1939

Curses on an executive committee who has charged your scribe with the task of securing two guest authors per AlumniMagazine season to assume the chore of writing two class notes columns. We thought it would be appropriate to have a guest piece done for this month. We set about the task of securing a sharp "pen" to fill in some gaps in class reportage. Why not, we thought, get a rundown on the northwest, from northern California through Washington. So we selected a target, Moreau Brown, who has always been an excellent source of news for this column. In due time we heard that Brownie has not had much contact with 39s of late and news was so sparse that it was suggested we look elsewhere for a scribe. Moreau is kept busy as president of the Montefiore Senior Center in San Francisco, an organization of 1,600 members. Although he says they have a very competent professional staff, he is usually on hand almost every day in the office. He gave us a quick trip down nostalgia lane, recounting that he has copies of newsletters he wrote in the forties while most of us "were off making the world safe for democracy." Brownie had some physical problems that kept him out of the service, some diagnosed while he was at Morristown (N.J.) Prep, where he roomed with the late T.K. Johnson, who was lost during World War 11. Brownie relates further that in an attempt to get into the navy in New Orleans he had some help from the late Wally Trautman, a navy M.D. at the time. But even Wally couldn't secure enough waivers to get him a uniform. Brownie ends with a comment that no one swims in the ocean in San Francisco, it being too cold along with the possibility of providing lunch for a great white shark. Sitting on the periphery of the opposite ocean at the moment, we would have to state that the same applies to the Atlantic off Maine, and with recent shark warnings just to the south off Hampton Beach, N.H., it would appear we have similar problems.

Having scratched our western attempt, we next thought it might be fine to get a rundown on the legion of classmates who have settled on Hilton Head Island, just off the South Carolina coast, but our designee, Ace Bailey, has recently moved from the area, opting for the mountains in the western part of the state at Tryon, S.C. Ace said he ran into Skip Morse, a long resident of Tryon, and reports that Skip is in fine health.

Time was slipping by and the deadline fast approaching as we shot a frantic note to Doug Beasley, on Cape Cod, where we knew another enclave of '39s holds forth, probably suitably swollen by summer visitors on the Cape and Nantucket or the Vineyard. Doug, as we reported in our last, had just taken over as president of the Dartmouth Club of Cape Cod and we thought might be a font of information. But a letter and follow-up phone call to Doug revealed that he was up to his "you-know-what" with new duties, and a self-inflicted schedule of tutoring high school students in math and english in a summer catch-up program. We had to admire Doug for his courage in that he is not a teacher by trade, and merely thought that he might be of help in the program, hence had volunteered his services. Nonetheless, he felt that at the moment he was not in a position to take on the chore of writing up 800 words on the comings and goings of Cape Codders for the Magazine.

At this point, one day short of our August deadline, it seems the better part of valor to try and put something down on paper; this despite the fact that our energies have been misplaced by seeking guest authors in lieu of news.

We do know that Bill and BunnyWebster on a trip west in August were planning on stopping in at Michelinda, Mich., to visit George and Ginny Neiley in their summer lair. This knowledge came firsthand from the Websters, who stopped in for the night with the Jacksons in York Harbor, Maine, this past July. They were en route to a camp further "down east" to pick up a grandson.

We shall conclude by passing along accolades to Jim Corner, Bill Tomkins, and their army of agents who managed to gather up $105,721 from 65 percent of our classmates in the 1986 Alumni Fund effort. Granted, we missed the excessively high goal of 125 G's, but for just a year after our prodigious effort at our 45th, we think anything over $100,000 is a real accomplishment.

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