Alumni Award: William Griffith "Pete" Barker Jr. '54
There have been scores of Alumni Awards over the years, but this must be the first to go to the great, great, great, great, great-grandson of a Dartmouth alumnus, Nathan Church by name, class of 1784. You can't go much further back than that! Pete's Dartmouth legacy is almost without parallel: it also includes a great, great, great-grandfather, a great-grandfather, a father, two brothers, a son, and a nephew. If we could somehow bring them all together, they'd just about take over half a college dormitory.
Fete was an undergraduate Tuck School threetwoer, a wrestler, varsity trackster, and a member of the marching band and the Barbary Coast. After graduation he moved into the world of finance three years as a finance officer in the army and a 30-year-plus business career applying his financal wizardry to McKinsey and Cos., Sunray Oil Cos., and CBS and CBS/Fox.
Then let's not forget about Pete's life-long service to his community, be it Msa, Philadelphia, New York City, or Greenwhich: the YMCA, museums,
churches, building cooperatives, and political organizations. On the Dartmouth front, he has been a class agent, member of the execu- tive and reunion giving committees; he has been a secreatary of the Greenwich Club and president and district enrollment director of the Dartmouth Club of Eastern Oklahoma; he's been a member of the Alumni Council, serving on the Alumni Fund and Communications Committees, and also the Nominat- ing and Alumni Trustee Search Committee, which he chaired; and in 1987 he received the Class of 1954 Award.
Pete has taken early retirement but is still busy consulting. He stays fit by working out and running a couple of miles a day in Central Park—back in 1980 he ran the New York Marathon. Everyone says he's a nice fellow, but don t mess with this guy He's a Judo Black Belt, a former Judo instructor, and he can toss you fight out of the park!
We were honored to toss this Dartmouth Alumni Award right his way he deserves it a hundred belts over.
