1945

Well, I suppose it had to happen sooner or later a real goof. The former Jane Abrams chose Valentine's Day (appropriately, she pointed out) to inform me that she finds her husband more handsome than any movie star and that her married name is Mrs. Lloyd Charles Nintzel. Lloyd Bridges is not and never was, I suppose - D'45. The only common ground for the two Lloyds, according to Jane, is that both have sons named Jeff. Now, I'm going to have to blame this Freudian slip on some movie-afflicted typesetter. Okay, you don't have to remind me that doesn't improve my efficiency rating as a proofreader As I don't seem to be able to find a hole to crawl out of responsibility for this one, I guess I should find a hole to crawl into. Anyway, my apologies to the newlyweds.

And speaking of new: Treasurer John Osborn reports two more newly active members of the class: Harrison O'Connor of Falmouth, Maine, and William H. Gunther of Sheboygan, Wis.

"Old Faithful" Frank Aldrich (although no older than the rest of us, of course) has come through for me again, first with a note from St. Kitts, West Indies, where, he says, "cutting a deal is something else again" and one can throw away the textbooks relied on at Tuck. Frank enclosed a copy of a letter he received from George W. Miller. Bud and Betty are to be numbered among the '45 world travelers. They are quite taken with Dartmouth club-sponsored trips and, having made their first in '83 to Austria and Hungary, were headed out this winter for Greece and Turkey. The Millers have a condo on Sugarbush Mountain, only 70 miles from Hanover; and we should be seeing them in the tent in June.

A note from Frederick H. Campbell of Colorado Springs indicates that he will be in the East this spring on an (undecipherable) trip and hopefully will join us in Hanover.

Frank also forwarded to me a letter included with Martha and John Holdridge's Christmas card, belatedly received by Frank. John has been U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia for some time now. Prior to going to Jakarta, he held many key government posts, including that of heading up the first U.S. mission to Peking. I believe the letter was written by Martha; it features a flowing style with colorful imagery. It is a shame there isn't room here to print it in full. The Holdridges, as Martha says, have "crisscrossed this beautiful archipelago and visited the famous Buddhist temple of Borobudur and then drove high into the misty mountains of central Java to see the ruins of the ninth century Hindu temple of the Dieng Plateau and then on to... the historic Spice Islands." Other forays took the Holdridges to Bali and to Lombok, where they "drank the waters of longevity . . . and ate sweet rice cones in a pavilion built in 1805 to represent a high and sacred volcano, Mount Rinjani, by a king who was too old to climb the mountain." An extended tour took them to Borneo and to many provencial towns, among them Sintang, "where the people had never seen an ambassador from any country. For our brief stop the whole town turned out. School children waved Indonesian and American flags... and amidst drums, dances, and brightly-col-ored costumes, John was presented with a sword... to ceremonially cut a bamboo bar across a gate to enter the city."

Now, would you possibly believe that after a brief visit to the U.S. last year, the Holdridges returned to Jakarta "via Cairo and the Valley of the Nile, fulfilling a long cherished desire of John's"? Did I say something about '45 world travelers?

I received a nice letter the other day from Harry Hampton, in which he suggested that the recent accomplishments of Charlie Holt and Evan Connell are deserving of note in this column. Can you imagine how proud I was of myself that this had already been done? On the whole, though, I think I'm slipping. I started out here apologizing and then let "Sheboygan" back there slide by without comment. That word just cries out for a wiseguy remark.

'45 40th REUNION JUNE 10-13, 1985

P.O. Box 39 Atkinson, NH 03811