Class Project

The class of'50 continues its ongoing classtreedition with a new campus field guide.

ONE OUTDOORS MAN HAD AN idea. The other had connections.

Steve Flemer was a Dartmouth Outing Club member whose family ran one of the nation's biggest nurseries in New Jersey. Newc Eldredge, a member of the army's 10th Mountain Division, spent plenty of time skiing around trees. After World War II they became roommates as memabers of Dartmouth's class of 1950.

In the mid-1960s, as the stately fountain elmssurroundmg the College Green were falling victim to disease, Flemer, an architect who died in 1997, sketched an arboreal idea: create a campus tree progrim, a unique and living contribution to life Collegers sense of place. Selling the class was easy. Then Eldredge, the insurance executive, led the campaign to sell the plan to the College.

Since 1967 the class of 1950's reputation as the Tree Class has grown. Through the program the class has donated new and replacement trees that provide the campus with sufficient variety to qualify it as an arboretum of northern trees. As a group or individually, the class has given more than 170 trees to Dartmouth, roughly 10 percent of all the trees that define the campus.

As the class's tree program flourished, Eldredge pondered another idea: There should be a booklet and map to describe those trees that shape the campus image as much as Dartmouth Hall and Baker Library. Dartmouth parent Molly Hughes, who moved to Hanover in 1984, had a similar idea. She suggested to Eldredge that the class of 1950 publish such a book in conjunction with its 50th Reunion in June 2000. It was another easy sell.

Five years later, the result is Forever Green, an illustrated guide to 77 different species found on campus—from arborvitae to zelkova, with numerous species of birch, dogwood, elm, larch, maple, oak, pine and spruce, to name just a few, in between. The book also includes maps that outline a walking tour that passes every tree described in the book. Most can be sampled on a route that strays little more than 200 yards from the center of the Green.

Forever Green is available for $19.95 by writing Enfield Publishing, P.O. Box 699, Enfield, NH 03748.