1948

These notes are written in late August of 1983, when our College on the Hill is commencing what is calculated to be its 215 th academic year since its founding in 1769 on the banks of the Connecticut by our intrepid and bold teacher/preacher/pioneer, Eleazar Wheelock. Also beginning, of course, is the 36th year since the official graduation year of the almost-no-less-noted class of 1948. Herewith submission of good wishes for both institutions during the forthcoming twelvemonth.

Men of the class who couldn't be there missed a good '48 reunion this past June. The event is a fast-fading memory now, but one or two flashbacks may bear retelling. On one of the evenings, '48 and '49 put on a joint bigband dance in the '49 tent in front of Middle Mass. Someone in '49 had found and hired an excellent professional swing band composed of businessmen who play mostly on weekends and who specialize in sounding like the Glenn Millers, the Dorsey brothers, the Harry Jameses, etc. of the forties. They were good. Probably all of us felt transported back to that era when oldies such as "One O'Clock Jump" first began flooding the Row. Final proof of the presence of that old spirit, often combined with presentday spirits, came when old bachelors John Lanzetta and Ted Thornton undertook the classical pastime of trying to pick up a date among the whooping crowd. Precisely as in those days of yore. (And probably with about as much success.) Nor can I fail to mention one '48 who just didn't get to Hanover. Old navigator Dirk Kuzmier had been hoping to complete his flying lessons in time to pilot a rented plane up from New York. When Dirk failed to appear, Jay Urstadt '49 was asked what had happened to his buddy. Jay proceeded to advise that Dirk had not yet quite mastered some of the navigational intricacies of the flight game. He had taken off in a small plane from a rural Long Island airport to fly to Hanover but had lost his bearings. When he couldn't identify anything in the green ocean below, he asked the authorities by radio to fix his position via the transponder. The answer came back that he was headed east from Provincetown! Dirk decided to turn around, take more navigation, and try again in 1988.

The class will wish to congratulate and proffer good wishes to its new president, Earl Chambers of Providence, to its new Alumni Councilor, Don Ryan of Chicago, and to its new memorial gifts chairman, Bud Gedney. These men were found by the class nominating committee and were elected at the reunion. They have taken on thankless jobs, so each '48 is asked to give them all the help he can.

Earl has called for a get-together on the Cornell game Saturday, October 22, in Hanover. All members of the class are invited to the executive committee meeting at 10:00 a.m. in 207 Thornton Hall, to the class luncheon in the Inn at noon, and to the class dinner as arranged by Ray Richard at Timothy's Table in Norwich at 6:00 p.m. It should be fun, so be there if you possibly can. Wives and friends are of course invited to the social events. And don't forget the torchlight parade the night before, when retired coach Bob Blackman of former Dartmouth football fame will be the honored guest. (Who will forget his team's magnificent 1965 28-14 win over unbeaten Princeton?)

Lloyd Krumm, who has just stepped down as class president after an excellent five-year term during which he was the source of much progress in bringing '48s closer together as an entity, advises that '48 has 21 reunion jackets left over (six of them are extra-large adult size and 15 are marked "XL 18-20" and can be for either big boys or small women). They are unlined, dark green nylon warm-up jackets decorated with the '48 logo in white. Send your check for $ 15 per jacket payable to the "Class of '48" to Lloyd Krumm, 813 Pueblo Drive, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417.

The class has suffered an irreplaceable loss. When we were undergrads in Hanover in the forties, two members of the class, Ted Tischler and Bob Blum, selflessly spent a great amount of time in compiling a '48 movie. Both were adept with the movie camera and working together and separately they tried to take sequences of every member of the class in some active phase of his undergrad Dartmouth life. They may not have succeeded in getting everyone, but they did succeed beyond anyone's reasonable expectation. That movie, a labor of love representing many hundreds of hours of effort by Tischler and Blum and by others who worked with them, is lost. It has disappeared from Hanover and can't be found. It was shown at the '48 tenth reunion, but to date no trace of the reels since then has turned up. If you can give us any help in locating the film, or any clues which might help us track it down, please get in touch with me. We'd like to recover it so '48s who visit Hanover can see it (and perhaps themselves in it). We'll not be too old to appreciate it at the 40th either. Please write or phone. Thanks.

Enjoy watching Joe Yukica's Big Green aggregation this fall!

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