1948

At a Dartmouth Club of Houston meeting in April, President Freedman was asked, with reference to Dartmouth 15 or 20 years down the road, what in his opinion should be the respective number of undergraduate and post graduate students at the College at that time. The president answered clearly and without hesitation that the College for many years has admitted about 1,050 freshman students each fall, and that he has no intention or desire to increase this number, a statement I judge most of us there welcomed highly. Concerning postgraduate students disregarding associated Thayer, Tuck, and DMS, which stand apart the College currently has 160 arts and sciences graduate Ph.D. and master's candidates on campus, the president said. He pointed out that the Trustees, during the Dickey administration, approved an increase in graduate students to ten percent of the undergrad enrollment, meaning there could be 400 now. He expressed strong personal uncertainty as to whether the College should so increase postgraduate enrollment, however, and stated there is no current intention on his part to do so. Mike Choukas '51, an old friend and fellow Hanover native and now the College's director of alumni affairs, immediately whispered, "Sonny, you've got to understand he has never wanted to Harvardize Dartmouth!" I accept what was said.

It was a pleasure to speak with attorney Don Casey of Chicago the first time since we had last seen each other on that June day 42 years ago when President Dickey handed us our diplomas in the Bema. Don just attended the reunion in Norfolk of 800 American prisoners of war who had been liberated in Germany by General George Patton's forces. (Don was captured June 18, 1944, when his 8th Air Force plane was shot down over Hamburg, an event from which he still feels lucky to have escaped with his life.) Don entered Dartmouth as a vet in the fall of '45 and went straight through to his graduation in three years. One of Don's four sons is an M.D. and Dartmouth '74. Don and new wife, Alice, were married in February and expect to be at the 45th in '94!

Al Fritzsche, has temporarily joined the 35-plus '48s now living in Florida, in Lakeland between Orlando and Tampa, whence he expects shortly to contact nearby MouseTaylor. Al points out that he, Mouse, WaltSchubert, and the late Gus Farnsworth '49 were almost the entire senior class of Stamford's King School in 1944. All went on to Dartmouth, where Al and Walt roomed together during that great '44 summer term. Al then left for the American Field Service in Italy, where he drove ambulances for British Eighth Army Nepalese Gurkhas before eventually returning to Hanover to complete college before entering the brokerage trade. He had the pleasure of seeing daughter Heidi graduate as an '84, and Al himself made his first '48 reunion in 1988.

Another pleasure was to talk to RayHowland after so many years, though sad to hear his news of the passing of JoseSuarez in Madrid after a long illness a few months ago. Ray was a March '44 arrival in Hanover. He and Joey Marple roomed together in Wheeler, and Ray remembers Bud Gedney very well, sending regards to both. He made the Granite State his home after Dartmouth where he's been a first-rank entrepreneur, everything from founding a bank to R & D for Uncle Sam to manufacturing to membership on UNH's board of trustees in Durham. He's proud that New Hampshire kids for years have been at the top level of national SAT scores and that his state still has no sales or income tax.

Did Warren Daniell see the mention of his father in a Moosilauke article by Bill Fowler '21 in a recent "Grabbers" issue by Bob Averill '72? And did each of you help Marve Axelrod try to help our College in the recent Alumni Fund drive? If not, how about it now? Make your voice count!

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