1961

Bill Blue is attracting plaudits after his first year on the job as the commissioner of the Ladies Professional Golf Association. He was featured _ this fall in the Dartmouth Football Program, where he was interviewed by Rick Adams. According to the interview, the LPGA had been plagued with declining sponsorship, lack of television exposure, and little recognition, and trailed both the PGA Tour and the Senior tour in corporate sponsorship support. So, according to Bill, it boiled down to a marketing solution—which is right up his alley from his former career as a highly successful marketing executive, most recently as vice president and director of international marketing for the Kahlua group.

"The growth of golf overall had just passed them by in terms of marketing," Blue told Adams. "Our goals haven't changed we want to provide a great opportunity for young women to have a full and successful professional career, whether they are players or teachers or in the business area.

"Those objectives require a higher sponsorship base in terms of dollars and it requires a stronger organization to get out and introduce the objectives of the association to corporate America, to charities, and those groups which can benefit from being with us and from whom we can obtain resources and assist in their objectives."

Already he's succeeding—with the richest-ever event on the tour—the $750,000 Centel Classic—and with seven new tour stops. "Every event this year has exceeded attendance records," he told Adams, "and the number of women coming to watch events has increased dramatically."

Several dozen classmates made it back for the mini-reunion during Dartmouth Night weekend, according to class president VicRich and mini-reunion chairman DavePrewitt. (It's only the second Dartmouth night in a decade that I've missed.)

At a class meeting on Saturday morning, the class set a 30th Reunion goal of $400,000 with 75 percent participation. Our emphasis will be on participation. Reunions are the time when the biggest campaigns for Alumni Fund giving are conducted and goals characteristically are substantially larger than those in nonreunion years. To win the Green Derby last July for only our third time since graduation, we had one of the highest participation rates 69 percent of any Dartmouth nonreunion class, and the $160,061 raised was our third highest nonreunion dollar amount. To reach our new participation goal means we need contributions from all 410 of us who gave this year and we need to find 36 classmates who didn't give in 1989. That is achievable.

Class members present also discussed our class projects ana plans for our 30th Reunion in June, which will be with the classes of 1959 and 1960. (Reminder: the dates are June 11-14, 1990, during the week.)

After the meeting, the class had a joint cookout with 1959 and 1960 on the patio of the Fayerweather Dorm Cluster Social Center, watched the loss to Yale, and then had a cocktail party and dinner at the Tom Dent Cabin. Among classmates seen attending the reunion, in addition to Vic and Dave, were Gerry Kaminsky, Mike Murphy, Bob Rosier, Morty Lynn, RedFacher, Henry Eberhardt, Ron Wybranowski, Al Rozycki, Jerry Akin, TomHewitt, Dave Qsterhout, Steve Bradish,Dave Heisterkamp, Mike Steinberg, BobWendell, Richard Wright, and Harry Al-tick.

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