For the past 30 years five 1956 classmates and wives have been getting together each summer with the house venue rotating and food and drinks provided by the hosting pair. The group includes Joel and Marsha Ash, Alan and Diane Friedman, Harold and Joan Gordon, Mike and Margie Grunebaum and Elliott and Alice Weinstein. This year’s get-together took place on June 21 at the Grunebaums’ home in Pound Ridge, New York, and the hosts put out a delicious spread, as usual. For the meeting back in 2001 I presented a poetic limerick created for the occasion titled “Jewish and Green” and I close this column with the last stanza of this four-stanza poem. 


I now interrupt to bring you the Barbary Coast Jazz Band playing in honor of three classmates who have passed. David Livingston Kerr passed away in December 2013. Fenwick Charles Riley Jr. and Roger Arno Schumacher passed in April. Samson Occom dressed in green buckskins leads the funeral procession up Main Street and around the Green. All surviving classmates bow their heads in solemn tribute and remembrance.


For those unaware, Bill Loyer’s beloved wife, Carol, passed away back in November 2013. This summer there was a Carol Ludwig Loyer Memorial Art Show and Sale in memory of Carol and her life in Wyoming. Bill has had a difficult year, what with breaking his hip several months after Carol passed. Bill is finally healthy again and in good spirits, considering. I am sure that he would appreciate hearing from any and all Dartmouth friends.


“Jewish and Green”


“Five couples with background to share,


Star of David and green underwear;


Special minion with wives,


Dartmouth changed all our lives,


Bunch of Jews with true green savoir-faire.”


—Joel D. Ash, P.O. Box 1733, Grantham, NH 03753; (603) 863-3360; joel@poeticlimericks.com