We are in the dog days of August with exciting pennant races in both leagues. It is hard to imagine that you will be reading this in a cooler October at World Series time. Baseball and its icons continue as part of the American cultural scene, and we note that a collection of essays from a conference at Hofstra University on the 100th anniversary of Babe Ruth’s birth edited by Bob Keane has recently been published. Bob’s preface, “Me and the Babe,” is based on his childhood meetings with the Babe and accompanying him on his off-season golf rounds and other events. That Bob is the only ’55 to have met and even golfed with Babe Ruth seems a cinch. Bob retired as professor of English literature from Hofstra in 2003; he and Doris now reside in a retirement village in Voorhees, New Jersey. In addition to Baseball and the “Sultan of Swat”: Babe Ruth at 100, Bob has published two books on the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and another on Oscar Wilde.


Lynmar Brock continues to receive high acclaim for his historical novel, In This Hospitable Land—the story of Claudie and her family escaping from Belgium ahead of the Germans to the south of France and their further survival hidden by families in a little cluster of houses deep in the mountains of the Cevennes. Amazon has placed the book No.15 on its list of 18 great war books,just after John Hersey and ahead of Oscar Wilde. 


Under the leadership of Buck Kuttner, donations from the class of 1955 will be bringing a film on the Nuremberg trials to Hanover on November 19. Banned in the United States for many years, the film was directed by John Ford and involved Budd Schulberg ’36. (Historical note: John French’s father, class of ’30, was a defense counsel the first year of the trials.) 


John Baldwin,who for years has been very involved in activities in support of our veterans, will be a guest speaker in September at the reunion of the 9th Division Mobile Riverine Force (Vietnam service).


—Ken Lundstrom, 1101 Exchange Place, #1106, Durham, NC 27713; (919) 206-4639; kenlundstrom@yahoo.com