1952

Hal Morse received an acting award and wondered if that would be worth a "Rouse." Southern California has a very active civic theater program with an amateur playhouse in every community up and down the coast. The theater in Costa Mesa, where Hal and his wife, Jamie, live and Hal performs, has been recognized in international competition as recently as 1990. Every year the playhouse audience votes in something like the Tony competition for best actor, best director, and so forth. In 1993 Hal received the Pati Award for best supporting actor as the prosecutor's conscience in GuiltyConscience, a role which Anthony Hopkins originated on film. Hal actually deserves a lot of "Rouses" for several other accolades: the psychiatrist in Nuts and a challenging role in the musical version of Dickens's The Mysteryof Edwin Drood.

Hal never took an acting lesson, so he credits his success to his drama major at Dartmouth and his single, now-forgotten, Player's role in Royal Family. Warner Bentley, George Schoenhut, and Henry Williams, take notice wherever you are.

The roar of the grease paint aside, Arthur H. Morse II has had a wonderful life. Imagine a job which permits you to ski in Aspen, play golf in Hawaii, and put tennis courts in some of the fanciest real estate in the world. Until he retired a year ago, that was Hal's life. Ski Magazine and other magazines published by Universal Publishing and Times Mirror sent him on all-expense-paid trips to places most of us will just hear about it was a part of his job. Hal has lived in Hanover, New York City, Boston, Denver, and other places in Colorado. He and Jamie wound up their business career as "The Plant People," an owneroperated business installing and maintaining plants in Los Angeles businesses. Now with no business at all, they can golf and ski all year round. There are frequent visits to their three children in Wyoming, Park City, Utah, and Northampton. Son Peter is class of '80.

Hal considers himself the luckiest guy in the world. The fires in California just missed the Morse's. They already had one fire and "you only get one in a lifetime," says Hal. As for the mud slides, erosion, dust, smog, earthquakes, violence, materialism, looniness, and all other California problems, Hal is stoical, focusing on the life joys of which California is a part.

He loved Dartmouth. There was "so much to take away." He haunted Baker Library and found the theater compelling. He wishes he had been older. He enjoys hearing from classmates like Whitey Dunlop and Bob Binswanger and anyone else who writes, calls, or stops by.

He deserves a "Rouse." Heck, how about a standing ovation?

10 Grove Street, Pittsford, NY 14534

Hal Morse has had a wonderful life. Imagine a job which permits you to ski in Aspen, golf in Hawaii, and put tennis courts in some of the fanciest real estate in the world. HENRY WILLIAMS JR. '52