1938

By the time you read this, Thanksgiving will be almost upon us. Incredible. The more so because as I write I'm sitting in front of an open window on a muggy, midsummer-type September day. Such, however, are the anomalies inherent in the twomonth advance deadline required by the Magazine. And so allow me to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving and to hope that the bounty symbolized by the holiday will extend throughout your year.

Bob Reeve tells me that give or take an unpacked carton or two he and Claire have completed their move from Connecticut to their newly finished house in Quechee, Vt., where, once "summer people," they will now become permanent party. Quechee does not lack for summer residents, however, among them being Bob and LoisDeery, who for the past several summers have temporarily forsaken Sarasota, Fla., to become neighbors of the Reeves in Vermont.

Bob also reports recent phone conversations with Charlie Keyes in Sequim, Wash., and Don Badger, who moved down to Tyler, Tex., not long ago. Both of them are enthusiastically anticipating returning to the 50th next June. And that leads to a more or less geographical observation: if Don and Charlie can make it to Hanover from as far away as Texas and Washington State, those of us who live closer surely have small excuse for not showing up. Another faraway classmate, John Johnson, now of Miami, Fla., checked in with Bob Reeve during the summer. John's grandson, from San Francisco, was on the traditional college inspection tour, it seems, and John took it upon himself to show the young man around Dartmouth personally. Now that's the way to recruit!

For most of us, I suspect, there are a hundred reasons for returning to Hanover and, of course, if we don't have a valid excuse we can always invent one. But two classmates, John McLane and Asher Lans, found a very substantial reason indeed. They attended that short course on the care and feeding of computers offered by the College for the past several summers. I understand several other classmates have taken the course in previous summers and have found it both stimulating and profitable. Would any of them like to offer a firsthand report? It would interest a lot of us, I'm sure.

Gil Tanis, Bob Manegold, and BobReeve have been conferring recently on raising the remaining funds required for the special 50-year gift the class will present to the College next June. Our Early Bird fund campaign has been a whopping success, but the class will still need everyone's help to reach that very substantial goal we have set for ourselves. By November, the three men promise, we will all have received their forthcoming letter on the subject.

THE-WAY-IT-WAS DEPARTMENT

Fifty years ago the Dartmouth enlivened an otherwise routine midweek day with a profile of George Chase Bray. Never heard of him? Try "Spud" Bray! Dartmouth's "overseer of unscheduled activities," the reporter called Spud, who "spends more time keeping people out of trouble than getting them out once they're in." Spud's job description? "What President Hopkins and Dean Neidlinger don't do, that's Spud's job." Nowadays it's unimaginable that a single "campus cop" could have kept tolerable order in a college of 2,500-plus young men. But Spud did it. Remember?

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