Class Notes December 2006

Certainly one of the most remarkable efforts in our class to remember our time at Dartmouth has been undertaken by our classmate PHILIP CLARK, whose novel based on our senior year, 1959-60, "The Ivy Gauntlet," was published last year and is available through the publisher, Authorhouse.com, or from Phil himself, now living at 186 Topeg Drive, Severna Park, Md.. 21146-2027.

 

Phil, a retired administrator at the University of Maryland, was five years in the writing  and I was quite taken by the book, which I read while traveling back to our mini-reunion in October. I could particularly empathize with what happened to the protagonist, John Brewster, when he traveled to Newport, R.I. over Thanksgiving to meet his girl friend's upper crust family, I think the dialogue here truly comes alive, and this becomes a very good story.

 

Be forewarned, however. This book focuses on the fraternity life at Dartmouth and dating with Colby Junior College girls. Although Colby is renamed Abbey, Dartmouth activities and landmarks are mentioned very specifically. There's not much about academics.

 

Phil, a member of Phi Gamma Delta at Dartmouth, has a couple of other books in various stages. He self-published this, says he had 500 copies printed and has sold about 200. Among classmates, he says who have read the book are BRUCE HASENKAMP, and GREG JOHNSON.

 

At our class meeting during the mini-reunion, by the way, we voted unanimously to hold our reunions on the same weekend as the regular college homecoming, which in 2007 will be the Oct. 20 weekend, and we heard from our scholarship chairman, BOB KENERSON  on our class scholars. Bob appealed for donations to help a former scholar, Matthew Ippolito, through health difficulties.

 

I try in these classnotes to include 1960s who haven't appeared in them before, and this time called PAUL SITZ in Elgin, Ill., and STEVE SINGER in New York City.

 

Paul, who taught history and economics in a career which took him to Tanzania for three years and to private and public high schools near his home, says he is surprised that he ended up living just a few miles from his boyhood home in Barrington, Ill. He is married and has three children, the youngest now a fourth-year student at the University of Chicago. .

 

Steve, who went to Harvard Law School, became a lieutenant commander in the Navy and then practiced law before retiring, now lives a quiet life and has had heart surgery twice. He is thinking of doing some traveling and he has upholstered quite a bit of his furniture. Fortunately, he said, he purchased his apartment back in the 1980s and avoided some of the outlandish New York housing prices of today. Steve has never married and lives alone on Manhattan's East Side..

 

Two of our former class presidents and their wives, JIM ADLER and GENE KOHN, are, as this is written, winding up a tour of China that also took them to Tibet. They attended one of our "Left coaster" lunches while passing through San Francisco. Both looked spry and ready for such an arduous trip.

 

--KEN REICH, 5522 Nagle Ave.,Van Nuys, CA 91401; (818) 994-9231; kennethireich@yahoo.com