1965

Most professions or other areas of human endeavor grant recognition to those who have served as pioneers in their field. There are halls of fame, monuments, and even lucrative pension programs. A notable exception to such treatment is found in the lives of former Dartmouth class secretaries. This seems to be the one group in the entire world that is totally without lasting glory. As a step toward correcting such injustice, we in the class of '65 must begin paying more attention to the activities of my predecessors.

Our secretary for the first 10 years after graduation was Rick Mahoney. Since 1967, Rick has made a career serving in a variety of administrative roles at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H. Having been a scholarship student himself at Exeter prior to attending Dartmouth, Rick finds his present position of associate director of admissions and financial aid to be especially rewarding. He also reports he is using his Dartmouth athletic experience in one of his "odd jobs," that of coaching the girl's basketball team. Rick and his wife, Linda, both natives of the New York City area, moved into their home at the school a week after their marriage and found it an ideal environment for raising their three children, ages 17, 15, and 12. Rick remembers that as a secretary desperate for news he often had to turn to what many of us believed to be an imaginary classmate. Rick regrets this same old friend, Palmer C. D. Wooglin, was unable to make our 20th reunion because of his commitments as a faculty member at the newly chartered Florida Water Skiing Academy but has been assured Palmer will be on hand for our 25th.

Serving as secretary from 1975 to 1980 was Dick Avery. Dick is a product of the combination Dartmouth/Tuck five-year program who, after military service, started a progression of assignments in the financial analysis and planning areas of Scott Paper. Within a few years, he was assigned to S.D. Warren, a major operating division of Scott. He is presently chief information technology officer of Warren and is responsible for all computer and other systems efforts of the company. He and his wife, Sally, have children ranging in age from Dick's daughter by a first marriage who is considering the Dartmouth class of 1990 to their youngest, a 20-month-old son. They live in Cohasset, Mass., and Dick says he enjoys the unusual experience of commuting to Boston each day by boat. His greatest challenge as class secretary was the "monthly creative writing effort of making a column out of very little news," and his only regret was that he was unable to convey properly some of the more serious messages he heard from class- mates on both the good and bad experiences in their lives.

Bob Blake, our most recent retiree from secretarial work, lives in Wellesley Hills, Mass., and serves the MIT Alumni Association as regional director for the western United States. Bob has been with MIT for 19 years and in an alumni role since 1975. He also continues the "amateur" side of his college activity and is president-elect of the Dartmouth Alumni Association of Eastern Massachusetts. Bob adds that he and his wife, Sharon, the personnel director of television station WCVB in Boston, were married in 1976 and that he still enjoys the annual naval reserve cruises that were once regularly a part of this column. Although he liked the portion of the secretary's job that allowed him to become acquainted with classmates he had not known well in Hanover, Bob says that by far the outstanding accomplishment of his term in office was that moment during our last reunion when he found the one remaining '65 gullible enough to serve as his replacement.

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