Class Notes

1938

MARCH • 1987 Robert H. Ross Jr.
Class Notes
1938
MARCH • 1987 Robert H. Ross Jr.

In the course of a Christmas week spent with our elder daughter and her family in Madison, Wis., Mary and I also managed the better part of a late-Decemb er afternoon with Bob and Sally Manegold at their home in nearby Hartland.

Mostly we reminisced, got updates on whose kids were doing what, and talked about our upcoming winter plans. But as the 50th reunion giving chairman, Bob also had a piece of "official" news that augurs well for the class. At year's end, 1986, Bob predicted, the '38 Early Bird Fund gifts made now but credited to our 50-year Alumni Fund gift in 1988 will approach, perhaps even surpass, $400,000! Bob could only approximate the figure because the College has fallen far behind in its record keeping, overloaded of course by year-end donations made to take advantage of the 1986 tax deductions. ' Whatever the specific sum turns out to be, it's bound to add up to a lot of money, a very sizeable step toward our goal, in 1988, of $1,038,000. What Bob Manegold remarked as we said good-bye back in December is surely true: "We are an amazing class."

Just how amazing is underscored by a letter received a few days ago from RedBoutilier, who reports on some recent correspondence with his sophomore-year roommate Sturgis White. Now, most of us, I suppose, have gotten into hobbies of one kind or another in recent years, but are you ready for this one? Sturge White has taken up sky diving! At the time he wrote to Red, Sturge had made two tandem jumps, one from 12,500 feet, which included an 8,500-foot free fall! "When they started this tandem jumping," Sturge said, "they came right down my alley getting into sky diving in a safe way for I'm a natural chicken. . . . Those square chutes we use . . . can fly almost like a hang glider. You feel like a hawk circling around up there. They can fly three feet horizontally for every foot they fall vertically. They call them flying mattresses." Some mattresses! Some chicken! Sturge says he wants to hear from any other classmates experienced in or interested in sky diving. His address is 7115 Highland Street, Springfield, VA 22150. Thanks all the same, Sturge, I think 111 pass. But I hope you'll keep us posted on how things fall.

A welcome letter from Fran Reilly brings us up to date on the activities of three of the lawyer-scholars in our class. Last summer, Fran writes, he attended a meeting of the Illinois Humanities Council in Chicago where the featured speaker was Hal Berman, who discussed his most recently published book War and Revolu-tion and of his continuing work in that field. After 36 years as a professor of in- ternational law at Harvard Law School, where his field of expertise was Soviet law, Hal moved from Cambridge to At- lanta, Ga., two years ago and now teaches at Emory University Law School. Another of the "prominent law school professor-scholars," as Fran remarks, is Frank Newman, formerly dean and pro- fessor of international law at Boalt Law School of the University of California, Berkeley, who is now back teaching law again at Boalt after many years service as a justice on the California Supreme Court. The third is Bill Chamberlin, who has recently retired from teaching at the Northwestern and Georgetown University law schools following a distinguished career in the marine corps.

As for his own activities, Fran says he retired from active, full-time law practice two years ago, but he still takes an occasional case and keeps himself busy in addition with alumni affairs of the Harvard Law School in Illinois, the Navy League, and the Illinois Humanities Council, among other things. Wonder what he does with this spare time.

Remember March in Hanover? Mud time, duckboards, sleet, rain the pits! Fifty years ago, on March 19, 1937, a pseudonymous bard yearned for softer climes on the editorial page of the Dartmouth (and the editors of the paper added their own caveat):

New England in the spring, When the crows begin to sing And you're drownded in a flood, Or you're ankle-deep in mud, Or you scramble through the slush And your shoes are full of mush, Is not so hot. But Bermuda in the spring, Is quite a different thing; There the moon is always bright And you're dancing through the night; And boy! The basking's grand, In the sun and sea and sand; Lounging neath a nodding palm Souls are filled with peace and calm, It hits the spot.

Eleazar's Uncle Joe (Climates sultry, promote adult'ry-The Editors.)

Do any of you have a clue as to who "Eleazar's Uncle Joe" was?

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