Class Note 1972
Issue
November-December 2022
Dear ’72s, it’s a beautiful summer day in Vermont as I write this column. I had lunch with John Burke at the Woodstock (Vermont) Inn. We met at Boys State in 1967 and were roommates all four years. John is a retired attorney and his son, Sean, is a rising litigation star at Duane Morris.
Give a rouse for our new class president, Joe Davis, whose company drilled 22 water wells and three oil wells in Namibia, providing water for about 600 people who otherwise had to walk about 3 miles one way to fill five-gallon buckets. The engineering for drilling oil wells came in handy. Water and energy are both essential for a society. ’Round the girdled earth they roam, leaving a positive mark.
I received a long note from Steve Tozer reflecting on his senior year and his career. Steve wrote: “I lived in the Sargent family hunting cabin on the Connecticut River below Norwich [Vermont] my senior year: wood heat, snowshoeing to campus, and living pretty much a hermit life. In June of 1972 the Sargents burned the camp to the ground to prevent other students from living there, which had been an annual tradition for some time. The Sargents learned about the squatting that was going on when a Spanish student drowned in front of the cabin after a fraternity fling in April of our senior year. The Boston papers ran an article about my involvement in rescuing the victim’s partner in the middle of the night.” About Steve’s later career, he writes: “After retiring from the University of Illinois, Chicago, I was asked to lead the creation of a new partnership between Northern Illinois University and Rockford Public Schools to formulate a pipeline of hand-picked high school principals to attend two years of advanced instruction at the university with pay. This was the most ambitious initiative of its kind in Illinois and one of the most ambitious in the nation to provide principals with tools to run better schools. The Rockford project graduated its first group this spring and is already having a positive impact on state policy. It turns out that better principals are the single most cost-effective intervention for under-performing schools and we actually know how to produce better principals.” Give a rouse for Steve, our own Henry David Thoreau, for these efforts.
I received a note from Greg McClelland’s brother that Greg and Dora were married June 10, 1972, at St. Dennis Catholic Church in Hanover, the day before graduation. If anyone else wants to report about their marriage around our graduation, I would be happy to share it.
Mike Meehan sponsored an essay writing contest for graduating Dartmouth students, with a $5000 first prize, about conflicts among our Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention. The winner, Greg Mesa ’22, wrote about the dynamics between delegates John Dickinson, George Mason, and Eldridge Gerry. Give a rouse to Mike for his thoughtful and inventive way to stimulate thinking about one of the world’s most enduring documents.
—Shel Prentice, 2311 Tradition Way, #102, Naples, FL 34105; shelprentice72@gmail.com
Give a rouse for our new class president, Joe Davis, whose company drilled 22 water wells and three oil wells in Namibia, providing water for about 600 people who otherwise had to walk about 3 miles one way to fill five-gallon buckets. The engineering for drilling oil wells came in handy. Water and energy are both essential for a society. ’Round the girdled earth they roam, leaving a positive mark.
I received a long note from Steve Tozer reflecting on his senior year and his career. Steve wrote: “I lived in the Sargent family hunting cabin on the Connecticut River below Norwich [Vermont] my senior year: wood heat, snowshoeing to campus, and living pretty much a hermit life. In June of 1972 the Sargents burned the camp to the ground to prevent other students from living there, which had been an annual tradition for some time. The Sargents learned about the squatting that was going on when a Spanish student drowned in front of the cabin after a fraternity fling in April of our senior year. The Boston papers ran an article about my involvement in rescuing the victim’s partner in the middle of the night.” About Steve’s later career, he writes: “After retiring from the University of Illinois, Chicago, I was asked to lead the creation of a new partnership between Northern Illinois University and Rockford Public Schools to formulate a pipeline of hand-picked high school principals to attend two years of advanced instruction at the university with pay. This was the most ambitious initiative of its kind in Illinois and one of the most ambitious in the nation to provide principals with tools to run better schools. The Rockford project graduated its first group this spring and is already having a positive impact on state policy. It turns out that better principals are the single most cost-effective intervention for under-performing schools and we actually know how to produce better principals.” Give a rouse for Steve, our own Henry David Thoreau, for these efforts.
I received a note from Greg McClelland’s brother that Greg and Dora were married June 10, 1972, at St. Dennis Catholic Church in Hanover, the day before graduation. If anyone else wants to report about their marriage around our graduation, I would be happy to share it.
Mike Meehan sponsored an essay writing contest for graduating Dartmouth students, with a $5000 first prize, about conflicts among our Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention. The winner, Greg Mesa ’22, wrote about the dynamics between delegates John Dickinson, George Mason, and Eldridge Gerry. Give a rouse to Mike for his thoughtful and inventive way to stimulate thinking about one of the world’s most enduring documents.
—Shel Prentice, 2311 Tradition Way, #102, Naples, FL 34105; shelprentice72@gmail.com