Class Note 1948
John “Jake” Turner came to Dartmouth in 1943 and enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in December of that year. He was planning to be a pilot, but flunked his eye exam and completed his training as a B-29 radar operator as the war ended. He returned to Dartmouth in 1945, received his B.A. in 1949, graduated from the Dartmouth Medical School in 1950 and completed his M.D. at Harvard Medical School. He met Carolyn at Children’s Hospital at 2 one morning when she asked him to put an IV in a baby, which he had never done before and was more difficult than he thought. However, they prospered and were married in Boston in 1952 on the day of his Harvard graduation ceremony. They have eight children, 18 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Jake did a postgraduate year at Harvard and then spent the bulk of his career at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, as a thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon. He completed his career at the Cleveland (Ohio) Clinic doing specialized surgery, and is still active teaching surgical residents at the Youngstown (Ohio) Hospital.
Tom Huffman matriculated atDartmouth in the summer of 1944 and in February of 1945 entered the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York. He served on a couple of ships and returned to Hanover in the fall of 1946. He and Jake were in the same accelerated program, graduating from Dartmouth in 1949 and the Medical School in 1950. Tom completed his M.D. at the University of Rochester (New York) in 1952, and then was drafted by the Navy during the Korean War, where he served mostly at sea from 1954 to 1956. He returned to his internist work in Cleveland area hospitals and married Elizabeth in 1957. In 1972 they made a life-changing move to Colorado, where they and their four boys still live. Tom was medical director for Colorado and Wyoming for the Bell System until his retirement in 1989. He and Elizabeth had hoped to attend our 65th but Tom’s balance problems, resulting from an illness, make this problematic.
—Dave Kurr, 4281 Indian Field Road, Clinton, NY 13323; (315) 853-3582; djkurr@verizon.net
