1950

As the sign says, our reunion is due in a couple of months. Are you planning to come to Hanover for the 55th? If yes, great! If not, why not? There's still time for you fence-sitters to sign up for a fun time in June. It'll be well worth the effort and you will be glad you made it.

Plans for the bash are well along and you've read what's up in sifty Joe's newsletter, several mailings and in this column. Reunion chairman Jack Harned, his wife, Jill, and his committee have worked hard to make this a gala affair. Good eats, a repeat great issues session with five of our special classmates, plenty of Ruggles (i.e., good music), glee clubs (the College's and our own '50s), a class meeting, a memorial service for those gone on and more. A key ingredient of this reunion will be much more "leisure time" to hike, golf and play tennis (if you're not one of us wobblers and limpers), and time to just get reacquainted. A highlight, to my body and mind, is that every scheduled activity will be clustered about the Green. That is, we'll be quartered in the refurbished Massachusetts Hall dorms, and events will be in or about Baker Library, Collis (the old Freshman Commons), the Inn, Hopkins Center, Dartmouth Hall and Rollins Chapel, all within easy walking distance from our domicile. Those of you who haven't been back to Hanover for some time have another reason to do so. See the changes. First, the campus/Green has changed very little. Except for the Hopkins Center and a facelift of the Hanover Inn, the campus looks almost exactly as it did in 1946 and 1950. Not so the peripheral areas. Main Street looks about the same, except the traffic resembles Boom Town's, but the side streets have all kinds of new things (including a multi-story parking garage!). Away from the Green are several new dorms, additions to Tuck and Thayer schools, many improvements to the athletic facilities and a huge addition to Baker Library. The hospital is no longer, having been replaced by a magnificent facility on the road to Lebanon. Wigwam Circle and Sachem Village have been replaced by parking lots and dorms, and so on. The place is very much as we remember it, but there are a lot of additions, mostly good ones. Besides nostalgia for "The Place," there are the guys whom you lived with for four years. Most of us have a few "lost buddies" we would like to see again and hear about the intervening years. This particular reunion has been designed with plenty of time and opportunity to mingle. It might be wise not to wait another five or 10 years to do so.

So this June is a great time to visit New England, see Hanover and Dartmouth, and renew over-50-year-old friendships. See you there?

2 Central Green, Winchester, MA01890; jekent2052@aol.com

REUNIONJune 13-152005