As you receive this, the last lazy days of August in Hanover will be ending and the class of 2019 will be getting ready for its first-year frenzy at our revered institution. When they graduate it will be 62 years since the great class of 1957 left for the wide wide world. Sixty-two years after 2019 it will be the year 2081. Think of all the changes we have seen since our graduation. What will the world be like for them?

Robert and Dorothy King have donated $21 million to the King Scholar Leadership Program, which attracts entrepreneurial students from developing countries for public service in their home countries. This gift more than doubles their endowment to more than $35 million. Since 2013 six students have matriculated in the program, from Jamaica, Burkino Faso, Kenya, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe, where they are working to build development projects that will fight poverty. During the next 10 years the Kings hope to increase the number of students to 50. In addition to their gifts to Dartmouth, the Kings have given more than $150 million to Stanford University to fund the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies. Thank you, Bob and Dottie, for helping to make this world a little better!

Go west, young man, and plan now to attend the mini-reunion in sunny Santa Barbara, California, next spring, April 12-14, 2016. Rooms have already been reserved. For more information or to sign up, contact Happy Griffiths at happyventures@comcast.net or Gordon Bjork at gbjorkca@yahoo.com.

And by the time you receive this it may be too late if you haven’t already made plans to attend Homecoming and our class meeting, October 9-11. But try anyway. We need your presence and company . Take a moment and tell me what you’ve been doing.

Death has claimed classmates John Strong Jr., Arthur Johnson, Richard Leavitt and Jules Rose. Our condolences reach out to their families and friends as they live on in our memories.

—Bruce Sloane, 124 Hull School Road, Sperryville, VA 22740; (540) 987-8859; bsloane@wildblue.net