1929

Our reunions are heartwarmers, but don't miss another side to Hanover visits. Dartmouth is for many of us the institution that will last longest and have the greatest influence of any of our connections. If we get involved with students, faculty, and administrators we can help make our own influence and experience felt.

The most frequent squawks from classmates are on the Indian symbol and coeducation. Frank Foster comments from Hanover:

"As to Indians, I can't find one undergrad who gives less than one slippery damn, although some express embarrassment at the naivete of covering the murals." There's a 12 year review report on the Native American Program at Dartmouth that's so full of facts you'll momentarily forget the over-emphasis on the symbol. Write, and I'll loan you my copy. In it, the Indian historian says we have the oldest ongoing program for Indians in the country, that Dartmouth has done its share of grinding up Indian identity, but that the Dartmouth model stands as the exemplary project of the 1970's for the higher education of Native Americans.

Coeducation is a fact and sure has its merits. Al Finlay's daughter, Susan Dunbar, is in her first year at Dartmouth Medical School After starting a family she went back and finished her Wellesley degree in style and is now making her dream of being a doctor come true. John Moxon's daughter Frederica is now finishing her internship in Reading, Pa., while bringing up two children. Do any of us prefer our sons to our daughters?

Dud and Gene Orr spent three weeks in Paris and London lately. Dud says, "Fifty years ago the most common French expletive was 'formidable'; now it's 'catastrophe.' " Charlie Dudley had a fine trip to Greece with a Lebanon College group. His young college is now driving for accreditation and can use money for equipment. Do save some for the John Sloan Dickey Endowment to celebrate our Fifty and Fifth. Chris Dickey reports, "Things are about the same but even a little better. We are both so lucky to have John in Dick's House and have both so much enjoyed the flowers '29 has sent from time to time."

The Harris Hustons saw Herb and PeggyFish on their way north, Bud and LynnFoulks heading south, and Nick and JoyceVincent heading west to Kentucky. As relics of the 1929 Penn Relay Mile Championship, Harris and I are surprised to see colleges giving track scholarships and luring runners away from Dartmouth. Larry Lougee's son Rich '78 is now a lieutenant, j.g., flying jets, while Larry and Mary sit around awaiting the arrival of their seventh grandchild.

George Lane planned to see the Yale game as he has every year since 1924. Brought up in New Haven, he most likes to see us beat Yale and shares our regret we didn't play them with our 1925 championship team. Jack Martin has retired from his medical practice and misses seeing the patients. Now he's "trying to learn to be a horticulturist." Art Bergeron is retired after 50 years of practicing law in Berlin, N.H. He winters in Lake Worth, Fla. I can almost always give you addresses. Try writing!

I'm the Alumni Council member for the eastern Massachusetts region and should be the better scribe for it. Through that job and the Dartmouth Committee for Intellectual Alternatives I'd like to have some effect on the tendency of some students and faculty to organize rallies more than to stimulate rational thought. Here's another jab:

The ostrich, we were led to understand, When frightened hid his head beneath the sand.

But now we know that fable really blew it. That wily bird is much too wise to do it. So why, with shouts of "Peace!"' "No Nukes!" and "Freeze!"

Do we play ostrich (as that bird does not)? We well may feel a shaking in our knees, But slogans are no substitute for thought.

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