Lover of parades

The students came to him in 1972. They wanted to bring back the spirit of dartmouth Night to revive the excitement of the pep-rally and bonfire, which had been set aside during the late sixties.

David Orr '57, associate director of alumni programs, was the perfect per son to approach. Officially, the students had to come to him because his office was responsible for Dartmouth Night Weekend Dartmouth's equivalent of homecoming. But what the students didn't know, though his wife does, is that "Dave loves a parade. He'll look for any kind of a reason to have one!" Of course he'd help the students, he said, probably with an even brighter twinkle in his already bright blue eyes. He encouraged them to revive the ceremonies, the speeches, the reading of telegrams from distant and famous alumni. It was his suggestion that they bring back the torchlight parades of the twenties, adding area high school bands and broadcasting the whole thing to alumni clubs throughout the country.

Typically of Dave Orr, whom his colleagues call a master at both the broad idea and the specific detail, he rolled up his sleeves and got to work. He helped those students organize a weekend of festivities which has grown steadily every year. This year, 35 classes came back for Dartmouth Night Weekend and mini reunions.

Orr is always thinking up ways to put alumni together in different situations, says Jim Tonkovich '68, one of two assistant directors of alumni programs. "He can turn one college event into four alumni events," like the William and Mary football weekend in 1980."It was the first time in a long time that Dartmouth had played in Williamsburg, so everyone knew there'd be a good turnout. Dave realized that it was Columbus Day Weekend, and he planned a box lunch supper, a seminar, and a dinner with a speaker."Twenty-five hundred alumni and their spouses and guests turned out for the game and the various activities.

"He can be mired in minute detail and leap out with global thinking," says Steve Calvert '68, the other assistant director of alumni programs.

"He is indefatigable and a walking encyclopedia of Dartmouth lore," notes Mike Choukas'51,the director of alumni programs.

"He'll come up with an idea, sell it, and then do most of the work," adds Mike McGean '49, director of alumni and communications planning.

The "Wearers of the Green" dinner held in Boston last spring was Orr's idea from start to finish, according to his colleagues. He sold the concept of a dinner honoring Dartmouth's athletes to Walter Yusen '58, president of the Dartmouth Alumni Association of Eastern Massachusetts. He developed the idea of a pin a gold "D" on a green field to be awarded to all Dartmouth alumni who had participated in athletics with major distinction.

Then he looked into the athletic records to find out which athletes should be included. What he found, McGean says, was records that were in complete disarray. "Instead of standing around wringing his hands," McGean notes, "Dave made calls to sports organizations around the country" pursuing the names of those athletes.

Orr enlisted volunteers to make arrangements for some older alumni who required special assistance to attend the dinner. He encouraged the printing of a large souvenir program which was sold to benefit the club's scholarship fund and the U.S. Olympic team. He commissioned John Scotford '38 to design a limited edition poster featuring 25 athletes spanning 80 years of Dartmouth sports. And he helped Barry Braverman '76 get some old news film footage for his 20 minute documentary film.

Orr's idea, and his attention to the fine details, brought 1,150 guests to the Westin Hotel in Boston last April. "We were all up there [at the head table]," McGean recalls, "talking away, having a wonderful time, and there was Dave in the back of the room, sitting with some alum, probably cooking up the next event."

"It doesn't even occur to Dave that he should get pats on the back," Calvert says. "He'd rather work behind the scenes."

And all the time he was making sure that details of this banquet came together, Orr was in the midst of com

pleting arrangements for the 12 classes reuning in June 1984 and was starting to organize the 12 reunions which will be held in June 1985. "Dave can absorb, manage, and control an astounding amount of detail," Calvert says. "And he never gets crabby."

Dave Orr came to Dartmouth in 1952 from Newton, Mass. Dartmouth was his first choice, and, like his father before him, Stuart Orr '26, and his son after him, James Orr '83, Dave majored in history. While an undergraduate, Dave worked on The Dartmouth and was a stringer for The Boston Globe, and he occasionally did stories for The PhiladelphiaEnquirer and The New Haven Register.

After a hockey or basketball game he would run up to the Western Union telegraph office on Wheelock Street (which was in a building directly behind the Casque and Gauntlet house) and begin to type his story on one of several typewriters there. In those days, most national newspapers relied on students for collegiate sports news. The first guy finished would get his story on the wire, Orr recalls. And the next day he would run downtown to get a paper and see how many inches of the story was printed he was paid by the inch.

After graduation in 1957, he headed for Oregon and a job on The GreshamOutlook as sports editor. There he met and married his wife, Ruth.

"In April 1959, the phone rang," he says with a smile. It was The Valley News in Lebanon, N.H. did he want to come back and work there? He did. His beat covered all the news east of the Connecticut River north to Orford, south to Claremont, and east to Canaan.

"In May 1960, the phone rang again," he says, enjoying the image. It was Sidney Hayward, secretary of the College did Orr want the job of assistant editor of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine and director of the new class newsletter program? He did. For the Magazine, he wrote features and sports articles and edited the class notes. The rest of the time, he fostered the fledgling class newsletters.

Two years later, he moved down the hall to take on the job of organizing class reunions just two and a half months before 2,200 alumni were due to arrive on campus. Today, the job of organizing reunions begins 13 months before the classes come back, and each year be tween 4,000 and 4,500 people return. This larger attendance reflects larger graduating classes, Orr says, because the percentages have remained just about the same over the years: 50 percent of the living members of a class return for their 50th reunion and 45 percent come back for their 25th.

"Dartmouth came to be known as the school that wrote the book about reunions under Dave's leadership," says Tonkovich. "His personal touch makes each class feel it is the only class coming back for reunions. His enthusiasm bubbles into everything he does, and it infects everyone around him!"

In 1964, Orr added a new number to his repertoire: he began organizing alumni clubs.

All of these special events, reunions, alumni weekends, seminars, clubs, and newsletters help to bring the alumni together and create an active alumni body which is loyal to the College.The Dartmouth Alumni Fund is consistently number one in the country, Orr notes. Last year, 67 percent of the alumni gave over $10 million in the annual giving campaign.

"No other school can match that," Orr says. "It doesn't just happen. It takes three things to make it work. The Alumni Fund has great workers. There is the loyalty and devotion of the alumni themselves. And there is the understanding of the needs of Dartmouth today."

Orr's job has always been to help strengthen that alumni body. Last year, he provided a speaker for almost every one of the 150 alumni clubs

that is, he organized and arranged for 60 different people from the faculty and administration to travel to clubs throughout this country and abroad to talk about what Dartmouth is like today. President David McLaughlin alone made 16 of these presentations.

.Orr's organizational skills make it possible for the president to do so much with alumni clubs, McGean says.Orr goes out before each trip and meets with the group, making sure that every hour of the president's trip is planned and that every detail is covered. Then, just before President McLaughlin goes,Orr collects and presents key information to him. In fact, the club relations aspect of Orr's job has grown so much in recent years that just recently the focus of his energies was changed to reflect that. Previously, he split his time about equally between clubs and reunions. Now, he handles club activities and spe- cial events such as Dartmouth Night, and he provides advice and assistance in planning for the 25th and 50th reunions.

Dave Orr doesn't have a lot of hobbies. He spends his free time working for many of the same ideals that he does at the College. He served nine years as a trustee of New England College in Henniker, N.H., assisting in alumni affairs and alumni development. And he serves the Holt-Elwel Foundation as the alumni affairs trustee of Camp Mowglis on Newfound Lake, which he attended as a camper in the forties, returned to as a counselor in the fifties, and sent his son to in the seventies.

Nowhere it is more evident that "Dave loves a parade" than in his vol- unteer .work with the Shrine Maple Sugar Bowl, the Vermont-New Hamp- shire all-star high school football game held in Hanover each summer to raise money for the Shriners' burn hospitals. As the publicity director of the Maple Sugar Bowl for many years, "he has done a lot to build up the parade," his wife says. He also served as the general chairman for three years in the seventies. During the 16 years that Orr was with the Shrine game, attendance grew from 9,000 to 18,000, and the money raised from $20,000 to between $18O,OOO and $230,000 (depending on the year and weather, he says). That makes the Hanover game the third largest of 40 Shrine benefit games played annually in this country.

Orr's other volunteer activities include serving on the board of the Christian Science Church in Hanover, serving on the Hanover Chamber of Commerce board two terms as a College representative, and acting as a spotter in the press booth at Dartmouth football games.

If you ask Dave Orr what he loves most about Dartmouth, he won't answer you directly. He'll say, "If you ask my wife, she'll say it's Dartmouth sports. I haven't missed a football game at home or away since the Cornell game in '64." It seems he hasn't missed much else, either.

Associate Director of Alumni Programs David On '57 is all smiles at a rare chance to hangonto a couple of the College's silver reunion trophies for the photographer. He's usually beenon the giving end of such awards, handing them out at many a reunion banquet.

In 1965, just after he'd joined the alumnioffice, Dave Orr found himself in a pose tobe repeated many times - handing out re-union trophies, here to '25.