1960

Our class has been fortunate indeed to have held, in addition to reunions every five years and mini-reunions every fall in Hanover (the next will be the weekend of Octoberi7-19),a seriesofbirthday celebrations in such remarkable cities as Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. The most recent, June 12-15, was held in Boston, four days of activities skillfully arranged by classmates Gene Kohn and Dick Foley.

It's a matter of pride for us Californians that so many from the Golden State journeyed clear across the country, in this age of airline service deterioration, to Boston for our 70th collective birthday. One out of every 27 freshmen at Dartmouth in 1956 was from California—30 altogether. But one out of every 12 of the 108 attending the Boston reunion came from California.

Those attending from the Pacific Coast included Bob Caulfield, Hap Dunning, Foley, Haley Fromholz, Dick Gale, Bruce Hasenkamp, Howard Jelinek, Dick Levy and me. I should also mention two other Pacific Coasters who were there: Ed Henriquez, by virtue of living in Panama and Tom Van Winkle, who came the longest distance, from Honolulu.

The reunion featured a clambake on Thompson Island, a gala dinner at Symphony Hall, a performance of the Boston Pops and a welcome party at the top of the 60 State Street building. Forty of us attended a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. The main hotel was the Marriott Long Wharf on Boston Harbor.

We concluded our Boston sojourn in Faneuil Hall, "The Cradle of Liberty," with talks, humorous and otherwise, of presidential campaigning. After we had gone home I received an e-mail from Allan Cameron, who lives in Bethesda, Maryland, recalling his own contacts, as a staff member for Sen. Jerimiah Denton of Alabama, with Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee. The way Allan tells it, Baker almost choked off the career of Al Gore, who got more popular votes for president in 2000 than George W. Bush, by tryingvainly in 1984 to enlist Lamar Alexander, then Tennessee governor, to run for the seat Baker had occupied and Gore won. But Alexander declined to run and didn't make it to the Senate until 2002. Gore, of course, is now a Nobel Prize winner. Another distinguished wife of a class member, playwright and poet Lois Roisman, is gone. The wife for 27 years of Tony Roisman, she died at their farmhouse in Lyme, New Hampshire, June 2 at 70, of congestive heart failure. Roisman, who lived many years in Oklahoma City and Washington, D.C., was for five years executive director of the Jewish Fund for Justice. She wrote seven plays, including the comedy Nobody's Gilgul, selected in 1993 as the "best newplay" by the Source Festival. The play, about a Jewish lawyer and an angel from the shtetl, a poor Jewish community, was performed in community theaters nationally. Her poetry appeared in literary magazines. She was the mother of three children by her first marriage and stepmother to three of Tony's. She will be greatly missed.

[Editor's Note: As we go to press, we have learned that Ken died in his sleep June 30. An obituary will follow in the next issue.]