1941
Some mini-reunions are born, not made. Don Hanks, escaping the rigors of the Salem, N.Y., winter, submits this report from Florida:
"In the fall of 1940 in Chase House at Tuck School, Joe Guidrey lived in 301, Chuck Reed and I in 302, and Bill Sleepeck in 303. At a February meeting in Fort Myers of the Southwestern Florida Dartmouth Club, all four of us turned up. No communications for 42 years. Furthermore, we all recognized each other! Chuck and Bill winter in Naples, Joe at Fort Myers, and I at Sanibel Island. So it continues to be a small world."
Last month I promised you tales of a trombone and a clarinet. Here they are, as witness that the spirit of 1941's Barbary Coast lives on.
The sliphorn, naturally, belongs to Robert C. Rainie. Bob was the subject of a big feature article in The Concord Monitor a while back, a warm tribute to his role in Concord, N.H., as "an old-fashioned, dedicated physician ... an old-fashioned, caring human being, who loves his work, his family and his community."
At 62, he may be the busiest person in the city," wrote Monitor columnist Tom Keyser. "Not only does Rainie run a practice that includes visiting patients at nursing homes and making house calls, but he also has a morning job at the state Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, plays baritone horn and trombone in the Nevers Band, sings in the choir and plays music at church, serves as chairman of the Giles Trust Fund Committee, works in several other community and medical organizations, including the heart and diabetes associations, serves as medical adviser at Havenwood, and plays in a trombone quartet."
As for the clarinet, whose but Dick Hill's? And the story can be told thanks to documentation passed along to us by Norm Locke. Seems that last June the Boston Symphony Orchestra staged an event called "Presidents at Pops," to promote local business support for the orchestra. A gourmet picnic was followed by a pops concert, with the presidents of 100 participating Boston corporations as guests. One among all those executives earned his supper. Dick played the clarinet solo in the orchestra's performance of Saint-Saens's "Carnival of the Animals. Which goes a long way toward explaining why the event was able to raise over $400,000. It's to be repeated this June, but whether Dick is on the program again is unclear at this writing.
Add to the retirement roster one William E. Hotaling, who has left Bethlehem Steel after more than 41 years. Bill joined the company right after graduation from Dartmouth in 1941, then rejoined it right after graduation from a German prisoner-of-war camp in 1945. Since 1966 he's been the company's manager of sales in Cleveland. All of us who wander back to the north-of-Boston country from time to time will take note that Bill and Jean plan to forsake Shaker Heights and relocate in the vicinity of Hanover, N.H., in the near future.
Second generation news: Sol Lifton writes from Mission Viejo, Calif., that son Richard '75 has just finished up medical school at Stanford.
Sue Hall writes from Garden City, N.Y., that daughter Mary is about to start her last year in high school and is looking for a good engineering college because her aim in life is to be an astronaut.
Brodie Bjorklund writes from Glen Head, N.Y., that son Hank, late of Princeton and the Jets, is practicing law in New York, doing trust and estate work. I'd give you the name of the law firm if I could read Brodie's handwriting, but I can at least tell you that it reaches from your ear to your elbow.
And to those notes I can add one of my own: Son Mike '69 is finishing his first year as dean of students at Sarah Lawrence College, somewhat shook. Daughter Martha is recently installed as a physician's assistant in Stroudsburg, Pa., and is loving the Delaware Watergap country. And daughter Sara has supplied us with a fourth grandchild, name of Katie.
Box 331 Essex, Conn. 06426
