1961

Ken and Pani Kolb tightly planned our "Big Green Meets the Big Easy" weekend in New Orleans, an event filled with food, food and more food - a true "Taste of New Orleans." Seventy-nine classmates with wives, girlfriends, and dates attended our third major out-of-Hanover reunion. (The others were our 50th birthday party in Washington and our Dartmouth Goes Hollywood reunion in 1993.)

The Kolbs had carefully planned the menus so every dish was new and represented a different element of the New Orleans cuisine. The restaurants were a cross-section of New Orleans' finest - Antoine's, the Bella Luna, Commander's Palace, and our headquarters hotel, the Monteleone (the only major hotel in the heart of the French Quarter), where a major Cajun feast was served.

It was a weekend made even more memorable by Pani's detailed 100-mimite walking tour of the French Quarter (she is a licensed guide), a self-guided tour of the Garden District, midnight wandering on the famed (and somewhat overrated) Bourbon Street, and other touristy attractions.

It was also a typical 1961 reunion, with a built-in period for group introspection. This time (as in Hollywood), the Saturday-morning discussion, "The Only Thing Constant is Change," was led by the Rev. Duane Cox. We learned that at least some of our classmates are responding to the business tumult of the nineties by switching careers or retiring. Those who have retired are quick to stress that retirement does not mean sitting around doing nothing. Rather, weekdays should be just as filled with activities as they were during the years of work—and weekends should be off.

The Kolbs had arranged live music just about everywhere, and even pulled off some surprises: staging the best-fanny contest at the Bella Luna; slipping the Dixieland band a Dartmouth Songbook on Saturday night. So there we were singing "As the Backs Go Tearing By" to a Dixieland band on the top floor of a hotel in the heart of New Orleans, at least 1,500 miles from Hanover.

Jimmy and Puddin Roussel were cohosts and seemed to be with us everywhereso imagine my surprise when I picked up the Sunday paper and found a big picture of Puddin. She had found time to slip away and help with a major 10K road race.

Minutes of our class meeting are being distributed, but a couple of notes now. We've got two mini-reunions before our big 35th Reunion in Hanover: one is the 100dr anniversary of Dartmouth Night, a must weekend for any Dartmouth man (call Mini-Reunion Chair Art Johnson for details at (203) 274-4502); and one in Vail, Colo., the first four days of February 1996, produced and hosted by President Art Kelton Cartter Frierson and Oscar Arslanian.

Roger McArt, our reunion chair, called to remind that the reunion dates are June 13-16, 1996. The reunion will be partly on campus, partly off (because we chose to go off the standard cycle and have a weekend reunion). Roger needs volunteers. Call him anytime at his office, (203) 341-2204; leave a voice-mail message if he doesn't answer.

Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd., Winston-Salem, NC 27157-1015