When asked, “Was there a time in your Dartmouth experience when you realized perhaps you weren’t quite as smart or as good as you thought you were?” so many classmates responded that we’re spreading them across two issues! Tom Bassett recalled, “One of my first roommates was class valedictorian, president of National Honor Society, football quarterback, fluent in a foreign language, played the guitar, and was also a nice guy.” Christian Smith’s moment was meeting “my freshman year roommate Fred Schauer,” while for Jim Rooks and Mike Gfroerer it was at “one of those freshman week all-class meetings when one of the faculty asked how many of us had taken calculus in high school. About half of the freshmen raised their hands!” Theirs were not among them. John Hager’s was, but despite having taken calculus already, he “was not prepared for the pace, and by the end of my freshman year the plan to graduate from Thayer with a B.S. was in the rear-view mirror.” Nick Mason says, “The French language lab did me in: I realized then how bad my ‘ear’ for the language was.” Jon Dana remembers “that we took several ‘standardized’ tests during our first week or so of freshman year, including some predictive tests about how well we would do in school. Somehow the results were either leaked or released and I remember being shocked at how low I scored!” Doug Smith is clear: “Vector equations, winter term, sophomore year.” Ed Arnold said “it was after I met Bob Reich ’68 and later heard he was smarter than his professors,” while Bob Smith says it was “when everyone but me knew it was okay to divide by zero.” For Ed Gray it was “in Professor Slesnick’s (in)famous ‘Math 3’ calculus class. I fell behind on homework assignments but wasn’t worried. Chris Nevison was one of the few guys I knew in that class, so I went to his dorm room to ask what the assignment was. He was at his desk, and to my horror I saw that he was working on a page near the very end of our gigantic math book. In shock I asked if that was where we were, and he said ‘No, I’m just reviewing. I went through the book last summer, since I knew we would be using it, and I’m just double-checking that I got all the problems right.’ ” Dave McMahill says that after “a month I determined I was no longer the smartest guy in class and no longer ran the fastest mile. Spring of 1967 looked a long way off.” For more, go to www.1967.dartmouth.org.

It is with sadness that I report the passing of Tom Tindall on September 29, 2021. His obituary is on our website and will appear later at dartmouthalumnimagazine.com.

Mark your calendars: Our 55th reunion will be on September 23-24 in Hanover! Stay tuned and contact Bruce Pacht (brucepacht67@gmail.com) as soon as you can and tell him you’re coming!

—Larry Langford, P.O. Box 71, Buckland, MA 01339; 1967damnotes@gmail.com