1948
A letter such as the one received from Bob Herrick in La Jolla makes your secretary's job a pleasure which more than offsets the occasional frustration involved in writing about one's classmates when there just isn't any hard news.
Some of Bob's highly welcome and thoughtful comments as a former purveyor of these notes and the newsletter are the following: He found Howie Hilton's The Endless Tunnel "a dandy suspense story which I'm sure others in the class would find equal to most of the paperbacks they pick up to make the jet flights a little shorter" . . . reminisced about the endless hours he and Howie and others spent "exploring Culbertson together in South Mass. back in '46-'47 . . . have visited with Dottie and Howie a couple of times since in Tampa" . . . also enjoyed Interlude in the Forties written by Bob Heussler '47 as "a delightful nostalgia piece for those of us who were in Hanover during and immediately after WW II" . . . talks with Dr. Keith McLoud once a year or so, a pediatrician "with such great potential."
Bob goes on to note they "have fairly solid Dartmouth contingent here in San Diego which recently nominated John Steele '54 for Alumni Trustee," causing "best internecine scrap" since an earlier election some years ago . . .
"certainly Ray Rasenberger '49 would have been an excellent trustee, too, but nice to know these things not entirely cut-and-dried" . . . "theory that says the nation is tilted toward the west and all the loose people end up in California; maybe so, but we enjoy being flaky together" . . . "Johnny Fenno reports from Canajoharie that Grace and their flock all doing well, ski a lot in the winter, and are ace Thistle-class sailors in the summer" . . . "BeechLockwood's death came as a real blow, no replacement for him, we had promised to get together at the last reunion but never made it."
Bob also reports he has changed careers at 52 and has been with The Equitable for a year. "Chose the insurance business for its freedom and no mandatory retirement . . . not easy, but what is? . . . have done more studying in 1980 than I did the first two years in Hanover . . .
Margie says I don't come home from work grinding my teeth and snarling any more." Bob, your epistle was a classic. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Dick Bredenberg does get around. The Christmas letter from him and Huldah was written in Haiti, but during the year one or the other fulfilled study or teaching duties at Tampa, San Diego, Buffalo, Greensboro, and St. Petersburg, not to mention Dick's having hosted an A.A.A. cruise to Mexico and Guatemala. Dick by now has returned from a half-year's sabbatical from Eckerd College in St. Pete and will be offering a new course, "The Creative Process." The English language program Dick and Huldah began ten years ago at Eckerd for Japanese students continues to receive enthusiastic pupils and the concentrated attention of its accomplished founders.
Two of the more active members of our class received the singular honor of being presented with Dartmouth Alumni Awards at the annual Alumni Council banquet on December 5th in Hanover. Pictures and excerpts from the citations appeared in last month's issue. These bestowals on John Hatheway and Lloyd Krumm were to mark the service provided by these tireless and selfless men to their communities and to their College on the Hill. Both are officers of the prominent business firms they serve, both hold or have held time-consuming volunteer civic responsibilities in the townships where they reside, and both have put in many, many hours of unselfish service over the years in the endeavor to help maintain their Dartmouth in the front rank of private educational institutions in our nation. An enthusiastic vote of thanks and a fond wah-hoo-wah to these '48s is deserved from all of us in further recognition of their having served their fellow Dartmouth men and women so effectively.
If one is fond of the "way down East" country of Maine, one has got to envy the location of Tom Crook and Geneen at Blue Hill, a tiny town on the coast south of Bangor. Not much of the United States lies east of this point where people are still few in number and where nor'easter winter storms carry a wild, singular fury. Tom has taken a job as director of development at George Stevens Academy, a position where we can guess his lively imagination will be given full vent.
Among '48s, however, Tom was preceded at Blue Hill by lieutenant commander JimGraham, a U.S. Navy classmate of whom we have no further information at present, but would like same. Another classmate who has recently arrived in Maine after selling his business in the Boston area is Phil Gahm, now resident at Medomak. He joins other '48 Maine-iacs Walt Baker, shipbuilder and marina operator in South Freeport; Ph.D. Charlie Majors who is a member of the faculty at the university in Orono; Gordie Noe who is a coal and lumber operator in Brunswick, the home of Bowdoin; Ed Ouellette, formerly in insurance in Berlin, N.H., who has transferred his residence to Kennebunkport; Dr. NormSaunders whose shingle is hung out at the Maine Medical Center in Portland; and PhilShepard whose government-connected work is carried on out of Yarmouth. Nor can we forget banker Sam Wilkinson who so loyally and effectively wrote these notes for so many years. Sam's with a bank holding company, can usually be found in his office in Lewiston, and calls Cumberland Foreside home for himself, wife Jean, and their four children. The class of '48 is well represented in Maine by the above. Apologies if I've missed anyone; please let me know so I can correct the error.
As I write this and when you read it Hanover should be covered by a marvelous blanket of white crystalline snow. If you have a minute, think back on it. Maybe this will remind you of some of those moments late in the afternoon of a dark February winter day when you emerged from Baker or a lab into the outdoor silence of an ending storm. The limited daylight was fast fading, a few lazy flakes were still effortlessly floating and falling, and the street lights were glimmering across and around the campus. Your footsteps muffled noiselessly along the plowed paths where a little light new snow still lay, and not a whisper of wind moved. Silence. Just beautiful, breathless silence. Do you have time to remember? Was this the way it was?
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