1948

Dick Repko worked for Caltex Petroleum for 36 years. During 29 of them he and family lived abroad in Colombia, Bangkok, Tokyo, Okinawa, Madagascar, Nairobi, Uganda, and Zambia. Adventure and sometimes risk were common denominators of Caltex's huge area from Japan thru Africa (and Mideast areas such as Yemen) where Dick served as traveling marketer. He was under house arrest in Antananarivo after his company was nationalized there in 1976, a problem he solved by an escape. Dick had another escape just before we talked for the first time since Japan in the 1960s, when his house in Wilmington, N.C., was on the lee side of Bertha when her eye came ashore two miles away. Today Dick plays golf, sends greetings to old '48 friends, and may get back for our 50th. (Those who were there won't forget years ago when Dick and Bill Malone carried the backpacks of about 20 of us from the Garfield cabin on Lafayette all the way down to the Franconia Notch Road. Remember?)

Jack Barry and his buddy, the late Frederick "Bill" Maloney, first met as U.S. Marines when each returned to Pearl Harbor after the horrors of Iwo Jima. They became fast friends, entered Dartmouth's V-12 in the fall of '45, and had no doubts about Hiroshima. Both married while at Dartmouth. Jack and Peg are parents of the first '48 offspring, their son John III born March 4, 1948. Bill married Mary-Hitchcock nurse Dorothea (Laplante) from Berlin, N.H., and the two couples have been friends ever since, now minus Bill, who died in 1991 after becoming a bemedalled colonel in the USMC before years in insurance and specialized childcare.

Jack and Peg now live in Stoneham where his Ph.D. in psychology from B.U. leads his highly innovative criminal stress research work for the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the Bay State police. He and the ladies may be in Hanover for the 50th.

First talk with automotive businessman Bob Kertnard in Concord, N.H., in years. Recalled an evening in 1949 when the late Pete Owen and I were invited by Bob and wife to their Wigwam Circle flat for spaghetti. The convivial four of us enthusiastically finished off a big tossed salad and a great bowl of spaghetti. And, judging by the way I felt next morning, we also drained that 40-cent gallon jug of dago red! Ugh! Great to be in touch, Bob, but no more dago red!

Highest applause to Hank Mueller for his beautiful, sensitive volume biography of his beloved son, Father Hank, who suddenly and unexpectedly died two years ago. All of us need to hope for a quick return to health of Dick Greene, who's had a difficult operation on a ballooned aorta in Florida where he's struggling in discomfort to recover. Our man in Washington, WidWashburn, wishes to thank all '4Bs who voted for him in his unsuccessful race for alumni Trustee a few years ago.

With sadness for Joie, the family, and all his friends we report the death of Dr. BillPace of cancer in June.

10214 Del Monte, Houston, TX 77042

Dick Repko has escaped house arrest in Antananarivo and a hurricane in Nortk Carolina. F.R. DRURY '48