1959

Congratulations to Barry Smith, M.D., of Norwich, Vt., chairman of the obstetrics/gynecology department at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, who received an innovative award from the Foundation for Healthy Communities.

Dave Marr, who teaches Asian studies at the college level in Australia and who has had several books about Vietnam published, recently spent nine weeks visiting that country doing what he describes as some archives work and some socializing. Dave thinks highly of the College's alumni office since it was able to put a Duke undergraduate who was doing a senior the sis (ostensibly related to Dave's field of learning) in touch with him.

The North Adams (Mass.) Transcript reports that Richard M. Macht, Ph.D., made two presentations on the topic of "The Magic of Jewish Humor." Richard, who received his M.A. from Duke and his Ph.D. from Indiana University, taught Jewish mysticism, Israeli, Yiddish, and German literature at Dartmouth. He has taught and directed plays at the Waldorf School in Garden City, N.Y., and has taught courses in the great Yiddish play wrights, acting, and dramatic literature at Woodmere Academy in Woodmere, N.Y. He moved to the Berkshires and worked with Elder Services where he lectured, held discussions, and read stories with seniors. Presently he is teaching English as a second language and tutoring in the special education department of the Pittsfield and Lenox public schools.

When New York City was my stomping grounds in the sixties and again in the seventies, I encountered Mai Swenson on an occasion or two. He would be responsive when asked what he was doing, but I didn't realize quite how much he understated it until I read an undated article from the Valley News forwarded to us by the College earlier this year.

According to the article, Mai's family has been in the stone business as long as 200 years ago in southern Sweden, and his grandfather and great-uncle formed the John Swenson Granite Co. in New Hampshire in 1883. After Dartmouth and military service Mai earned his M.B.A. at Harvard in 1963. Now he is CEO of Granilac, USA Inc., a $3-million multinational holding company. One subsidiary which Mai founded in 1988 is helping to select, buy, and produce the stone for 18 projects in eight countries. He also consults on quarry development and stone factory design—another subsidiary quarries and fabricates granite.

Chairman Doug Wise is well under way with plans for our fabulous 40th Reunion in Hanover in June of 1999. I hope many of you have responded to Doug's June solicitation of your interest in getting involved in a variety of different ways to help make the reunion a success (there is a three-month lag time in publication in the Class Notes section of this magazine). I'd be willing to bet it's not too late to get involved now. Why not contact him (The Wise Associates, P.O. Box 286, Lyme, NH 03768-0286; (603) 795-2888; (603) 795- 2890, fax; ). ChrisCundy is reunion treasurer: (603) 526- 7836; fax (603) 526-7846; .

2209 Coffeewood Court, Silver Spring, MD 20906; (301) 924-4669 (h); (301) 827-4826 (w)

Kurt Wehbring '59 hikes Mt. St. Helens, p. 63