1961
Hanover in late February 1983 could have passed for April. Though the huge ice statue of Pegasus still loomed in the middle of campus, a remnant of mid-February's Winter Carnival, the temperature was in the 40s and, in the offices of The D, editors scurried for a photographer to take the inevitable picture of the first shirtless student sunning. (Remember the one our senior year of two macho types lying down over the path of the heating pipes in the middle of the Green?)
The abundant snow was melting rapidly, making Hanover a study in contrasts. Runners were out in shorts and turtlenecks as skiers boarded the shuttlebus to the Ski way . . . students on skis hurtled down the slopes at Oak Hill as runners sped past on one of the popular routes around nearby Storrs Pond . . . people jogged past Occom Pond as others held hockey games on the still-solid ice.
The cold weather returned just as we left Hanover, so don't think Dartmouth has changed all that much. But it's nice when you are now from the South and fly into Hanover for four days that the weather is very much like. southern winter some snow, but rapid meling, and some cold days intermixed with warmer ones.
The purpose of my trip to Hanover was to speak to a class in recent U.S. history. Today's students strike me as a good bit sharper than we were, although perhaps a bit on the polite side I didn't get any nasty questions, and I think we would have been tougher.
The children of 1961 are starting to come into prominence on the campus I guess proof that we really are a generation out of Dartmouth. Charlie Chapman's son, Chuck '84, is the new president of the Interfraternity Council. Congratulations to him and his dad.
Ken Quickel was the subject of a major profile in the January 23 issue of the Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot News. He was featured in his role as president of the prestigious Geisinger Medical Center in the area where he grew up. The article talks not only about Ken's leadership of the huge medical center and its 3,500- person staff, but also about his medical detective work. The article credits him with making a key suggestion in solving the problem of the Legionnaire's disease back in 1976. Some excerpts:
"More than being a perceptive doctor and medical researcher, Dr. Kenneth E. Quickeljr. is a sharp administrator, which explains why he's president of the Danville institution at age 43.
"This is a broader role than he imagined he would fill when he chose medicine as a career. At that time, he decided he would like to practice good clinical medicine. Later he added two more goals. He wanted to participate in a good educational program and also publish a minimum of two research papers a year. And, he decided, Geisinger was the place to do it. . . .
"As he was meeting his career goals, his leadership as an educator organizing and implementing a training program for resident physicians and visiting medical students, and as an administrator planning and promoting a $4O-million expansion, marked him as a leader who could steer difficult projects through to fruition. . . . He believes his wider role as an administrator multiplies his overall contribution.
'There's a sort of vicarious aspect to my practice of medicine,' [he says], explaining that he's been able to expand his own practice through the work of the medical center as a whole. As he sets it, 'lf I do my job well, well take care of our patients very well.'
The article also describes Ken's role in the establishment of the center's kidney transplant program. He says, "I'm very proud of this very sophisticated, modern medical center. I dont ever like to be boastful, but it's a resource to Pennsylvania that people should be aware of.
About that Legionnaire's solution: The newspaper story says Ken, who had spent his active-duty military time with the Center for Disease Control, saw in three Legionnaire's patients at Geisinger symptoms identical to those in an outbreak at .the Pontiac, Mich., health department years before. He suggested that to his colleagues in Atlanta, who quickly con' firmed that the bug was the same. They then isolated the bacteria and found an antibiotic, erythromycin, to treat it.
On to other classmates, R. Bruce Callahan has been named president and chief executive officer of American Founders Life Insurance Company in Austin, Tex. Congratulations.
You may have missed the note in the book reviews column a couple of issues ago giving Ron Boss credit for instigating the publication of Dartmouth, a Visual Remembrance. Said Reviews Editor Peter Smith, "Ron Boss '61 deserves our thanks for having conceived the idea of such a book and for giving it the financial underpinning without which it would never have left the ground."
Former class president and 1961's elected Alumni Council representative, Gerry Kaminsky, says he is leaving Wertheim and Company and, with three others, forming his own broker-dealer firm. The firm is to be called Friedlander, Hockler, Kaminsky and Company and it will be at 20 Exchange Place in New York.
Secretary of the Alumni Mike McGean '49 is asking for help in "identifying men and women in the younger half of the alumni body who are in some way making outstanding 'contributions to society' through their work, avocations, or volunteer activities. . . . We often wish to focus on the younger ranks for assistance in various volunteer activities from career conferences for undergraduates to calling on schools and applicants, to speaking to undergraduates in their courses, to service on various groups of overseers and even on the board of trustees."
He's especially interested in those who have not kept in close contact with the College.
I know many, perhaps most of us, qualify when you consider work, avocations, or volunteer work, and I can tell you that it is fun to speak to a Dartmouth class. If you want to nominate yourself or a classmate, please drop me a line, pronto.
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