1955

Two summers ago, while I was driving west through the plains of Wyoming, the scarcity of hard news finally caught up. We stopped at an extremely modest town in Wyoming to allow for the purchase of the largest newspaper on the rack, the weight and bulk of which hardly seemed enough for the charge, at least compared to large metropolitan standards. However, when the national and international news is covered in a page and a half, and one is becoming stangely fascinated by the price of feed, the idea of any lasting impression is hard to comprehend. However, there, heading the business section, was an article announcing the appointment of Harry T. Lewis as head of the Rocky Mountain Region of the investment banking firm of Dain Bosworth, Inc., headquartered in Minneapolis. The real "H.T.," of course, did not come through with sufficient clarity, which encouraged a report at greater depth.

A typical graduate from the class of '55, Harry is a man of many talents with a broad range of interests. He has served as chairman of Downtown Denver, Inc., the organization that organized the mile-long pedestrian and transit mall through the major shopping street in Denver. Harry still spends time in that effort, including showing the mayor of Boston around Denver on the mayor's tour of western cities and entertaining him for dinner. Harry is also on the board of trustees and is treasurer for the Denver Museum of Natural History. The Tuck group will be pleased to recognize a $4-million-a-year budget, and as Harry says, "They are in the black, no mean feat for a museum." Further than that, however, they have undertaken a $20-million building program with General Obligation Bonds, and the trustees have undertaken the further obligation to raise and spend $30 million to fill the museum over a seven-to-ten year period with enough emphasis on science and technology on a worldwide basis. (Harry and the other trustees must be an aggressive group.) The advantage of living in Denver, however, is that all is not necessarily work, particularly in "H.T.'s" case. An hour and 20 minutes gets you from home to their condominium at Copper Mountain. He and Tanya spend most every weekend during the skiing season enjoying that great Colorado snow, but even that's not always enough, for Harry has taken up helicopter skiing in the Canadian Rockies. (There you really do have to be very good, for between deep powder, the potential for avalanches, and no handy ski lodge, the challenge is formidable.)

The Lewises also headed for Switzerland, where they stayed in part with Dave and Jane Conlan in Geneva. Dave is at the Arthur Anderson International Headquarters in Geneva, the firm that he's been with since leaving the air force in the late fifties. He has responsibilities from Stockholm to Ankara and interests in the Far East including India, the Philippines, and Hong Kong and with all that, it gave the Lewises and the Conlans the opportunity to travel to Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.

Which also puts Dave close by JohnDemas, another Arthur Anderson partner, in Geneva. (Accounting did not seem so exciting at Tuck, although it still remains interesting to see which column exceeds the other.)

Herb Darling has at least one thing in common with "H.T.," for he was elected for the second time as president of the Buffalo, N.Y., Museum of Natural History. Herb is president of the family business, H.F. Darling Engineering Contractors, engaged in pile driving, roads, and underwater pipe lines, among other things. Herb and Jane have three children, the oldest of whom, H.F. III (Buck), has joined Herb in the business. Their daughters, Karen and Kathy, also live in the Buffalo area. Herb squeezes in service on the board of the Beechwood Foundation and is a director of the Key Banks of Buffalo. Of course, there's always deer hunting whenever possible (and presumably legal).

The Darlings live close to John andConnie Cant. John is head of his family business, the Lancaster Machine and Knife Works. (It's always nice to have a start, but it doesn't preclude an awful lot of hard work.) John's son, Scott, was a ski instructor in Chile last summer while his daughter, Deborah, was in Boston.

But, you don't have to go into the family business in order to be a success. TomSchoonmaker has been through it all, having started with the New York Central Railway System in 1960 and going through the combination forming the Penn Central in 1968 and the bankruptcy of the whole railroad in 1970. Persistance has obviously paid off, for he was part of the task force set up in 1975 to launch Conrail. It's.now gotten to the point where Tom heads off to the Greenbriar to give speeches regarding the future of Conrail and in one recent case to precede the vice president of the Norfolk Southern. It was back to back the following week again at the Greenbriar when the sales and marketing team made a presentation to the coal industry. The remarkable success of Conrail must be a real satisfaction for Tom, who notes the company is far better off as an independent organization. He is also happy to note that after a well placed word here and there that Dartmouth is part of the Morgan Stanley group offering to buy the government's share of the railroad. Tom and Anne's oldest, Tim, Dartmouth '79, is now in London, having married a British girl; he is running a British company, which all means that between that liberating Dartmouth education and jet air travel, none of us are really the same.

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