1944

A quote from Cervantes' DonQuixote: "Can we ever have too much of a good thing?" Answer: Not of a Dartmouth 55th Reunion, we can't. So if you haven't signed up yet, stop reading this minute and get in touch with (send in your green card to) Burt Bickford,3 The Courtyard, White River Jet., VT 05001, Tel: (802) 295-7941.

It's our last major reunion in this millennium, gentleman, and it's a pretty sure bet none of us will be around for the next one, a thousand years hence.

A belated report on a note we had from Ric Bradley earlier in the year: "We had one super event here. Chile's foremost concert pianist, Roberto Bravo, a former student of Claudio Arrau, spent a week

with us and played a thrilling concert at Colorado College. It was a real slice of heaven having him in the house, practicing several hours a day on our baby grand. He is surely the best pianist we have ever heard, and he plays Bach, Chopin, and Beethoven like God."

Also on the music front, WileyHitchcock was quoted in The New YorkTimes again last November, this time in an article about the American composer Roy Harris. Wiley is revising his classic Musicin the United States for a fourth edition, and he says he'll have to re-evaluate the public's opinion of Harris' music.

Gordie Ross and wife Carla had a busy summer in Hancock, N.H. Gordie had a number of his paintings in art shows, and along with Carla's flowers made from sea shells, fish bones, sea sponge, etc., the two of them took over the Peterborough Library walls.

Also on the family front, GeorgeRecke's grandson, Adam Mulliken, is a member of the class of 2002. George, the "Recker," died in 1993.

You could have fooled me when JohnMcAllister called from Arvada, Colo.., asking whether I could find New

Hampshire, Vermont, and Dartmouth souvenir thimbles as a present for his wife, who has a thimble collection. The Vermont and New Hampshire items didn't turn my head much, but Dartmouth thimbles? I wondered for a moment whether old John was talking with a lisp—we haven't had a Dartmouth symbol for years. But lo and behold, a Main Street novelty shop had a pewter thimble with a Dartmouth seal on it ($5.95), and John had a nifty anniversary present for wife Elinor.

Bob F. Miller sent me a USA Today clipping back in 1997 about the Zippo lighter company in Bradford, Penn., and the fact that it was still very much in business despite the tobacco imbroglio. Bob wonders whether our classmate, WalterG. Blaisdell, also from Bradford, was a member of the Zippo lighter family. Bob remembers a student coming into his room in September 1940 saying, "My father makes Zippo lighters—have one." I have the same recollection in the Sigma Chi house, during those broken semesters of 1942, of "Pete" Blaisdell '44 with a pocket fall of Zippos. He died in 1983.

One death: Ray Hensler died in November 1998. Our sympathy. That's it. Blessings.

P.O. Box 24, Lovejoy Hill, Cornish Flat, NH 03746

Leonard Rieser '44 remembered, p. 21