1961

The leadership core for the Chicago reunion is growing, according to class president Oscar Arslanian. The core committee now includes Alan Orschel, Denny Engelman, and Rick Taft as well as Cleve Carney and Bill Glenn. From New Orleans, Ken Kolb has been offering his advice based on his experience with the New Orleans reunion, The Big Green Meets the Big Easy. Plans for the reunion are accelerating and an initial invitation should be coming to you soon (or already be in your hands by the time you read this.)

Oscar reports that class vice president Duane Cox is recovering rapidly from hip replacement surgery. Oscar said that before the operation, Doberman had not been walking well, and Oscar urged him to have the operation for "quality-of-life" reasons. Sounds to me as if that's a preacher's argument, the perfect one to make with the reverend, who serves in the United Church of Religious Science. Anyway, he's recovering speedily—five days in the hospital and then physical therapy. A couple of Frost statue updates, courtesy of Mike Murphy: George Lundeen, the sculptor who did the Frost and the now famous Franklin statue at Penn has been awarded the prestigious commission to sculpt Colorado's second statue for the Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol. It will be of late astronaut James Swigert, the heroic commander of the Apollo 13 flight, who was later elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, but died before he could serve. Mike said he hopes to place some sort of small plaque or some such to indicate that the Frost sculpture is a gift from our class.

Several news notes: John Bryan Starr gave one lecture in a month-long Darien Community Association series called China Crossroads, focusing on China 1997. A one-sentence analysis: China has problems with environmental pollution, feeding the population with a decreasing amount of cultivated land, rising crime, and a government that is losing control of the population. His new book, Understanding China, is due out shortly. Bob Leiblich, who works for the Office of Counsel, Naval Sea Systems Command, writes via e-mail that his office actually is in Arlington, Va., after the postal service and the phone company refused to continue the fiction that the office was located in Washington. You'll recall that Bob left after sophomore year, transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, and actually finished in January 1961—before the rest of us graduated from Dartmouth.

Dick Beattie was cited as a man with a social conscience and a strong shoulder to lean on recently. Beattie is chairman of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett and is "a top name in mergers, leveraged buyouts, and corporate law and finance." He is chairman and founder of New Visions for Public Schools, a nonprofit group that advises businesses on ways to improve public education which is a continuation of his long service to public education. Dick's philosophy: "Don't be afraid to say, 'I don't know' and seek help from others."

Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Medical Center Boulevard, Winston-Salem NC 27157-1015;