In July about 20 of us, including Susan and Dave Beattie, Sharon and Bob Blake, Toni and Ren Carlisle and their family, and Ellen and Dave Wagner gathered in Hanover for a collective 70th birthday celebration. It was different from other mini-reunions in two major respects. First, we spent Friday evening hosting an “Etiquette Dinner” for an outstanding group from the class of 2015. There’s a sure way to make one feel one’s age—and a deep sense of appreciation that we don’t have to compete for a place in today’s class. On Saturday, following our class and executive committee meeting, we enjoyed a special tour of the Hood Museum, which focused on art either created or contributed by our classmates. Then we had our birthday dinner in the lovely Paganucci Lounge of the Class of 1953 Commons, which is the much-refurbished Thayer Hall. Instead of having one of the a cappella groups provide after dinner entertainment, we spent the time reminiscing about the extraordinary good fortune that has befallen us as a group to have lived in the period we have. We talked at some length about the events that surrounded the years of our births and our memories of 1963, 50 years ago.


World War II dominated our families’ lives at the time of our birth in 1942 or 1943. Axis advances had been stopped and the allies were advancing on all fronts. On November 20, 1943, Marines landed on “Bloody Tarawa” and in December summit conferences in Cairo and Teheran set strategy for the remainder of the war—and started planning our post-war world. On Christmas Eve 1943 Ike was named supreme allied commander for the massive D-Day landing. 


War and tragedy also dominated our lives as we neared the end of our fall quarter in 1963. During the afternoon of November 1, 1963, the South Vietnamese Army surrounded the presidential palace executing the anticipated coup. When Ngo Dinh Diem, “America’s man” in Saigon, called to ask if the United States would support him, Ambassador Lodge, on orders from Washington, said he could not provide such assurance. Diem and his brother Ngo Din Ngu escaped from the palace through a secret passageway during the evening, but were captured and killed the next morning in the Chinese section of the city. Then three weeks later President Kennedy was assassinated. That was the event that everyone at our dinner remembered above all others from our time at Dartmouth. Ted Bracken, Ed Keible and Bob McConnaughey remembered being with the football team at a hotel preparing to play Princeton the next day. Dick Harris and I recalled being on the bus with the marching band heading for New York for the game. Everyone then was glued to television sets. Rob Hartford, Steve Fowler and Steve Waterhouse in the TV room at the Sig Ep house followed events, including the telecast of Jack Ruby’s shooting of Oswald. Every person in the room was transported back by our reminiscences. Start planning for the 50th!


Please send me a note about what you have been doing.


—Tom Long, 1056 Leigh Mill Road, Great Falls, VA 22066; (703) 759-4255; tomlong@gwu.edu