In December 2013, after 26 years, Pat and I sold our primary residence and downsized. The only positive interim enjoyment to this otherwise dreadful moving experience was that I got to look at some memorabilia that I haven’t looked at for decades. One of these items was the dated magazine, Swiss Holiday, billed as the official program for the Dartmouth Winter Carnival of 1960. As I browsed through that Dartmouth Winter Carnival magazine for 1960 I was impressed with how many ’61s were involved in all aspects of that Winter Carnival weekend. As a result, I am dedicating this article to those classmates, 54 years after the fact. Some of the classmates I will be referring to are no longer with us, but that doesn’t diminish their respective contributions at that time and it shouldn’t diminish our respect for their successful efforts in 1960.


The magazine listed Bruce Hasenkamp as its publisher, Bob Vincent Jr. as its business manager and Bob Conn as a contributing editor. The excellent articles and photographs relating to the Dartmouth Winter Carnival represented an outstanding walk down memory lane.


The magazine referred to the numerous social events occurring during the weekend. Of note, however, was the second annual student-faculty-town musical show, Guys & Dolls, starring David Birney in the lead role as Sky Masterson and featuring big Mike Mooney in the significant supporting role as Big Julie.


As to the athletic teams engaged that weekend, I refer only to those articles where classmates are specifically mentioned. The article about the highly rated varsity hockey team stated that the “high-scoring junior Bobby Moore is the man to watch on the green first line” and that “he teams up with the fiery Jake Haertl…to form a solid attacking unit.” The article about the top-rated varsity basketball team stated that juniors Dan Berry at forward and George Ramming at center were major contributors to the team. The article about the highly rated varsity ski team, competing for the highly prized Carnival Cup, singled out “juniors [Art] Bookstrom and [Jim] DeLong [to] pace the team for the weekend meet,” referring to both as strong in all four skiing events. Dick Nordhaus, John Stewell and Skip Bean were also referred to positively.


Finally, there was the Winter Carnival Board itself, which included Larry Gleeson as secretary and George Breed representing the Interdormitory Council. The board was responsible for the entire Winter Carnival weekend: the scheduling of all College athletic and social events; the production of the outdoor opening ceremonies, center-of-campus ice statue and Carnival Ball; the judging of the interfraternity-interdormitory-graduate school ice statue contests and the judging of the Winter Carnival Queen contest (a nice perk); and other matters, including the “supervision of the [weekend’s] guest policy” (whatever that meant).


In closing, I apologize if I inadvertently left out of this article any classmate who deserved to be included. However, I depended very strongly upon the magazine referred to above for my information, as well as for my inspiration. Perhaps, after traveling back 54 years, I can be forgiven.


Note that a significantly more extensive and complete version of this article (limited to 500 words here) can be found on the ’61 class website.


—Victor S. Rich, 5 Red Ground Road, Old Westbury, NY 11568; victor.rich@rsmi.com