1935

We have just heard that Reg Bankhart, the editor of that superb newsletter the Tear Bag, recently suffered a slight stroke. Bob McLelland and Sax Zeimen were unable to attend the mini-reunion because of a quadruple bypass and a broken hip, respectively, but they and Reg are all now well on the way to recovery.

Wiley Hubbell told us that he recently shot 77 at age 79 and thus is no longer worried about getting old. Lowie Haas's son Fred '73, one of New England's outstanding jazz saxophonists, is being featured at a number of jazz music happenings in the area. Nick Jacobson's daughter Nora '76 received excellent reviews in The New York Times and Newsday for her documentary on housing shown at the New York Film Festival.

We now have a new President with a Congress of the same political persuasion. It will be the neatest trick of the year for Clinton to jumpstart the economy, create jobs, improve healthcare, cut the military budget, increase taxes only on the very rich, and at the same time reduce the federal deficit. Perhaps the

brightest spot in the picture is the appointment of Ed Reich's son Bob '68 first as head of the transition team's economic policy and then as the Secretary of Labor.

Under somewhat similar circumstances Roosevelt took over during our sophomore year, but he had a much larger mandate (472-59 electoral votes compared to 357-168 for Clinton). Certain other fascinating events also took place during that year: just before we arrived in Hanover Jimmy Walker was forced to resign as mayor of New York City. The Yankees beat the Cubs in four straight. By early 1933 the U.S. jobless figure reached 15 million. A week before legislative elections in Germany a mysterious fire destroyed the Reichstag, which was the excuse for Hitler's Nazi regime to tighten its grip on the country.

FDR was inaugurated in March and immediately ordered a four-day bank holiday followed by his first radio "fireside chat." The following month the U.S. went off the gold standard, whereupon stock prices shot up. In June the National Industrial Recovery Act was passed, giving the government control over industry in an attempt to help the nation recover from the Depression. Robert A. Chesebrough, the inventor of Vaseline who attributed his longevity to ingesting one spoonful every day of his life, finally died at the age of 96.

Gordon Farm, RR 1-Box 83, Sutton, VT 05867-9721