1949

The weekend of October 21-23 included Dartmouth Night festivities and the annual fall reunion of our class. My surrogates report that the Friday night parade was a "vast success" and that it was the largest crowd on campus ever to attend Dartmouth Night. The executive committee met and agreed to increase the class dues from $15 to $20 because expenses now exceed income. Mike and LoisMcGean hosted a cocktail party in the Faculty Lounge before lunch on Saturday, and after the football win over Cornell approximately 50 people gathered for more cocktails and piano entertainment with dazzling Skip Ungar and friend Rellie Raffman, a professor of music at Clark University. The annual "Gold Pick Ax" award was given posthumously to Sam Kilner. It will be transmitted to his family and will be published verbatim in my next report.

Meanwhile, in October, Punchy Thomas was issued a citation from the chairman of the Dartmouth Alumni Fund for outstanding performance as head class agent during 1983, and United States Senator Slade Gorton of Washington State was chosen by College President David T. McLaughlin as a member of the ten-person board of visitors for the College's new Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences.

While in Denver for the annual meeting of the American Public Transit Association, I reached Bob Priester by telephone and found that Bob had left the banking business approximately ten years ago in favor of some entrepreneurial action which includes a leasing company, cable television, and private offerings of a varied sort. Bob and Marge have a daughter who graduated from Dartmouth with the class of 1976 and who is presently in graduate school at Princeton, seeking a master's degree in art history. She formerly wrote for House and Garden magazine in New York City. Bob sounded spirited and in command of his considerable A couple of days later, in Oklahoma City, I reached Bill Blaik by telephone. Bill operates his own oil exploration company, called Blaik Oil Company. His wife Shirley is an alumna of Scripps College in California and Oklahoma University. They have two children a son, Will, who is 14 years of age and playing freshman football at the Cassidy School in Oklahoma City, and a daughter, Katy, who is 12. Bill saw the Dartmouth-Army game at West Point with King Kenny, who is a member of the class of 1950 but who roomed with Bill and used to pal around with him closely in Oklahoma during the early years after graduation. (King, whose wife died last year of cancer, and a friend, will have been my guests at the ArmyNavy Game in the Rose Bowl, the day after Thanksgiving.) Also at the Army game were Ritchie Hunt, Punchy Thomas, Bill Chapman, Paul Bjorklund, and Vail Haak. Vail is a member of the Alumni Council, and his committee assignments include honorary degrees and student life, a controversial subject in light of a recent report of the trustees establishing minimum standards for fraternities, an increase in the number of sororities, and a target date for compliance with fraternity standards by the fall quarter of 1984.

Vail reported a postcard from John Stockwell with a Barnstable, Mass., address, but indicated that John is managing the opening and operation of an 820-bed, $400-million hospital at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. It is affiliated with the University Medical School and opened in four months "from a standing start." John assembled a management team of some 60 Saudis, Americans, Canadians, Britishers, Italians, Germans, Pakistanis, at al., and about 1,000 nurses, technicians, supply, food service, and maintenance workers from the Philippines, Thailand, Tunisia, Great Britain, the United States, Sudan, Egypt, India, and Yemen. Finally, John notes that he has bought a home in New London, N.H. Sounds good. And in addition to letting us know all this news, John was also good enough to share with Vail a photograph, reproduced below, of himself and one of his Saudi colleagues.

300 Montgomery St., #723 San Francisco, CA 94104