1952

Through the years a number of our classmates have been asked by the College administration to perform various important tasks. Our classmates do them, don't get any publicity or applause and seem to have a unanimously positive view of their service.

Bob Brace, for example, had already been president of the Alumni Council and chair of the Alumni Fund when, in 1980, with John Kemeny's retirement pending, Bob was asked to be a member of the very select presidential search committee.

Bob recalls his service as including a lot of travel and hard work. The committee interviewed more than 400 suggested candidates. The sense of the committee was that the Dartmouth constituency wanted a somewhat conservative president who was a Dartmouth graduate.

In the end the committees selection was businessman David McLaughlin '54. Opinions may be mixed about the McLaughlin presidency, but Bob feels that "we did a pretty good job" and thinks of it as "the most intriguing Dartmouth job I've ever been part of."

In 1980 the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences opened on the north end of the campus. It housed various allied departments such as government, sociology, history, econommics, etc.

Eight years after opening, the center had a successful program but was seen to lack an academic root. Pete McSpadden was named chairman of Rockefeller's board of visitors in 1988. His board, with Jim Wrights help,designed a program that gave the center the desired academic focus and promoted interdisciplinary teaching among the social sciences. Pete looks back on this task as being "the most interesting and important thing I have ever done."

Almost from the day we graduated Steve Mandel has been working on Dartmouth fundraising. Since 1960 he's led all the capital giving campaigns in his home state of Connecticut. After years as a class agent, from 1992 Steve was our own class' fund chair until 1997, when he became the overall Alumni Fund chairman. In just three years he increased the take by 50 percent!

Steve continues to head up a bunch of leadership giving jobs and on the side he serves on the College trustee nominating committee. We don't know just how much real fun these difficult and demanding jobs are, but Steve keeps doing them—superbly—for which we are all grateful.

At our 50th Rem Kinne chaired the presentations on the Hood Museum and the Hopkins Center. We asked him to refresh our memory about how he got involved. Rem told us that the two institutions have a joint board of overseers. Rem served two overseer terms as an appointee of President Freedman.

The board recommends policy, develops independent funding and generally gives advice to the heads of these entities.

Obviously, neither the Hood nor the Hop existed in our undergraduate days. Rem feels that they have been enormous additions to Dartmouth and he regards his overseer service as being "more than just interesting—a wonderful experience."

Open on www.dartmouth.org/classes/1952.

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