1956

Homecoming brought back at least 27 of our classmates, who watched in frustration as the game officials robbed our team of its chance to upend Harvard in the closing seconds. Glen French led our Saturday morning class meeting through an agenda pointing to a great 50th in June of 2.006. Russ Cooper-Mead, Clem Malin, Len Clark and Elliott Weinstein have worked to craft a great keepsake. You'll be getting yours in December 2005. David Stackpole and Line Spaulding rehearsed the plans for our 50th with the goal of 330 of us returning. That will be a record! In anticipation we've begun a relationship with the class of 2.006, with whom we'll be marching. Six of them were able to join the class and spouses for dinner after the game. During the next year and a half we hope to generate a variety of occasions when 56ers and '06ers can share the Dartmouth experience.

As always the news of the death of classmates confronts us with painful losses and the reality of our own mortality. Since the last issue ofDAM I've been alerted to the deaths of George Brophy, Dick Barnett, Jack Robinson and Perry Gresh. Obituaries will appear in this or the next issue of DAM.

In late August close to two dozen Phi Delts and their spouses rode into the /J/ Ranch of Bill and Joanne Kieger near Cranby, Colorado. Harry Nutting reports that, "Judges are hopelessly deadlocked in determining the winners" of the calf roping and bull-riding. It was such a good time that a pre-soth is planned for a Landgrove, Vermont, bluegrass festival and a possible Norwegian ford sightseeing cruise in 2005.

Harry also reported his own skirmish with Hurricane Frances. He and Crile Doscher sought successfully to protect their cruising sailboat and DeFevre 49-foot crawler, but there was lots of damage all around them.

John Van de Kamp has now been sworn in as the California State Bar Associations Both president! His remarkable career following Stanford's Law School includes military service, a six-year stint in the U.S. attorneys office in Los Angeles, appointment as a U.S.attorney by President Johnson in 1966, running the executive office for U.S. attorneys under Attorney General Ramsay Clark, a run for a congressional seat that ended in an unsuccessful runoff to Barry Gold water Jr., a return call to D.C. as special assistant to the President's Commission on Campus Unrest, the creation in California of our first federal public defender office, appointment and then election as Los Angeles' district attorney (a role he played for seven years) and, more recently, eight years as the states attorney general. It's a career of remarkable public service!

Tony Newey has authored for the Unitarian Universalist Church a study/action issue on global warming. He hopes it will be claimed in 2006 as the UU "Statement of Conscience" for that year and invites you to find it online at www.uua.org/csw/saiy1.htm

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