Class Note 1962
The summer before my freshman year at Dartmouth I worked as a bank messenger in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of the older messengers, for whom the job had become a career, gave me frequent unsolicited advice. He spoke quickly with a bark and I often had to ask him to repeat what he had said. He would invariably respond, “I never repeat, kid. I never repeat.” It was the same line, time and again, and for me his words, rather like a mantra, came to define him. Years later, walking down a country road, I was thinking about the old messenger and his characteristic peremptory response and I suddenly “got it.” Call me a slow learner. His response was itself a repetition! He was making a joke and I had missed it completely. It was only through thinking about it once more, so many years later, that I finally caught on. “I never repeat, kid. I never repeat.”
And so with the conviction that repetition sooner or later makes an impression, Kent Hutchinson and I are repeating the following reminder to us all. This, please, from Hutch: “Our 50th reunion book effort is well under way. Sections will include a 50-year timeline, memorial tributes to deceased classmates and numerous messages. Currently the major focus on classmate input to the electronic biographical questionnaire (www.dartmouth.org/classes/62/questionnaire.htm) distributed by mail in early January has dragged out and we were only at the 50-percent mark at the requested mid-May date for submission. Constant reminders to submit are being sent via College-supported email address lists, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine and the 1962 newsletter. Essays and accompanying pictures are also requested. If you need help or another copy of the letter mailed in January please contact Hutch via email at preziii@hotmail.com. The book will be made available in early 2012, well before the reunion.” How great is that! Hutch and his crew, which are putting forth so much tireless effort, are willing to repeat—again and again and again—that we all have a place in the book. That indeed we are the book! So let’s get with the program while there’s still time. Better late than never. Better late than never.
More news worth repeating comes from Frank Kehl in a press release printed in Dartmouth Now. Daryl and Steve Roth and their family have raised the bar for reunion giving—indeed, for charitable giving, period. According to the announcement posted on April 12 by Dartmouth’s office of public affairs, the Roth family has made a “$15 million gift to endow two new distinguished professorships and a faculty fellowship.” Steve, the CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, says of the gift, “It is our hope that these professorships and this fellowship will allow the recruitment and retention of the very best scholars and teachers—those rare individuals who have the ability to inspire our students, to transform Dartmouth and to change the world.” Many kudos to the Roths. Such a generous and meaningful gift is an inspiration to us all.
—Jim Haines, 307 Sewickley Ridge Drive, Sewickley, PA 15143; (412) 741-9008; jbhaines@comcast.net
