President's Letter Fall 2001

Dear Members of ‘60 and Special Others,

Having completed another enjoyable Homecoming, its timely to review with you things that came up at our Class Meeting on Oct 21and where we are on our goals and programs, to solicit your participation and thoughts.

First and foremost, an exciting change for 2002 to our annual Fall gathering in Hanover. When it was announced at our Class Meeting that the college had moved Homecoming back to Nov. 2 next year, there was a unanimous cry to have our Class mini-reunion earlier, when the weather would still be good and the leaves at their best. We’ve settled on the Columbus Day weekend, October 11, 12, 13 & 14. The Classes of ‘59 and ‘61 are switching also, so we’re working on some joint activities for Friday (likely a seminar built around an exceptional exhibition on Orozco then at the Hood Museum) and Sunday (likely a brunch at the new ski lodge with some hiking options to build up or work off appetites). Saturday will be just for our Class, with our morning meeting, tailgating, game (Yale) or more vigorous adventures and our usual Class Dinner in the evening. More specifics after our mini-reunion Chair Roger Hanlon moves gracefully into retirement at year end. In the meantime, mark your calendars and, as its a busy weekend, let me know by January if you’ll need a room - if there’s enough interest, we may reserve some condos.

Our goals, which have served us well for over a decade, remain:

(1) to further strengthen involvement and participation in Class activities; and

(2) to further strengthen our Class support of Dartmouth.

Since everything we are presently doing fits well within them and pretty much anything we might contemplate would as well, unless there are different ideas or thoughts they will stand.

In implementing the first goal, we have a number of programs. Foremost is our bidecile Birthday Celebration, which is being copied now by any number of other classes. Our approach has been to move the location around to encourage participation from classmates in the sponsoring region, who might miss the regular Hanover gatherings because of distance. We have also focused on larger cities to provide a diversity of activities and accommodations plus better travel opportunities, all designed to fit a range of budgets and interests to bring together the greatest number of classmates and partners.

The success of our previous parties in New York, Washington and San Francisco led Alan Danson’s Committee to Chicago for our 65th in 2003. Barry&Mary Ann MacLean, Walt&Karen Freedman and Mike&Leslie Notaro are heading up the local planning and are begining to assemble a team (volunteers?). The first sign-up mailing will go out next Fall. Thanks to all for the work so far and for all the efforts to come! It will be a great event!

At the same time we are interested in the possibility of smaller events and mini-reunions in those locations where we have classmates willing to act as local sponsors and hosts. Suggestions most welcome, if accompanied by the offer to organize and host A hot topic at our Reunion was using the web to promote class communications, and we became the first class to add a webmaster as a class officer. Walter Daniels has put together a fine website, including a chat/forum capability that is easy to use. The only problem is that we aren’t getting much traffic - the only contributors have been Gene Kohn, Alan Danson, Walter, Denny’s great newsletters, Ken’s super columns and myself. Take a look at the site and help with ideas on how to make it more useful - you can get to it via the Dartmouth home page, or directly at www.alum.dartmouth.org/classes/60/.

Moving to our second goal, support of Dartmouth, the Alumni Fund is our primary support numerically. Our $370M gift in the campaign just ended put us in the top tier of non-reunion classes and our 64% participation was way above the college average. But our tireless Head Agent Ken Johansen is not about to let us rest on our laurels. You’ll be hearing from one of Ken’s agents or a student - be generous!

Our class finances and projects are solid. You’ve recently received Jay Emery’s annual report (and dues notice). As a result of loyal dues payers (please be one of them) plus good reunion attendance and cost management, our class assets are now around $65M.

Some generous scholarship gifts brought us to within about $1000 of a fourth scholar and we made up this amount from class assets. We will now have a scholar in each class, in perpetuity. One of our scholars, Matt Ippolito ‘02, joined our Homecoming Class Meeting and told us of his studies and travels in China, which the Class helped support. Bob will be updating us on all our scholars in one of Denny’s next newsletters. While we will continue to work toward a fifth scholar, as this will take some time we are also looking into the possibility of providing annual support for some Presidential Scholars’ research, Art Interns’ projects and Athletes’ extra expenses. We’d invite them to also share their experiences with the Class. If anyone would like to contribute to this effort, please let Jay or me know.

Our Dorm Art purchases are announced at the Studio Art Department’s Senior Majors Exhibit each May in the Jaffe-Friede & Strauss Galleries in Hopkins Center, which has become the most heavily attended annual event in those galleries. We could use some help in the fundraising area; this year our voluntary gifts were up but still fell short of our $4000 funding commitment by $620, covered by our class assets. Volunteers?

Tony Roisman is developing information on how we could assist with an exciting new program at Dartmouth initiated last summer. As President Wright wrote recently “I was particularly inspired by the Summer Enrichment at Dartmouth Program (SEAD) .... which brought ninth-graders from Philadelphia, Boston and New Hampshire to campus for two weeks for an academic program that involved local high school teachers and Dartmouth ‘03s as mentors....The program exemplifies the spirit of collaboration and service central to the Dartmouth experience.” The kids selected are talented but underprivileged, kids who teachers believe have promise but have yet to become motivated to want to get the most out of school. The program is geared to giving them a taste of what a good education can mean to them in the future and thus inspire them to do their best in high school. In addition to funding needs, the program offers the opportunity for ongoing mentoring in the target cities and in Hanover during the summer. For more info read your October issue of Dartmouth Life or go to www.dartmouth.edu/~sead/summer2001/. Contact Tony if you’d like to help.

That’s it for now. I’d appreciate your feedback on how we’re doing. You can email me at rickroesch@aol.com - or snailmail at P.O.Box 60, Etna, NH 03750.

Happy Holidays!