1931

In the autumn quarterly issue of Dartmouth Medicine, a magazine for alumni and friends of Dartmouth Medical School and of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Art Ecker class correspondent, reported our '31 classmates Almond, himself, Bob Fraser,Hunter, McLean, Montgomery, and Wollaeger still "in orbit." In this critic's eye Art's beautifully written tales of incidents during med school days merit high consideration of him for this job, should your present scribe get run over by a Mack truck.

Inasmuch as this column has lacked news of Wilder Montgomery, Art's mention of him prompted my sending Wilder a card asking if the view of Washington, D.C., from inside the beltway was different from that from the provinces. His view from "a ring-side seat": a five-billion dollar Congress which puts on shows (I assume he means for us couch-potatoes), and permits a deficit out of control and a fiat currency a prescription for disaster; and the local scene, ranking first or near the top in murders, number of municipal employees and police per capita, infant mortality, possibilities of being conked by a stray bullet from someone with ruffled feelings, high taxes, and cancer deaths. He is one classmate who can write about our nation's capitol:" [when I was] a kid my front door was locked only at night, and I could roam most of the city after dark without fear. Now..." Despite all that, he calls Washington a beautiful city with many cultural outlets. He wrote that one can succeed there if careful, and that it's possible and to be hoped that the new mayor will again make it what a local brewery once called "the land of pleasant living." Wilder, we'll be needing reports on the momentous days ahead.

At Franklin Field I saw us hold on to defeat Penn in an exciting football season's opener; then, two weeks later, a great game at Lehigh in which a last-minute pass by us was ruled out-of-bounds, thus putting us out of winning field-goal range. Tough one to lose.

R.D. 2, Box 36A, Schnecksville, PA 18078