Class of 1976

Hello, classmates. In case you didn’t receive the email, or it snagged in your spam, class-wide thanks to Nic Cols and Fern Bennett Phillips for taking on the chairs of our 50th reunion, June 12-14, 2026. They will need a lot of support and volunteerism from classmates. Let them know at dartmouthreunionteam@gmail.com if you can help. They noted, and a great point, “It is never too late to go to a first reunion. If you have missed previous reunions, this is the one to make.”

Our class’s most distinguished journalist, David Shribman,wrote a review in his former newspaper, The Boston Globe, of John Feinstein’s The Ancient Eight, about Ivy League football. Shribman wrote: “In the old days, Penn played Cornell at Thanksgiving with as many as 80,000 people attending one of the great gridiron rivalries of the age. In the nostalgia-tinged years, Brown fielded an ‘Iron Man’ team whose players were on the field, without substitution, for all 60 minutes of their game against Yale. In years within living memory, Dartmouth’s 11 played all its games against Princeton, Harvard, and Yale on the road, the better to accommodate the huge crowds of partisans its green-clad warriors attracted. Those glory days are long gone. I was at Dartmouth’s home opener this autumn and sat amid 3,573 fans—a far cry from the 60,820 I joined to see Dartmouth defeat Yale in 1970. This September’s game was against Fordham, its own glory days with the fabled ‘Seven Blocks of Granite’ (the linemen who included Vince Lombardi) nearly a century in the past.” We can enjoy our memories and the teams from 1972-76. The book, Shribman writes, focuses on the 2023 season, the tragedy and widespread impact of Coach Buddy Teevens’ bicycle accident.

Speaking of writers, Henry Hart,an endowed English professor at William & Mary, just published Seamus Heaney’s Gifts, about the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet. The book “offers the first comprehensive examination of Heaney’s preoccupation with gifts and gift exchange. Drawing on extensive research in Heaney’s papers, as well as three decades of correspondence with the poet, Hart presents a richly detailed study of Heaney’s life and work that foregrounds the Irishman’s commitment to the vocation of poetry as a public art to be shared with audiences and readers around the world.” You may have seen notice of the passing November 15 in Hanover of former dean of the College Ralph Manuel ’58. You can google his obituary. As one classmate remarked, he kept a lot of us out of serious trouble. He was our dean of freshmen, and your class officers are looking into joining the College and perhaps other classes in an honor for his many contributions to Dartmouth and to many of us.

Ciao for now. Please send news of yourself and classmates to steve@stevebellcommunications.com and update those email addresses in the class listings.

—Steve Bell, 15 Harbour Pointe, Buffalo, NY 14202; steve@stevebellcommunications.com