1957

Back in September '53, 17 '57s showed up for GreenBook pictures sporting bow ties, including Merv Bagan, Mai Brown, ScottCorey, Bill Davidow, BillDraper, Dave Kamper, Skip Kerr, JimMacmillan, Al McWade, Erv Phillips,Harvey Weiss, and Woody Woodbury. Four years later after most of a Dartmouth education, every portrait in the Aegis featured a conventional tie. Very likely, there's more here than immediately meets the eye. For example, consider that the class count was down to 614 in our Aegis, compared to 728 in our Green Book, attrition of about 16 percent. By contrast, 29 percent of the freshman bow tie wearers failed to make it into the '57 Aegis. Any comments on the significance of these statistics will be shared in a future column.

The old school ties have certainly grown stronger for Jack and Liz Cramer, with the graduation of their daughter Jennifer '88. As part of the celebration Jack turned in a tremendous first year as class agent, leading the class to its first Green Derby win since 1964. Reluctant as ever to accept the accolades earned by a great deal of organization and hard work, Jack was quick to say, "I had a lot of help from Eric Eichler, JoeStevenson, Hanny Mason, and many others; and I hope we can do it again." As for himself, Jack did acknowledge, "You do need a guy to take the bit in his teeth. All of us are busy with our lives, and relatively few have the time to do this job. But it's rewarding. If you can ask people to give to the College and get fun out of it, you get a chance to talk to a lot of good guys, and it's really gratifying."

In early August Bill Allison jetted back to San Diego from Wales, where he had participated in a conference on bioenergetics. As a professor of biochemistry at the University of California, he has "a fairly large program going on in the molecular mechanisms of energy generation and storage in biological systems, such as the processes by which light energy is converted to chemical energy in photosynthesis. Europeans have great interest in bioenergetics because they don't have as many fossil fuels as we do. The ultimate goal of most of this research is to take advantage of some of the biological systems and harness them in bioreactors. Another result coming out of this research is understanding of a lot of rare diseases caused by inborn errors in human metabolism."

Just before graduation from Dartmouth, Bill's draft into the service was cancelled, too late for him to apply to graduate school. "The chemistry department offered to take me on for a couple of years as a teaching fellow. It was a very serendipitous thing to happen and very helpful for me, as it provided an opportunity to really think about what I wanted to do." Bill hasn't been back to Hanover since those days, but his daughter spent a year nearby, riding competition horses professionally. A broken leg, arm, and pelvis over the past few years has caused her parents some disquiet, but her ambition remains to get a horse good enough to go to the Olympics.

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