1931

You'll hardly be surprised when I say I am starting on the assignment of writing these monthly columns with the gravest of misgivings misgivings that only you, gentle readers, can cure. Except for some wonderful help from Trudy Burrill, I start out with a virtually clean slate as far as class news is concerned. Please, won't you help a neophyte correspondent by sending in the news about you and other classmates! I'm sure going to need it if I'm ever going to approach the grand jobs my predecessors have all performed.

So far this summer, the job has been the sorrowful one of writing too many obituaries. Rog Burrill. Jim McElroy, Jack Cunningham, Vic Rockhill, Hugh Glass, Ed Elmer, and Ed Langenbach have all been lost to us in recent months; pieces on each of them have been sent along to Hanover. What grand guys they were! The class extends deepest sympathy to all their dear ones.

The 1983 Alumni Fund is closed out, of course, and Don Stoddard and his team did their usual superb job, as you are well aware. The class of '31 went over its target by more than 18 percent, contributing $112,379. We were nosed out for first place in the 1927-1935 Green Derby by half a percentage point, '34 being the winner. If my calculations are correct, we would have topped those young upstarts if we had had either two more contributors or collectively had given an additional $710. Let that be a lesson for going the extra mile (or 100 yards) next year!

From here on, more and more 50th wedding anniversaries are certainly going to be coming along. Rose and Hank McCarthy celebrated theirs in June, with their children giving them a party.

About their life in the Hanover area, Hank writes: "We do enjoy the North Country football, hockey, plays, etc. Then when Rose and I hunt, that makes a great fall. Then there is skiing, ice-fishing, and snowmobiling. Doesn't quite sound like a 73-year old-timer, does it?"

Bunce Clarkson also checks in from Hanover, saying the spring season was a "washout" too wet to play golf or garden and "too cold to enjoy anything." He and Eleanor were looking forward to heading for their Drake's Island retreat in Maine.

Some excerpts from a fine, long letter Jack Weisert had written Rog from his retirement villa at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France: "It's theoretically possible to play golf every day in the year here but 'letting up' on daily practice has moved my handicap from 16 to 21. . . . Rog, you mention my 'diplomatic polish,' but the real pro diplomat in our class is Harry Reed, who is retired now in Italy. He raises thoroughbred dogs and shows them often. . . . Ilona is going to make a trip back to the States later this year, but I would rather stay here."

Charlie Babbitt writes from Fairlee, VT, with this blithe report: We live a long par-five from the Lake Morey Country Club and a seveniron from our shorefront, where we have a sailboat that needs some work, a Sunfish that needs a new sail, and miscellaneous appurtenances like a. raft, a wharf, a buoy, etc. So you can imagine where I spend my time during suitable weather . . . After several years of hacking out rocks, I've finally worked up a small section that can pass off as a garden."

Dick Fisher sent along a picture layout featuring Peanut Winslow, whose two tugs, the Marjorie Winslow and the Eliot Winslow, participated in the launching ceremony for a 666-foot petroleum tanker built at Peanut's Boothbay, ME, hometown. Our redoubtable cap'n was at the helm of one.

Dick himself and Midge are enjoying life at Hilton Head, NC. He works as a starter and ranger for a local golf course with a play of 400 to 500 people a day and plays himself as often as possible. They go to Florida in the winter (briefly) and Belgrade Lakes, ME, in the summer.

If the space available were limitless, I would like to print the whole of a 28-page talk Gale Freeman gave before a group in a local club in Wayne, IL, where he lives. Entitled "Lessons Learned and Concerns Considered," it was based on his distinguished career that took him to the chairmanship of the First National Bank of Chicago before retirement. But this quotation has special meaning: "Retirement should be the fourth phase of an active life. I decided to devote my time to the 'third sector,' after business and government."

Gale has done this manfully. He has taught at two universities. He chaired President Ford's Committee on Postal Service. He chaired an Illinois governor's Cost Control Task Force. Currently, he is spending most of his time as chairman of the finance committee of a billiondollar charitable foundation. I'll send the copy of his speech to Bill Wendell. He may be able to use more.

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