1935

There's a little more to work with this month, largely thanks to another memorable mini-reunion in October. The attendance of more than 100 set to rest any uneasiness the planners may have felt as to the possibility of a falloff in interest due to proximity of the Big Five-Oh last June. Six new faces graced the scene this year as the Will Gahagans came from California, the Bill Walraths from Arizona, and the Don Koehlers from Florida. Will, incidentally, came east to play in the National Senior Tennis Championships at Newport in mid-October with his partner, Paul Guibord '36.

The weekend program started with a fascinating talk by young Bill Mathers, son of our own Bill Mathers, in which he filled in the details of the story, already reported in the "Tear Bag," covering his ordeal at the hands of the North Vietnamese. For eight months after his arrest for alleged spying following the capture and confiscation of his 80-foot schooner in international waters off Vietnam, he was subjected to continuous interrogation, general harassment, and unattended medical problems, devoid of any communication with the outside world, before pressures from a variety of influential sources secured his release. He is now in fine shape, studying and teaching at Yale, and in the design process of building a new schooner, to be fully equipped for underwater salvage and survey work, which will take him into the next stage of an adventurous and, it is hoped, profitable career. Any of you interested in gold and silver plucked from the ocean's bottom may want to get in touch with him in a couple of years. Bill M., referring to a past difference with Bill pere in the matter of career choice, wound up his talk with a smiling comment: "There is only one other point to make. ... I might have avoided this misadventure if I had only listened to my father" (general laughter).

Before Bill's talk we were treated to a slide film presentation by Jacquelynn Baas, director of the new Hood Museum, covering the design problems and solutions involved in the planning and construction of the museum. We subsequently had an opportunity to see for ourselves the end results and to say we were impressed would be putting it mildly.

The dinners at the DOC and Alumni Hall provided the usual opportunity for creating new friendships or reinforcing old ones. The feature of the Saturday night dinner was a one-hour film of the Big Five-Oh ably created, edited and narrated by Howie Croninger after many hours of dedicated toil. There was little if anything of which he didn't capture at least a piece, and everyone felt they had been treated to a fresh injection of that old reunion magic. Another happy note was struck by the reading of a letter from the Holderness School, advising of the the naming of a new building in honor of Don Hagerman and Ibba. All in all, a great mini - they seem to get better every year.

Cam Duncan reports a Dartmouth Alumni College Abroad trip to Russia. He gives Russian Language Studies Professor Richard Sheldon and family credit for a fine tour which he would recommend to one and all.

"Dartmouth in Hollywood, A Potpourri of Film Celebrating the Opening of the Loews Theater in the Hood Museum of Art," saluted the film industry accomplishments of the Dartmouth family in recent presentations in New York, Hanover, and Hollywood. Our own Maury Rapf was selected to write the feature story in the program. Maury came back to Dartmouth, after a long career in Hollywood, to teach writing and production and, subsequently, to direct the College film study program. It's a fascinating history that's well worth reading if you can get hold of a copy.

I don't want to let any more issues go by without a quote I've been meaning to include in this column from the citation written for Reg Bankart at the Big FiveOh banquet. Some of the memorable lines from his class poem went like this:

Dreams are real If we but make them so . . . My heart has found a melting pot In which the best of life and youth Is forever solvent.

The citation concluded: "You, more than any of us, have made a reality of the dream that this class could be 'that melting pot in which the best of life and youth [and now of age] is ever solvent.' " That seems to me to say something about the class that we all feel and have trouble putting into words, so I thought it shouldn't be allowed to die in the class files. Hope you feel the same. Peace and love to you all.

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