Milton Kramer was an outstanding member of our class, serving in leadership positions—chair of Palaeopitus and editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth. He was the valedictorian of our class. The summer after graduation Milt died in an auto accident while driving east from a summer job on his way to England as a Rhodes scholar. A number of classmates headed by Jon Moore met to discuss how to memorialize Milt. They reached out to others, not only classmates, and with the College’s approval arranged to endow the Milton Sims Kramer 1954 Memorial Award. This monetary award is given annually to students or student groups for engaging in research, service or programing projects that benefit the Dartmouth community. Most recently the award winners were Rachel Siegel ’12 for a Dartmouth Book Day—focused on a book written by a Dartmouth professor or alum, for an afternoon after class dedicated to the self-reflection, profound thought and free exchange of ideas facilitated by a great book—and the Dartmouth Student Initiative on Global Experiences, “to form a student community passionate about tackling international socioeconomic inequality and engaging with the world’s problems by improving the quality of Dartmouth students’ engagement with global experience through peer-to-peer mentoring programs” 


John Robbins left us during sophomore year and since has left his mark in the world. He completed his college education at New York University and NYU Medical School. He served as an intern and resident at Mass General Hospital and in 1970, after nine years in academia at the Weitzman Institute of Science and at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, was appointed as clinical director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He then became director of bacterial vaccines at the Food and Drug Administration. In 1983 he returned to the National Institute as chief of the laboratory of development and molecular immunity. John’s research focused on developing vaccines for diseases that are prevalent in infants and children. He developed a vaccine, which is now used throughout the world, designed to eradicate bacterial meningitis, a leading cause of acquired mental retardation in children. John has been awarded the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research, the World Health Organization’s Pasteur Award and the Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal. 


—Don Berlin, 7 Hamilton Drive, Washington Valley, Morristown, NJ 07960-3311; (973) 267-8122; berlin1954@aol.com