1944

We are, of course, still reveling in reunion remembrances, and they are as fresh and fancy now as they were back in June. And here we are, face-to-face with our fall mini-reunion, scheduled for October 19-20, which just happens to be the weekend we bang heads with Harvard on Memorial Field, and the ever faithful will once again point their engine nacelles towards Hanover. You've had all the details via Merle Hagen's newsletter.

Merle, by the way, spent another summer promoting the Mt. Washington Hotel at Bretton Woods, a labor of love he's immersed himself in for the past several years. Word has.it that he may just altogether give up teaching at New England College and do Bretton Woods permanently. Nice duty, that's for sure . . .

We can't keep Dr. Marsh Tenney out of the news, nor would we want to. In May he was awarded the honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Rochester, cited as "acknowledged world leader in research on conjunctive cardiorespiratory physiology, and widely respected as the architect of the Medical School at Dartmouth."

Wife Carolyn Tenney has been front and center, too. She was the only '44 attendee at this summer's Alumni College, the theme of which was "The Nature of Empire."

Another reunion item: a photo of Carolynand Charlie Jack and Priscilla and Jack Haffenreffer on top of Mt. Moosilauke on June 15, the oldest of the reunion hikers to scale Dartmouth's mountain. Jack H. said that the wind was blowing 20 mph and gusting to 30 ("we brought along our own wind indicator and thermometer") and at 42 F the windchill factor was such that it was hard to operate a camera without gloves.

And then a reunion observation: how nice it is that our wives' curves improve even if our bulges don't.

From the corporate world comes word that the board of directors of ASARCO Inc. (producer of nonferrous metals and asbestos) elected AlexGillespie, general counsel, to the additional post of vice chairman. Alex, who joined ASARCO in 1960 as attorney, became assistant general counsel in 1962 and assumed additional responsibility as assistant secretary in 1967. He was elected secretary and general counsel in 1969 and a vice president in 1972. Alex and Elizabeth live in Greenwich, Conn.

Then, our übiquitous John Berry has been named one of the six new directors of Society Corporation of Cleveland, a multi-bank holding company.

Donning cap and gown to represent Dartmouth at other inaugural ceremonies last April were Bruce Thomson at Lynchburg College in Virginia and Bill McElnea at the University of California at Berkeley.

Alas, we were saddened to see stories in several New Hampshire newspapers on the demise of Stan. Barr's family-owned shoe manufacturer, Welpro, Inc., in Seabrook, N.H. It closed July 1, 50 years to the day after it opened. Stan and his two brothers have seen some 145 New England plants shut down in the last 15 years, and they said Welpro just couldn't hold out against foreign imports any longer. "I'm afraid the domestic shoe industry will continue to erode," Stan said, although there will be no personal erosion whatsoever for Stan as he spends more and more time at his lakeside cabin in northern Maine.

We enjoyed Greg Rabassa's letter to TheNew York Times regarding the Alastair Reid/ New Yorker Magazine controversy. Wrote Greg: "The pedantic uproar brought on by Alastair Reid's description of how he writes pieces for The New Yorker avoids the ambivalent nature of both fact and fiction (same Latin root).

"In the past, as in the future, they blend into the same thing and are easily swapped. Only in the present are they distinguishable, and that moving moment is too ephemeral to be grasped. We should be happy that someone among us can be as eloquent with the English language as Mr. Reid, and we should cease in any demands that cab drivers and barflies be notarized." Amen . . .

It's fun, too, having Betty and Karl Musser newly on the Hanover scene. They've bought a condominium and Karl keeps out of trouble, and his hand in, with a local accounting firm.

But it was not nice at all to hear of the death of Bob Gilchrist on July 26, in Cleveland, of cancer. He wrote a long, poignant letter to the newsletter last fall about his sudden illness and why he couldn't make reunion. And now he'll make no more. All our sympathy to Liz and their children.

That's it. Blessings.

Love joy Hill Cornish Flat, NH 03746