Looking back at our class’s formative 1945 year, we were 389 freshmen: 49 entered in March, 221 in July and 119 in November. The average age of the first two groups was 17 years and 9 months. Twenty-four of us were only 16 when we matriculated.


The payment for tuition and board in March 1945 was $377; room was $95, so the four-month term came to $472. The full freshman year cost less than $1,000, which is about 2 percent of today’s bill. Of course the College had only two deans on the payroll as I recall: Bob Strong for the freshmen and Pudge Neidlinger for the rest of the College.


Today almost all our classmates are retired and many are struggling with various ailments and disabilities. In contrast Dr. Carl Granger is working full time as executive director of a center for rehabilitative medicine at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Carl’s specialty for many years has been the development of a quantitative approach for documenting and assessing in a uniform way the severity of patient disability and the results of medical rehabilitation for strokes and other physical and neurological diseases. He was recently singled out as the top-cited author in his field. Carl’s Uniform Data System for Medical Rehabilitation has nationwide subscribers, so check him out at UDSMR.org if you want to know more.


Speaking of strokes, Bob Alden is making a good recovery. He is singing with a local group in Greenwich, Connecticut, called the Melody Men, driving again, and even planning a visit with Persis to see his granddaughter in Prague.


Hank Gutman, another of the 49 ’49s, was a lacrosse player from Baltimore. He still lives there, plays golf regularly and celebrated 60 years of marriage. Hank spent most of his career in healthcare with a hospital affiliated with Johns Hopkins.


I am a snowbird, so contact me in Sarasota for the next six months.


—John Adler, 1623 Pelican Cove Road, BA 123, Sarasota, FL 34231; (203) 622-9069; (941) 966-2943 (fax)