1950

A Dartmouth Lady. It all began on Cape Cod the summer between our freshman and sophomore years, half a century ago. Just graduated from Northfield, she was working as a waitress at an inn and three Dartmouth guys were also working there. She became lifelong friends with all of them, one in particular, whom she fell in love with. The summer was idyllic: work not too hard, tips pretty good, nice people to work with and for, swimming every day, bonfire beer-and-necking parties, occasional movies, sailboating, some bar-hopping.. .a whole lot of fun and a summer to remember.

That fall she entered Skidmore, rooming in a large Victorian-era mansion converted to a college dorm. She made good friends there and studied some, but mostly Saratoga Springs was just a place to be between trips to Hanover or visits by her Dartmouth guy and his buddies. Hanover meant glorious fall football weekends, fun parties at Phi Delt, and Winter Carnival and Green Key as they were meant to be. She made as many friends at Dartmouth as he did including dates of fraternity brothers, many of whom eventually married their beaus.

By her sophomore year at Skidmore, she was engaged to her Dartmouth guy and she married him at the end of our junior year. They lived in one of the converted army barracks in Wigwam Circle for two memorable years: a kerosene stove and an icebox, paper-thin walls, laundry frozen on the clothesline, typing his term papers...and truly wonderful friends. She worked in the pathology lab at Mary Hitchcock Hospital while earning her Ph.T. ("Putting Hubby Through"). Their first daughter was born at Hitchcock just before his final year at Tuck.

Since Hanover, she's lived briefly in Cincinnati and Washington, D.C., and, for the past 38 years, in the same large house in a town outside of Boston, where she raised seven fine kids. A true New England WASP, and proud of it, she's even more proud that she raised kids who chose mates with backgrounds including Irish, Italian, Cuban, Jewish, Catholic, and Midwestern. Her kids and their families live in Massachusetts, Idaho, Colorado, Minnesota, and Ohio. Now she thoroughly enjoys the responsibility of protecting her nine grandchildren from their parents.

Dartmouth and Hanover mean as much to her as they do to her husband. She knows as many people at reunions and mini reunions as he does. She was courted there, parried there, married and worked there, bore a child there, made many fast friends there, and returns there as often as possible. She wouldn't want to be called "a Dartmouth lady." Too rah-rah. But, that's what she is.

A rouse for A Dartmouth Lady.

2 Central Green, Winchester, MA 01890

My "DartmouthLady' wascourted there,partied there,married andworked there,hore a child there,made many fastfriends there, andreturns there asoften as possible. JACK KENT '50