request for a review of his activities, although, as he put it, some of it does not make for pleasant reading. After graduation from Boston University Medical School, Stan recounted, he accepted a residency in pediatrics at Boston City Hospital and was certified for the specialty in 1942. He conducted private practice in Lowell, Mass., for ten years, and then the storm broke. He had two coronaries in two years, and later a stroke from which hemiplegia developed. He had to abandon his practice and went into clinical pharmacology in the pharmaceutical industry, from which endeavor he retired two years ago.

Stan's son received his B.A. from Dartmouth and his M.D. from Duke and is now in his third year of residency in internal medicine at North Carolina Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem. Stan's daughter, a graduate of Mount Holyoke, received a master's in communication from Penn and is now in her second year at Tuck, studying for an M.B.A. It's good to be able to include these two happy second-generation notes in the Bloomfield family report.

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