1948

Remember Floyd, the infamous hurricane of September. It fouled plans of at least two of your obedient servants to be at Leadership Weekend in Hanover and a chance to be in the picture with John Hatheway, Joe Smith,John Van Raalte, and Jim Schaefer receiving the well-deserved 1998-99 Class of the Year Award. Your correspondent got as far as Chicago but would have had to paddle east of there to make it.

Dick Dahl was stock in Princeton bailing out his office. Undeterred, Jim Schaefer swam that big Caddie through the torrents to Hanover.

We checked with Dick Repko, a resident of Wilmington, N.C., where the storm hit the coast. He is fortunately on high ground several miles from water so was not a victim of the storm surge from the sea. The pine trees were trimmed and shed of their cones but it wasn't near as bad as other storms. Only a few were uprooted from soggy ground. The area has had five hurricanes in three years. Only one in 15 years prior to that. Dick and Casey still travel a lot—soon to Turkey and back to Bangkok next spring. He stays fit on the golf course.

Sam Katz, on higher ground in the Research Triangle, reported lots of rain and power outage for 16 hours but little more.

Reports from the Hanover September meeting indicate that the College is seeking some PR help, having admitted that its handling of the student life initiative had been less than exemplary. We are all aware that the challenges there are not all that different from other campuses, with common economic, social, and administrative pressures which abound. A major bone of contention shared by undergrads and alumni is the value of fraternities and sororities on campus. This calls for a lot more debate before they are summarily dispatched as an evil, elitist cancer on healthy campus life. Many spoke of the value to themselves of their Greek experience while on campus. Do we need more of them, not less? Tune in later.

Our class was the oldest for several years to take advantage of the class web page at www.dartmouth.edu/alumni , and PeteFoster still labors to keep it current and interesting. Among its features are class email addresses, which can come in handy if trying to keep up or renew old acquaintances. We suspect that there are a whole lot more of you (particularly the law, medical, and education types) who have hid your address under the proverbial bushel. We urge you to come out of the closet and join us in this 2000-style of communication. Send your address to me and I'll be happy to relay it to Pete. As we age and become more infirm, here's a great way to stay in touch when world travel is no longer an option.

Hope you all have a splendid holiday season and don't have to travel too far to be with family and friends. We look forward to the new millennium with hope and prayers for peace. GO GREEN!

6442 Cardeno Drive,La Jolla, CA 92037-6929; (619) 459-5133; bobherrick@aol.com