1948
One of the unexpected pleasures that came during a trip to Hanover last June just may bear repeating here. One quiet evening your secretary wandered to the senior fence, sat down, and looked across the campus in the fading twilight at the lovely old buildings of Dartmouth Row. At the time the Green was silent, dead still; no movement was seen or heard anywhere around us, and the only interruption of the silence was the quiet squeak of a lonely cricket somewhere along the fence. In the waning light I watched and I listened. It seemed for a few minutes that a thousand ghostly forms passed before me: a springtime campus softball game with Dean Neidlinger hitting one of his tremendous shots toward Webster Hall; old freshman/ sophomore football rushes and intramural touch football games; the belted wetdown ceremony; the duckboards of schlump; walking the campus pathways with laughter between classes or on the way downstreet with one's undergrad buddies.
And while I watched, the dimming whiteness of the face of Dartmouth Hall suddenly flickered out as the sun sank beneath the Norwich hills behind us, and we were left in complete and utterly silent darkness, the cricket somehow also being overcome by the spell's need for silence. The moment lasted only seconds and was broken almost reluctantly, it seemed to me when a car's lights came around the corner at Webster and a voice shouted a greeting at the Inn corner. I was lucky to have experienced a subjective event which is available to any Dartmouth man who will take the time to allow his imagination and memory to work during a soft summer evening at the old senior fence. Try it when you're in Hanover.
One of the great institutions around Hanover over the past 75 years has been the Dartmouth Outing Club, founded by student Fred Harris '11 in 1909 in Fayerweather Hall. Harris appreciated Hanover's great rural setting amid the hills, lakes, and rivers of the North Country, and apparently felt that organized opportunity to enjoy and protect that countryside and heritage should be developed. All of us who came after have enjoyed to greater or lesser extent the results of Harris's foresight and action in founding the DOC.
This is written on October 6,the 75th anniversary of that founding.To mark the occasion the DOC has arranged for members of the organization today students,faculty, townsmen to climb the 48 peaks in New Hampshire of more than 4,000 feet and for each party to wave DOC flags from summits at noon, an event of interest and symbolism for those who have enjoyed the rugged sports and outdoor life which the White Mountains provide.
Uncounted Darmouth men and many a'48 are among those who have so enjoyed these hills. Many of us, particularly in the summer and fall of 1944, were included in those weekend climbing trips, often led by A1 Gustafson, when the navy stake truck, driven by Dave Kendall '45, was made available to get us to the Presidentials or elsewhere in the high hills of the Granite State. Hours of hard, sweaty work were involved in the long climbs and hikes, but the country we saw was magnificent, the campfire stories and laughter were always superb, and some of the skills and knowledge of the outdoors we acquired helped many of us in the years ahead, some perhaps in the final days of World War II and in Korea.
The list of those from the class who climbed one or more of the peaks in Maine, New Hampshire, or Vermont during 1948's undergrad years or afterwards is long as many as 75 of us. Walt Cairns, as of this writing, however, has as far as we know climbed more of New Hampshire's 48 4,000 foot plus peaks than any other '48 Included in his list are all the difficult ones, too, those without trails, where pure bushwhacking through the often densely-wooded lower slopes with a compass is involved. Hard work, with many an unexpected snowstorm or rain squall as unwelcome company. When Walt married Mary Lane he only had 4,005- foot Mt. Isolation still to climb. With five offspring to worry about he just hasn't had the time to cover the long two-day hike back into the Presidential Range wilderness to get this one. Don't bet he won't though, as he knows the Davis Path from Crawford Notch over Mts. Crawford, David, and Resolution to Isolation has unsurpassed views of Washington and the long sweep of the Presidential Ridge which Walt almost certainly doesn't wish to miss.
One '48 who lives a long way from Hanover and New England is attorney HughShearer. Hugh, following a fine academic career at Dartmouth where he graduated "with distinction" and won the Colby Prize in government, went on to law school, took a trip to Hawaii in 1951, and has remained there ever since. Says he still loves the palm trees, the ocean, the sands, and the life of the islands. Although he sees other alumni at the Honolulu Dartmouth Club, he hasn't seen a '48 in years and would enjoy being contacted by any classmates who visit the Pearl of the Pacific.
All members of the class acknowledge and thank the widows of our departed classmates and other friends who year after year send Alumni Fund contributions to the College in honor of these men. As memorial gift chairman of the class our excellent advertising executive, Bud Gedney, keeps in touch with these good people. Among the givers this year were Hazel Evans for Ray, Mrs. CarolBald for Dr. Phil Johnson, Cindy Lockwood for Beech, Mrs. Louis Lieby for Herbert Call,Carla Macartney for Mac, and Mrs. LoisMcAllister Reed for Al.To these widows, our eternal thanks. Additionally, we thank Harold McAllister for his gift in honor of brother Al, and Robert Kittridge for honoring our departed Jack Costello. We also thank the Delaware Vassar Club for a welcome gift whose origin we can't yet explain.
Getting short of news, men of'48. Let me hear from you so your friends can know what you're doing. All for now.
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