Deadly Waters
notebook
CAMPUS
notes from, around the green
CONNECTICUT RIVER
The Ledyard Bridge has seen its share of misfortune.
The death of David Gallagher ’20 in August serves as a grim reminder: The bucolic Connecticut River can be deadly. Gallagher died hours after being found injured on the Hanover shore around 1 a.m. on Sunday, August 7. He was roughly 100 yards south of the Ledyard Bridge. The class of 2020 had celebrated its graduation on the Green the previous day. Friends of Gallagher’s said a “freak accident” led to the tragedy. It’s not known if Gallagher had been on the bridge or swimming nearby, and a police investigation has thus far offered no additional information.
The section of the river between Hanover and Norwich, Vermont, has now claimed 26 known victims since 1816, according to an informal database kept by former Hanover deputy fire chief Mike Hinsley. Accidental drownings account for most of the fatalities, and half involved College undergrads who died in canoeing or swimming incidents. Only one person has died after jumping off the Ledyard Bridge—in 1956—and it was considered a death by suicide.
Prior to this summer, the most recent death near the bridge occurred when 21-year-old Valentine Valkov, a Trinity College student in Hanover for the summer of 2005 to attend a Tuck course, drowned during his attempt to complete “The Ledyard Challenge.” Like most students who undertake the so-called challenge—a Dartmouth dare in which participants swim naked across the river to Norwich and then streak back to Hanover across the Ledyard Bridge—Valkov had been drinking alcohol.
Dartmouth Safety and Security regularly patrols the College’s property on the waterfront north of the bridge, says director Keiselim Montas. Lifeguards keep watch on the swimming docks throughout summer, and Montas says he educates new students about water safety during first-year orientation each fall. Anyone can swim from the docks—no swim test required.
Hinsley adds that rope swings on the riverbanks north and south of the bridge have been responsible for numerous accidents in recent years, but the Ledyard Bridge area has historically been and will likely continue to be the site of drownings. “We have a waterfront there, and the College has taken steps to make it as safe as it can be,” he says. “But a lot of it still comes down to individual responsibility.”
Svati Kirsten Narula ’13
ENDURANCE
24
Students who completed the DOC “Fifty” trek in August
FACULTY
39
Years history professor Jere Daniell ’55 taught at the College.
He died in May.
VEGGIES
4,000
Pounds of produce grown at the organic farm each year
“What’s rush going to be like this year?No one can really say, mainly because now there are girls on campus”
-DREW NEWMAN ’74
IN THE APRIL 1973 ISSUE OF DAM
A MOVING EXPERIENCE
Parrish Abramson ’26 of New Orleans rolled into Bissell Hall on move-in day, August 31. “It was kind of stressful, but the biggest thing was the ridiculous amount of stuff my mom got me that I didn’t need for my dorm,” says Abramson, a walk-on member of the football team. “We had to figure out what stuff to send home.”
