1952

Among the highlights of last June's 55 th reunion were three seminars on current affairs arranged by professor Bob Binswanger that he nostalgically labeled Great Issues Revisited Truth be told, the Great Issues course, an innovation of President Dickeys aimed at broadening our world view, was not particularly popular in 1952. Many of us resented being saddled as seniors with a required, attendance-compulsory journal-keeping, graded course, even if some of our Monday evenings in 105 Dartmouth were informative and entertaining. The overflowing attendance and enthusiastic response to Bins' "elective" mini-course plainly demonstrated that President Dickey's goal may have been achieved in spite of ourselves.

One of the speakers in 1952 was Crawford H. Greenewalt, chairman of the DuPont Cos., who delivered an encomium to the free enterprise system which, he posited, provided each '52er withthe opportunity, through dedication and hard work, to benefit society as a whole and in so doing achieve remunerative personal goals as well.

In the late 1960s I worked closely with Mr. Greenewalt on a legal matter and one day I casually mentioned that I had been in his audience at Dartmouth. He told me he remembered the occasion well, not for his talk, which he frankly acknowledged had been a rehash of his standard speech to business groups, but for the question-and-answer session the next morning. He had been asked by a black student (I didn't recall the incident or which of our few black classmates it might have been) whether the prior evenings message had application to him. "I answered in the affirmative, all the while knowing in my heart and mind that at that time in this country it really did not. I have always regretted that I lacked the courage to confront myself and that young man with the truth."

Mr. Greenewalt did not then mention it and it maybe pure coincidence, but later in the 1950s DuPont had been a leader by example in the desegregation of public accommodations in Delaware.

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