Class Note 1948
Issue
November-December 2020
I had a nice chat with Bud Munson, our president and general factotum and only class member still living in the Hanover area. He received a nice note from Bob Herrick’s widow, Margaret, who says she is still active living in their house in La Jolla, California, and just this year was having someone handling the gardening. Pete Foster told Bud he and Anne are very satisfied with their retirement home in Haddam, Connecticut, but commented most of the residents were widows.
At this writing apparently half the classes at Dartmouth will be virtual. Tricky, particularly for foreign students. Thayer School has completed its major construction, and Bud’s reaction is that the last building looks like a medieval fortress. That area reminds me of the main campus at Duke, which is one large building after another around a rectangular mall with a little grass on which you’re not allowed to walk. Dartmouth says the shortage of land and an annual seven-figure loss are causing the closing of the golf course. We are purportedly a rural campus in a charming town and this diminishes the school. It’s a shame.
I have talked about Jerry Wensinger in this column and know he is only recently retired as professor emeritus of German and the humanities at Wesleyan College. He is shown on the internet as having written 33 works (including several books) in 100 publications in three languages. He met Wallace Bradway ’47 at Dartmouth and they became close friends until Wallace died this year and left his estate to the College, which asked Jerry for his written comments, which I am briefly excerpting. Wallace had the highest grade-point average in his class at Dartmouth, was an avid reader, and joined the Chicago Art Institute later in his career. Wallace and Jerry kept in touch, as they both had summer homes in New Hampshire, and in the 1970s and 1980s traveled to Italian apartments in Florence, Venice, and then Rome. Wallace retired earlier than Jerry and for the last 25 years entertained friends in his large apartment just outside of Yale University. Jerry comments, “Wallace was a kind, modest gentleman; a person of abundant good cheer, deep intelligence, simple tastes; a brilliant conversationalist; someone for whom the guest invariably came first; and generous to a fault. It took a while to get to know him, but the wait was invariably repaid in manifold ways.“
This indeed speaks well of both parties.
—Dave Kurr, 603 Mountain Ave., Apt. 331, New Providence, NJ 07974; (781) 801-6716; djkurr@verizon.net
At this writing apparently half the classes at Dartmouth will be virtual. Tricky, particularly for foreign students. Thayer School has completed its major construction, and Bud’s reaction is that the last building looks like a medieval fortress. That area reminds me of the main campus at Duke, which is one large building after another around a rectangular mall with a little grass on which you’re not allowed to walk. Dartmouth says the shortage of land and an annual seven-figure loss are causing the closing of the golf course. We are purportedly a rural campus in a charming town and this diminishes the school. It’s a shame.
I have talked about Jerry Wensinger in this column and know he is only recently retired as professor emeritus of German and the humanities at Wesleyan College. He is shown on the internet as having written 33 works (including several books) in 100 publications in three languages. He met Wallace Bradway ’47 at Dartmouth and they became close friends until Wallace died this year and left his estate to the College, which asked Jerry for his written comments, which I am briefly excerpting. Wallace had the highest grade-point average in his class at Dartmouth, was an avid reader, and joined the Chicago Art Institute later in his career. Wallace and Jerry kept in touch, as they both had summer homes in New Hampshire, and in the 1970s and 1980s traveled to Italian apartments in Florence, Venice, and then Rome. Wallace retired earlier than Jerry and for the last 25 years entertained friends in his large apartment just outside of Yale University. Jerry comments, “Wallace was a kind, modest gentleman; a person of abundant good cheer, deep intelligence, simple tastes; a brilliant conversationalist; someone for whom the guest invariably came first; and generous to a fault. It took a while to get to know him, but the wait was invariably repaid in manifold ways.“
This indeed speaks well of both parties.
—Dave Kurr, 603 Mountain Ave., Apt. 331, New Providence, NJ 07974; (781) 801-6716; djkurr@verizon.net