1981

I apologize for the indulgence, but I'm going to devote thus column to someone who was not in our class. To someone who didn't even go to Dartmouth. But he did love the place. I'm writing about my dad. He died today at the age of 70. My father went to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His father was a Yale man. So Dartmouth didn't mean beans to him. He had no real emotional connection to the school beyond the rather sizeable checks he sent there for four years. Of course, that's not true. My father was deeply connected to Dartmouth. His only son went there. I can still remember overhearing him at Christmas some 20 years ago. "My son goes to Dartmouth; he loves it." He took so much pride in that fact that it was almost embarrassing. Almost.

But it wasn't simply a source of vanity for him. He followed Dartmouth. Seemed to care about its' fortunes. He knew how the football team was doing; he knew what President Kemeny was up to; he even tracked the weather. And every time Dartmouth was mentioned in the newspaper, he sent the clippings. Long after I stopped caring, long after I stopped reading, he'd still send those damn clippings. If Dartmouth was mentioned, it must be news. God bless him.

On those occasions when he came to Hanover, you could see that he, too, had fallen in love. It was in his eyes. In the constant shuttering of his camera. Here was a place where my dad would actually hand over the camera to someone else. "Take a picture of me here," he would say. "Take a picture of me and Stephen." John Godchaux knew what a special place it was that he had sent his son.

My father loved Dartmouth because my father loved me.

1047 Lincoln Blvd., Apt. 10, Santa Monica, CA 90403; ; , 4807 Dover Court, Bethesda, MD 20816;