Getting A Head

A MOOSE HEAD, YES. BUT WHAT Visitors to the Ravine Lodge on Mt. Moosilauke didn't expect to see this past summer was a massive walrus head, grinning down through 20-inch tusks.

So imagine the surprise when a whole menagerie of heads—21 in all, including a wildebeest, springbok and spotted jaguar, plus a couple of full animals, antlers, skins and pelts—turned up on campus in mid-July, the gift of an alum who had them wrapped in blankets and delivered by truck.

"Its surprising any time you walk into Robinson Hall and there's a black rhinoceros head in the basement," says professor Andy Friedland, chair of the environmental studies program and a member of the team that catalogued the collection. "But some of the pieces are spectacular."

Just how spectacular may be a matter of perspective, compared with the story of the heads' donor, William Koester '42, whose larger-than-life post-college adventures suggest Allan Quatermain by way of 007.

After he narrowly escaped death when a Japanese kamikaze plane dive-bombed his ship during World War II, Koester turned to acting, family members say. Soon he became known as much for his Broadway roles as his ever-present tuxedo and sports cars, in addition to the gold-tipped cigarette holder that always dangled from his mouth.

When he wasn't partying with Robert Mitchum, the peripatetic playboy discovered big game hunting, which took him from the Arctic Circle to the Serengeti, from dust-ups with Mexican banditos to run-ins with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who weren't exactly thrilled Koester was bagging some endangered species.

Since suffering a stroke five years ago, Koester has lived in an assisted-living facility in Baltimore, a lion skin at his side. His hunting heyday is long past.

"He regrets it as one of the less-proud periods of his life because he was killing for sport instead of for food," says Koester's nephew-in-law, Roger Hancock, who is his main link with the outside world. "But he did manage to experience this incredible, historic life."

The Colleges discomfort notwithstanding, Dartmouth has decided the heads' educational value outweighs any appearances of impropriety. The only question is where on campus they will hang. "As long as they're not used to decorate a Chili's or TGI Friday's," Hancock says. So far, the outdoor programs office (the gift's official recipient) is eyeing wall space in its own digs in Robinson Hall, as well as at the DOC House on Occom Pond, the Montshire Museum in Norwich or, perhaps, back at Moosilauke.

"You would never go out today and bring back specimens like these," says outdoor programs director Andrew Harvard '71. "But here they are, so let's find a beneficial use for them."

QUOTE/UNQUOTE "Financially, this deal had to be worth giving up senior yearbecause getting that degree in the back pocket is almost as financially sound." HOCKEY FORWARD HUGH JESSIMAN '06, QUOTED IN THE DARTMOUTH AFTER SIGNING WITH THE NEW YORK RANGERS