1943

This column I should caption The Scandalous and The Sublime. First a colorful report from Scott Mitchell reporting on a middle-of-the-night call (1:30 a.m.) castigating him ("a profane tirade" were his words) and threatening him with bodily harm. When the caller ran out of breath Scott tried to tell him he had a wrong number. The caller replied: "You're Scott Mitchell, aren't you?" Scott said yes and listened to more profanity and the clincher: "You better leave my daughter alone." Scott replied with his age, and before he could add "and no woman under 60 would even look at me twice," the guy hung up. Next day Scott thought of a dozen clever responses but the irate father has not called back so Scott has stroked his ego by telling his contemporaries "not to be jealous." Incidentally, the same Scott Mitchell carries a No. 2 tennis ranking among North Carolina senior singles players. The second report is about Warren Preece, who was honored this past year along with four other Norwalk, Connecticut, High School grads. Warren, who achieved the highest academic rating in the class of 1939, was voted Most Likely to Succeed, Most Versatile, Most Reliable, Most Efficient, Most Popular with the Faculty among other honors. Warren, who spent many years in the newspaper business, was hired in 1957 by then Senator William Benton to be secretary to the board of editors of the Encyclopedia Bntannica, which necessitated a move to Chicago, where he worked closely with the brilliant but controversial Robert Hutchins. Preece eventually became Britannica editor and was the key figure in the creation of the mammoth 15th edition in 1974. The edition represented the work of 4,000 contributing authors from more than 100 nations.

In a fall conversation with Howie Thomas, a fellow Cape Codder, Howie told me he and wife Jackie were planning to tough it out on the Cape this winter rather than flee to Arizona warmth. A gimpy knee kept Howie off the tennis courts last summer.Two classmate deaths to report: Lee Anderson, October 31, Fred Stockwell, December 2; both cancer victims. Our condolences to the families. Stay well!

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