Man of Dartmouth

THE alert observer might have noticed, late in December, jets of steam emerging from Crosby Hall. DENNIS A. DINAN '61, flipping through this, his final issue as editor of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, had just come to page 34, anticipating quite another profile. (As Dero Saunders '35 once wrote in an article similarly "conceived in secret and pursued in stealth" about Dinan's predecessor, the editor "would rather accept a hot coal without tongs than willingly assent to a story in his beloved magazine giving him his due.")

Risking his wrath, the staff elected Dinan's retired associate editor, now safely removed from the source of that wrath, for the job. It is a difficult task and an easy one, an assignment both cherished for the opportunity and lamented for the need.

It is also a challenge, because Dennis Dinan is a very private man, not given to extravagant pronouncements about the College and the mission of the Magazine. Deep love and abiding respect for Dartmouth and for the Magazine's historic role as the vital communications link between the College and its alumni are basic assumptions, rarely articulated, that time has abundantly proved to be fundamental to his personal and professional philosophy. Another unstated editorial assumption has been that Dartmouth is an exciting, heterogeneous, evolving institution of learning and that the entire raison d'etre of the Magazine is to convey that excitement, that heterogeneity, that evolution to a wildly diverse body of alumni, men and women of strong opinion, few among them indifferent to the College.

Students are an integral part of the opera'tion, thanks largely to the Whitney Campbell internships, and the nurture of young writers has been a significant facet of Dinan's job. The interns have been his ear to the campus, to how the College is going about its business of learning, in and beyond the classroom. He has listened to them, encouraged them, stimulated them to become more perceptive observers, better writers.

Asked about Dinan as editor, former interns speak of Dinan as teacher. Princeton graduate" student Dan Nelson '75 recalls that his internship was "as much an education as a job, because Dennis is as inspiring and demanding a teacher as he is an editor." When Nelson returned to the Magazine as assistant editor, "the teaching didn't stop and the lessons covered more than putting out a magazine. He quietly made it clear that he wanted excellence, not just in layout and writing, but in the observation and questioning and thinking as well. Having an editor like Dennis is like having a good conscience.

Washington journalist David Shribman '76 says, I always ranked Dennis high among Dartmouth's teachers. In journalism, you come across all sorts of editors, but hardly ever do you find someone with the touch no, make that the genius that he has. The thing about Dennis is his style, and I don t mean rules about abbreviations and capitalizations. I mean the way he works with words, and with writers."

Michael Colacchio 'BO, editor at a Colorado tabloid, recalls his strongest impression: "If you were a young writer and had a problem, he would not, as either a professional or a person, rub your nose in your behavior. He tailored his approach, because of his very keen powers of perception and sensitivity, to each writer's eccentricities. All in all, I produced more writing and more quality writing under Dennis than I have before or since.'

The Magazine changed under Dinan's editorship, as the College did during that decade. The changes aroused resentment in some alumni and impatience in others who would have had them come swifter. Covers elicited the greatest dismay as they have since 1932, when the late Sidney Hay ward '26 evoked horror in some quarters with the first photographic cover, a sedate view of Baker Library. The selfsame Dinan covers have been called both "the worst-looking things I have ever seen" and "well chosen and well treated . . . suitable for framing."

Dero Saunders, recently retired executive editor of Forbes, takes a professional view. "I admire Dennis and the way he edited the Magazine," he writes, "but I have never confessed to the downright envy I felt for his ability to guide the Magazine's cover so that no single issue ever looked like the one that went before or the one that came after. His success in thus disarming the reader, so that none could ever say, 'Hell, here comes another issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE,' was an achievement not even approached by any other editor of my acquaintanceship."

Charlie Widmayer, for 30 years editor of the Magazine, recalls Dinan during the six years he worked next door in Crosby Hall as director of Alumni College. "I admired the special flair, with a touch of whimsy, that characterized his writing. I was delighted when he was chosen to be my successor. What has marked his work in that job, I think, is his creativity. His integrity and devotion to Dartmouth have been evident and constant.

Satisfying the tastes of some 40,000 alumni spanning classes from 1903 through 1982, with the median falling in 1961, is clearly an impossible task, a balance too delicate ever to be achieved. But Dinan has pursued the chimera with diligence, good humor, and a certain acquired resilience to the slings and arrows from whatever quarter.

Dennis Dinan himself best set forth the goal of an alumni magazine editor in a piece he wrote in 1980 for the Council for the Support and Advancement of Education: "To be bold, creative, and honorable. To face squarely the good and the bad, with as little subliminal selling as possible. To discuss the knotty problems (and the joys); to be inventive (not solemn); to hail to reason (not subterfuge); to strive for life (not deathly pallor); to entice readers to read."