Almost half a century ago most of us sat in Dartmouth Hall listening to Robert Frost read from the first edition of his last book, In the Clearing: “It’s right in there/Betwixt and between/The orchard bare/And the orchard green….” With shovel-ready hands clutching the podium, Frost sonorously recited a coming-of-spring poem called “Peril of Hope.” He made four spontaneous revisions as he went along, re-seeing the poem as he read. He made small changes, just a word here and there, attempting to realize more vividly, and reflect upon, the tenuous nature of seasonal change. “For there’s not a clime,” he concluded, “But at all that cost/Will seize that time/For a night of frost.” The poet may have been punning on his own last name. But he also anticipated our collective perilous hope so many years later—the hope, among other things, that we might all make it back to Hanover safe and sound for our 50th reunion in 2012.


As Al Huck has already telegraphed in the ’62 newsletter, Dick Brooks and Bill Pierce are working diligently, making preparations for our reunion next year on June 8-10, 2012. That’s right! It’s only a little more than a year from now. Bill Baschnagel has been establishing a ’62 bond with the graduating class of 2012—our surrogate brethren some 50 years younger—and reunion committees are cranking up to full tilt. You have probably recently received a letter from the 50th reunion book committee, headed by Carl Jaeger, Gordy Aydelott, Dick Bragaw and Kent Hutchinson, soliciting personal reflections and biographical input. Our own personal stories, combined with class artist Bob Aiken’s celebratory rendering of the ’62 Dartmouth experience and Ross Burkhardt’s eagerly anticipated DVD presentation of “the orchard green” (so to speak), will graphically validate our class slogan: “Dartmouth 1962: Green and Still Proud of It.” As for keeping the orchard green financially, John Clark and John Walters will lead the fundraising initiative for our gift to the class of 1962 writing and rhetoric program. So let’s all plan, and hope, however audaciously, to be there for our last big reunion, the greenest and the best.


In the meantime, life goes on and folks keep active. A wonderful note arrived from Barbara and Chuck Preuss, confirming the Huckster’s contention that “life is good.” Barbara writes: “We still continue to see Jan and Phil Meyer on a regular basis, as they live close by. Last year they rented their home in Los Altos, California, for a year and spent the summer and fall in Quechee, Vermont, the winter in a rented condo in San Francisco and the spring and early summer in Italy.” Barbara and Chuck visited the Meyers for two weeks in Italy, one week in a rented farm house and another in a hill-town palazzo, where Chuck, an avid cyclist, was able to watch the Giro d’Italia and Phil to secure a cameo appearance in La Boheme and “flirt with Musetta as she sang her famous aria to make Marcello jealous.” Life is good indeed!


—Jim Haines, 307 Sewickley Ridge Drive, Sewickley, PA 15143; (412) 741-9088; jbhaines@comcast.net