1949

Lets get the bad news out of the way promptly. Berf Oakley died in October down in Scottsdale, Arizona. He had gone down there after graduating from Tuck School and later became a professor of finance at Grand Canyon University. And Charlie Eaton died recently in Boston, where he had worked for some time in the insurance business, at one time owning his own agency in Boston. Both of these classmates were members of Chi Phi.

Old friend Jack Carey is currently recovering from a stroke up in New York State. Jack, you will remember, was that big tall guy in the last row of the Glee Club—and also the big tall guy in the first row of the basement bar in the Phi Delt house, singing lustily. Deke Jackson recently emailed me that Rocket Reed had been under the weather, but has now recovered and was conversing with Slade Gorton over his anger at some of the remarks made by Slade's successor as senator from Washington. I have read about her, too, and I would think the voters up there in the Northwest are having a lot of second thoughts. On the subject of Deke Jackson, I received a nice picture of him with some other Dartmouth types at the Savute Elephant Camp in Botswanna. Careful study of the picture revealed that the elephants are those in the background. Went to a cocktail party here in our community, Bonita Bay, and chatted with a man who turned out to be the necrologist of the class of '64, Bob Patterson. This, by my count, means that six Dartmouth grads live here. Hate to think that we might get a reputation such as the one at Harbour Ridge on the east coast of Florida, where Bud Hughes is the don of the Green Mafia. My spies over there tell me that Bud has developed a very strong interest in tennis. For those of you who know the Eastman community near Hanover, I must report a tragedy that occurred a couple of days after the new year. Shortly after clearing considerable snow off the platform tennis facility, some kind of faulty propane connection used to dry the surface blew up, killing one man and seriously injuring two others.The court is just around the corner from Ray Grinold's home. The October 1945 issue of this magazine had a nice picture of a freshman English class featuring Marv Dunning, Ralph Sleeper, Ralph Burgard, John Hodgens, Lou Mulkern, Jack Seiverling, Dave Raynolds, Norm Crisp and Dick Mallory. Ah, the intellectual power fairly radiates from the page. That issue also tells us that you could have purchased 100 acres plus a colonial farmhouse in Lyme for $20,000. Somehow my 75 bucks a month under the G.I. Bill made that price pretty daunting. In fact, the ad for a smoking pipe at $5 looks pretty expensive, too. Of course, only the aforementioned English types with tweed coats and leather elbow patches smoked pipes.

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