1962

It has been fun to be your class secretary these past two and one half years. It is especially gratifying to write a 1962 Class Notes column for the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine at the end of a millennium. As this issue of the magazine arrives at our homes, I trust all of us have crammed four digits into the two-digit field for the year in our computers and Y2K problems are a distant memory.

Forty-one years ago, in September of 1958, we began to assemble in Hanover to form a Dartmouth class. Many had met already for the Freshman Trip. We gathered at Robinson Hall to group up and choose our hike in the Whites or other peaks. We were entertained by Ross McKenney (a.k.a. Jean Baptist) at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge and we were pleased that the president of the College, John Sloan Dickey, trekked north to speak to us. We were taught the melody and the unauthorized words to "Dartmouth's In Town Again" by DOC upperclassmen.

Later in the week most of us gathered at Webster Hall and heard Freshman Dean Al Dickerson and others describe Dartmouth fellowship and the benefits of a liberal arts education. Later the president met with each of us in his Baker Library office, personally signed our matriculation paper and shook our hand. There was a visit to the College infirmary, Dick's House, named after Dick Hall '27, for physical examinations slightly portentous of the military ones we would take four or so years later. There was testing of all sorts at Alumni Gymnasium and then convocation. President Dickey's address at times was eloquent: "In our search for a truth which is personal, it is our destiny to be a centrifugally oriented group of individuals. The love of truth and beauty and the willingness to search endlessly for better answers in man's relationship to both man and his Maker are the overarching common cause that first brought teacher and student together here; and now daily recreate the union of our community of learning."

In June of 1962 we gathered at the BEMA, where Dean Thad Seymour, Sachem orator, Tom Green and others reminisced and counseled. On a cloudy Sunday morning we gathered on Baker lawn and heard valedictorian Jim Hale, commencement speaker Arthur H. Dean and honorary degree recipient astronaut Alan Shepherd for more counsel. And then the centrifugal forces that President Dickey described took hold. Our lives and careers spun away in time and space from our community in Hanover, but, thankfully, we keep in touch.

In 1966 Bill Pierce was class president as we gathered for the Fifth Reunion. At the 10th it was John Clark, and the 15th, JohnWalters. At the 20th, Josh Rich was class president, the 25th, Gene Gasbarro, the 30th, Tom Komarek, and now CharlieGiersch.

As we plunge headlong into a new era it is a good time to "re-create the union of our community of learning." May the gods of peace and reason sustain us until our 40th!

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