1942

Doug Stowell died suddenly at home one Friday in August. A proper obituary will appear in this Magazine. Meantime, we all express our sympathy to Alyce and their family. Doug was a "good guy," and we will all miss him.

"Cappy" Rix wrote in that unless we juggle our reunion dates, he will probably have to skip the 45th. It seems that his daughter Kate will be graduating from the University of Southern California at the same time. We told him that reunion dates are set a millennium in advance by someone "up there, and that Kate should come first. Will hope that Cappy joins us on our 50th which, believe it or not, is not very far away.

John Montagne sent in the annual meeting notes of the Montana Power Company which announced, among other things, the reelection of Warren Jones as a director. Some of us keep going forever. MerrillMcClane is, for sure. He's just come out with a new book, Proud Outcasts-The Gypsiesof Spain, via Carderock Press. With the book done, Merrill keeps busy "gardening, painting the house, sailing with friends, and blueberry picking" in Rockport, Mass.

Our star commentator on affairs foreign, Art Cox, did it again last summer with a big piece in the Los Angeles Times. Art, as you probably know, started out in adult life in the OSS, went on to the CIA, and now is in the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. His entire working career has had to do with our relations with the many nations, races, and creeds with which we share this globe. At the moment, Art is arguing that Gorbachev and glasnost are for real and that we ignore the opening of Russia at our own peril. The cold war is dead, or should be, and we and our Russian competitors need not compete with nuclear arms, but with agricultural and industrial know how for influence in the civilized and third worlds. Art's arguments are convincing, and, for those of us with grandchildren, encouraging.

Joe Nason's an author now, too. His Horio You Next Die is the story of his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese in 1943-45. Joe was shot down on his first mission over Bougainville in the South Pacific. His SBD "shuddered slightly from the impact of an incendiary anti-aircraft shell. Smoke from the engine cowling immediately obscured Joe's view. Jolted out of his concentration (on the target), Joe thought, My God, we've been hit. Releasing his bomb, he closed the dive flaps and hauled his stick back." Joe spent the rest of the war as a POW of the Japanese. He and six other men were the only survivors of the 63 original POWs in his compound. Malnutrition, disease, and brutal handling took the rest. Joe's story is spellbinding and should be read by all to remind us that war is not a good alternative to political action.

Bob and Betsy Uptegrove made the Boston Globe last summer as champions of the West River, a small but beautiful stream which runs southeasterly across southern Vermont into the Connecticut near Brattleboro. Both Uptegroves are board members of the conservation society of southern Vermont and are trying to keep the West River protected legally from development as an "outstanding resource river."

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