1950

Brilliant. Glinting. Four perfect days in the North Country in late February. Cold, but not frigid. Windless. Cloudless skies. On campus a two-foot layer of snow. Dazzling.

Few reunions, mini- or maxi-, manage to arrange or control the environment so adroitly. Applaud the chair: Len Matless.

Hockey prevailed. The men played two evenly matched games, one against a team someone aptly labeled thugs. After controlling - not dominating, just controlling - the play, Dartmouth lost both games in the last second. (Technically, one was a sudden death overtime; the facts remain valid.) The women hosted the Ivy championships and garnered fourth, beating Yale before succumbing to the eventual champion, Princeton, and Cornell. We left Thompson satiated.

Then there is women's basketball. (Forget the men. Since 1959, Dartmouth's last championship year, Penn and Princeton have vied for supremacy. With this year's win, Penn is now up 11-10.) In 1976, the women's team was pressed to find a sixth player; it lost to teams like Plymouth State. This year, the team won its third successive Ivy championship, avenging its only regular season league loss by whipping Penn in the finals. At season's end, senior center Gail Koziara was honored as Dartmouth's all-time career scorer and rebounder, male or female. A superb athlete, Gail led the basketball team to victory one night this winter and won her event in track the next.

Finale on winter mini-reunion games galore and take your pick: tennis, squash, running, or skiing. Much hobnobbing. Shopping, as usual. Meetings, of course. A seminar on Alexander, Alexandria. A symphony. Conviviality at cocktails and meals, including a joint dinner with '51. After hockey, '53 joined in. The count, 40 plus or minus, including distaffs.

Tidbits from here and there: Tall tales abound, like the one about Randi and Nev Chamberlain skippering a yacht in southern seas. Close by in Ft. Lauderdale is Duncan MacLeod, not long missing, but long silent. Streuby Drumm still hails from the land of riverboats, jazz, and domes New Orleans. Picture Tom Ruggles as Nathan Detroit, old and good and reliable, with or without banjo. Don and Sandra Hall wended their way among the marble gardens of classical Greece and Rome last fall a tough life.

Next month: less editorial, more news. April drifts into May. The sun dispels the rain; trees bloom, and flowers. The meadows grow lush, green. Summer is acoming. Enjoy the coming, the enveloping warmth. Enjoy yourself.

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