1954

The Westfield Suburban News in New Jersey recently paid a lovely tribute to Walter Lee Clarkson. An article entitled "Teacher" said in part: "There is a special bond between teacher and student that is mutually rewarding and often hard to explain. As we look back upon our school days, I'm sure that we can all remember certain teachers as our favorites, with a few who occupy that special top rung on the ladder.

"Let me tell you about a teacher who had a profound effect on me as both an individual and a student. His name is Walter Lee Clarkson, and he teaches English, journalism, and a course not printed in any curriculum, which I call 'Life Model I.' Through no conscious effort on his part, or at least none that I could e'ver detect, he nevertheless was and I assume still is widely regarded by his pupils as 'the perfect teacher.' Fair, compassionate, honest, enthusiastic, and, above all else, vitally involved in the educative process, he somehowtranscended any attempts at beatification and remained stubbornly human. He was my teacher at Westfield High School in 1967 and 1968. He was also the faculty adviser to the student newspaper and coached track and field. He succeeded on all fronts.

"Fifteen years have passed since I had my first class with Walt Clarkson, so I can at last view his impact upon me with a degree of objectivity and distance, but the simple fact remains that no one before or since has had as great an influence upon my development as a writer, a journalist, an observer, or a person. Walt Clarkson is a teacher."

Dave Grogan, who as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College acquired a love of ture that he says has given added meaning to his life, recently established a new annual literary prize for the best fiction or poetry by an undergraduate. Dave has provided the funding to create the Hardy-Skilling Literary Prize. The prize will include a yearly S600 award to be given at a presentation dinner each year. The first award of the Hardy-Skilling Prize will be made in the spring of 1984. (Please note the picture of Dave accompanying this article.)

Grant J. Gruel has been elected to the presidency of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers for the year ending April 1985. The academy is limited, by invitation, to 500 lawyers within the continental United States, plus leading trial lawyers from countries around the world.

Our class was well represented at the big "Wearers of the Green" banquet in Boston. Tom Corcoran, Pete Kirby, John Heyn, and Steve Mullins were all recognized for their athletic achievements. Also there to celebrate with them were Dick Barker, Pete Bullis,Phil Cooke, John Crowe, Dick Danforth,Pete Greithner, John Heston, DaveMcLaughlin, Charlie Morrison, Seav Peters,Jack Reilly, Harry Robinson, and John Titus.

Seaver Peters, now with an investment firm in Hanover, passed along the following tidbit from the July 10, 1982, edition of TheValley News. I found it amusing enough to want to share it with you all:

"LEBANON Lucinda Jan Mcßain and David Edward Heller were married May 28, 1982.. . . The bride is the daughter of Johnnie and Julia Mcßain of Lebanon. . . . Lucinda wore denim blue dungarees and a green Tshirt. A reception followed the ceremony at the IGA parking lot in Lebanon.

It has been a pleasure reporting the varied activities of classmates over the past five years (writing a column for 40 editions of the Alumni Magazine, as a matter of fact). In addition to reporting the winning of the coveted

"Class-of-the-Year Award" for various 1954 accomplishments and record-breaking performances, it has been fun for me to see and report all kinds of good news about classmates. It certainly makes me proud to be a member of this great class of Dartmouth.

I am particularly pleased with the nice photography coverage we have received in the Alumni Magazine recently. This has been sort of a specialty for the last year and we hit with seven pictures in the last eight issues, including this one. Recent editions have had pictures of the elephant Babar (he turned 50 with the rest of us); Ralph Destino of Cartier with resplendent jewelry; Marge Tomchuk, the distinguished printmaker who was commissioned to design the limited edition of the famous '54 class award; Tony Kane's handsome subway poster for Citibank; SinclairHitchings in his fantastic old office at the Boston Library; Alan and Peggy Bialosky and several of their famous bears; and the great '54 winter carnival poster were all included. There were lots of great shots.

A special thanks to all of you who fed important leads to me for the past five years. Fred Alpert, Pete Barker, Dick Page, and Jerry Goldstein were particularly helpful in this area.

None of these columns would have gotten off the ground without the accurate typing of my assistant, Shari Ehrlich, or without the constant editing, proofing, and spelling corrections by a very patient Sandy Gillespie. In respect to spelling, Sandy has finally deemed me intractable in this regard, having given up on this aspect of my learning. She has often wondered how I could possibly have received degrees from both Dartmouth and Cornell.

We'll be looking forward to seeing you at the 35th reunion in 1989.

David Grogan '54, right, a New Canaan, Conn., businessman, stands before a statue ofThomas Hardy in the English novelist's native Dorchester. With Grogan is James Skilling,retired editor of The London Times and distinguished Hardy scholar. Grogan, a champion ofthe civilizing role of literature and a Hardy enthusiast himself, recently established at Dartmouth a literary prize to memorialize Hardy, to honor Skilling, and to underscore his urgentsense of the importance of the written word.

Bill and Jane White '54 were recently hosts of a class mini-reunion at their home in Short Hills, N. J. Classmates from the tri-state area there includedleft to right, Bob Adnopoz, John Gillespie,Tom Kelsey, Bill White, Tommy Sayles, Dave Metz, and David Mandelbaum. Not pic-tured but in attendance were Bob Clements and Bob Berry.

The Class-Secretary-of-t.he-Year Award for 1984 went to John L. Gillespie '54. He was cited for bringing "unsurpassed enthusiasm to a job that offers precious few rewards." Among his accomplishments in that role have been meeting deadlines, tracking down "a voluminous number"" of interesting items, suggesting profiles on classmates, and finding interesting photographs to accompany his columns. Gillespie also helped establish the College's first reunion attendance cup in 38 years and commissioned a limited-edition etching for recipients of his class award. He chaired, with two other classmates, 1954's 20th and 25th reunions (three reunion records were broken at the 25th) and did the same for the class's 30th. He has also worked "tirelessly" for the Dartmouth Club of Westchester County.

39 Walworth Avenue Scarsdale, NY 10583