1938

Amazing! Maybe you've heard the word used once or twice before to describe the class of 1938? Nevertheless, I'll risk the ubiquitous A-word yet one more time. For as applied to our 50th Reunion it simply fits. That's all.

First, the statistics, fresh from Dick Francis's calculator. At least 361 people—classmates, wives, friends, widows, even grandchildren—came to Hanover for the weekend. Of that total 185 were classmates—about 52 percent of the class. BobManegold, Gil Tanis, and Bob Reeve reported that our 50-year gift to the College will total at least $1,038,380.38! That symbolic figure was of course our goal and no doubt we'll surpass it by the time the books are closed. A final significant number: almost 80 percent of us contributed to that near-record 50-year gift. Amazing!

Amazing too was the seemingly effortless efficiency of the whole operation from start to finish. The pace of events was awesome: on Friday afternoon an initial panel discussion moderated by Frank Newman and featuring, among other panelists, John Jova and John Johnson, followed by our class dinner and a Glee Club concert; on Saturday our memorial service, class picture, meeting, luncheon, and banquet; on Sunday, Commencement and the farewell luncheon at the Outing Club. The whole affair was punctuated at appropriate intervals, of course, by what the printed program called, in a uniquely delicate phrase, "reminiscing in the tent." There wasn't a hitch, not a glitch. Amazing? I think so.

thirties photographs, even a couple of senior blazers (unbuttonable, naturally). But most evocative was a wonderfully nostalgic slide show depicting events and personages of our undergraduate years which was created and videotaped by Dick Francis.

hard, haltingly, through choked-up throats.

Between remembering in Rollins and "reminiscing in the tent" we also managed to do some business. At the class meeting new officers were elected for the next five years, and five men were honored for extraordinary contributions to the class in recent years: John Scotford, Dan Marshall, DickFrancis, Gil Tanis, and Bob Manegold. By acclamation Bob Reeve, who presided, was directed to add his own name to that list. On a spontaneous motion from the floor we adjourned to a noisy, enthusiastic, a capella rendition of "Eleazer Wheelock." We were, you might say, amazing.

My goodbye column in May turned out to be a bit premature, so this becomes my second, final, farewell appearance. Your new secretary is Gene Waggaman, whose 50-year address at the reunion so master fully captured the essential spirit of the class. Gene said: "Perhaps the most amazing thing about the amazing class of 1938 is how the threads of common experience have kept us bound together in a unity that has survived the years . . . We are men of differing attitudes, differing accomplishments, often differing convictions. Yet 'round the girdled earth we share one immutable bond: universally and eternally, we are men of Dartmouth."

You can't say it better than that. So long, my friends.

Box 42 Waterford, ME 04088