1960

Excepting Texas and Washington, D.C., only 15 of our class came to Hanover from the South, and only half of these live in the South today. Some found Dartmouth a daunting experience.

"Holy Mackerel, I was scared," recalls Art Seessel. "I went up there not knowing a soul. When I arrived, I found not a thing in my room, 110 Streeter." But Art thought Norris Knosher, not a Southerner, was a fine roommate, and he notes that his own daughter, Kay, attended UC Berkeley, a school even more remote in spirit from Memphis. (Art has just sold his Memphis supermarket chain.)

Bill Baxley, of Macon, Ga., and Don Bayles, of Florence, Ala., both left Dartmouth in their second years.

Bill, an ear, nose, and throat specialist, remarks, "I always wanted to get to Dartmouth, but I'm not the kind of person who made a million friends.... The thing that got me was the isolation of the place. My God, it was 100 miles down the road to anywhere, and there was just one movie theater."

Don recalls, "I thought I was smart as hell coming out of a good old southern high school. But I felt dumb when I got up there." A Daniel Webster scholar, he exempted English and went to the honors class, "six hours on Friday at this professor's house. I still felt dumb. All the other fellows had read Plato five times." And, Don adds, some of his classmates "called me 'rebel.' I got to where I played Hank Williams on my stereo.... I went back to Alabama after two years," where he later became a plastic surgeon and now enjoys serving as flight surgeon in a reserve Air Force unit that flies into the middle of hurricanes.

Don recalled his roommate, Tom Van Winkle, got an A in English. Tom, now a lawyer in Honolulu, modestly can't remember."

Mel Converse, clerk of the circuit court of Leesburg, Va., found that being a southerner in the class of 1960 wasnt a problem. In fact, he liked New England so much on the Outing Club's freshman hike that he led one of the groups as a sophomore. Mel's daughter, Mate, is getting an M.B.A. at Tuck, so he still frequently gets to Hanover.

Coming from the South to Dartmouth, "I couldn't define as a distinct experience," says Howard Craig, a 28-year professor of chemistry at Lenoir-Rhyne College, Hickory, N.C. "But I hadn't seen a winter quite like that. I remember those piles of snow walking to class."

Allan Cameron came from Oak Ridge, Tenn., where he attended the only high school integrated in the South before our freshman year. "I got a little ribbing for being a Southerner, but I didn't think it was anything other than good-natured. Allan is now an executive with Dynmeridian, an arms-control implementation firm in the Washington suburbs.

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Author Bruce Ducker '60, p 45