1956

The "Fun Fantastic Four" weekend in the Big Apple took place January 29-31. Unfortunately for him, your secretary was able to make only the meeting of the executive committee on Saturday morning. Judging by the bloodshot eyes and chance remarks overheard ("What did you do with my wife?"), Friday night must have been quite an evening. Social director par excellence, Peter "Cube" Conroy, reported that about 40 classmates, accompanied by 20 wives or dates, showed up for cocktails and dinner. Highlights of the evening's program included another in the continuing series of shirt-shredding demonstrations by Dartmouth's most conservative and by-the-book professor of romance languages, John "Mad Dog" Rassias. The evening also proved conclusively that a college education isn't everything. In spite of the presence of 40 recipients of Dartmouth College degrees, of which not a few had been supplemented by advanced degrees elsewhere, it took almost an hour for the assembled multitude to figure out how to thread a movie projector so that the film of the glorious 25 th could be shown. In the end, the film was too dark. Sic transit gloria . .

The executive committee meeting lacked some of the punch and urgency that attended the meetings leading up to the 25th reunion. Not unexpected. Class President Doug Keare, having jet-lagged in from yet another roundthe-world junket, conducted the meeting with his usual authority and dignity. Meaty issues, such as the Horizons program at the College, dues, the Alumni Council, and the scholarship fund, were discussed and will be elaborated upon in a more detailed report in that other rag edited by H. Flint Ranney. Dick Taylor is picking up where Wally Pugh left off as class agent for the Alumni Fund. By the time this is published, the 1982 drive will have already begun. We have an ambitious target after an impressive performance last year. We may lower our sights in dollar amount perhaps, but strong participation is still the watchword. No let-up, please.

As always happens, just after you put one of these columms to bed, you get some mail that should have been included. Sure enough, we have some more New Year's honors to bestow.

A brief blurb from Hanover reveals that last August, George Sherman represented Dartmouth at the inauguration of Gene A. Budig as chancellor of the University of Kansas. George is president of Laurel Bancshares in Kansas City and lives with his wife Joan in a charmingsounding place, Shawnee Mission. Joan is also a president, of the Studio Midwest, a retail needlepoint business which she built stitch by stitch. George might well have passed along to the new chancellor his remarks in our 25th reunion book about Dartmouth's new president: "I do not envy the new president of Dartmouth. His problems will be different ones; and changes will come about that will not be universally popular, especially among the alumni body. We must remember, however, that he is on the firing line in Hanover and we are not. He will need our support." Amen, George, in Kansas too.

"My life is unorthodox," wrote Charlie Morrissey in the 25th reunion book, "and despite a historian's quizzical concern for explaining a personal route from past to present, I am Mystified by the turns and sequences in my own quarter-century journey." Chalk up another turn and sequence." Charlie has been appointed editor of Vermont Life magazine. Vermont Life concerns itself with just that, is published quarterly, and goes to 120,000 subscribers, not all of whom can possibly live in Vermont. Charlie acknowledges that this new responsibility, when combined with his teaching loads at the University of Vermont and Middlebury College, will cut into his first love, oral history. This last has taken Charlie all over North America in the past six years and even to Singapore and Indonesia.

David Tonneson has been elected treasurer of S.B.A.N.E., the Smaller (that's what the release said) Business Association of New England. S.B.A.N.E. comprises 1,700 small business members, provides eduational programs for small business, and lobbies in Washington on behalf of small enterprise. David is managing partner of Tonneson, Mela, Curtin and Company in Wakefield, Mass., an accounting firm. He is also a trustee of Beverly Hospital.

This has been quite a winter in the Northeast, as it appears to have been throughout the United States. Ann and I managed a spur-of- the-moment trip to Europe in mid-January and can report that winter over there was no better, or no worse, depending upon your point of view. Spring, thankfully, offers promise year after year. May yours also.

For his "outstanding overall service," Eliot Swift Lawrence '55 was given an Alumni Award on December 4. His successful banking career; his professional activities; his community service as a hospital trustee, United Fund chair, and trustee of the Marine Biological Laboratory; his corporate directorships; his College service as Club President of the Year in 1970, a class agent from 1960 to 1965, an Alumni Councilor from 1974 to 1977, and a member of Third Century Fund and Campaign for Dartmouth committees — plus the succession by his daughter Marcia '80 and son Jim '84 - were all cited in presenting him the award.

15 Old Hyde Road Weston, Conn. 06883