On Sunday, June 13, 1965, most of us concluded our Dartmouth careers. It was a time of great joy, more than a little sadness and a good measure of uncertainty. On Class Day we walked past the Old Pine and broke our clay pipes in the age-old tradition. Bill Affolter delivered the Sachem Oration. At 10:30 the next morning 97 members of the class (out of 629 baccalaureate degrees) received commissions in the armed forces. 


Then, on Sunday, June 13, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stuart Udall was our commencement speaker. Byron Ford, Lynn Mason and Wes Townsend won Great Issues prizes and Frederick Bogel and James Carey shared the Edwin Perkins Literature Prize. Brian Porzak issued the class oration, John Richardson gave the address to the College. Seven members of the class graduated summa: John Amoda, James Carey, Richard Jones, Jack Livingston, Paul Schunke, David Wilson and Irwin Zarembok. Richard Jones delivered the valedictory address. We received our copies of The College on the Hill from the seemingly ancient class of 1915. How time flies.


We will celebrate those halcyon days and celebrate the accomplishments of the 50 intervening years at our 50th reunion, June 11-16, in Hanover. Please try to attend. The program is accessible at www.biggreen65.com/50th-reunion. 


Professor Edward Miller of the Dartmouth history department is leading the Dartmouth Vietnam Project (DVP) to compile oral histories to share stories about the Vietnam War era (1950-75) from a broadly defined Dartmouth community, including students, alumni, faculty, staff, families and Upper Valley residents. The DVP seeks diverse recollections of the Vietnam era, from military service to campus and anti-war activism, political campaigns and everyday life. The transcript and recording of each oral history interview will be made available to the public through an online archive, and will be permanently catalogued at Rauner Special Collections Library as part of the Dartmouth College archives. I plan to participate, and encourage you to do so as well. Here’s a link to the project website (www.dartmouth.edu/~dvp), which has a tab telling “How to Participate”—it’s an easy way to document our connection to one of the formative events of our lives and our modern nation. Professor Miller will also present a lecture about the war era during our program on the “Vietnam War Experience of the Class of 1965” on Saturday, during our reunion. He will be joined by a panel of five of our classmates who will share their experiences and thoughts about the ways the war affected them and all of us. Our real hope is that you will all attend and share memories of that era and the way it affected us.


Our class gift planning chair, Hank Amon, is thrilled to announce eight new memberships in the Bartlett Tower Society. These generous classmates recently established a planned gift for the College and brought our class that much closer to the reunion goal of “50 by the 50th.” There are currently 33 Bartlett Tower Society members for our class and Hank is asking everyone to consider including the College in their estate plans and joining Dartmouth’s legacy society. For more information about planned giving and the society, please contact Hank (camon@whitecase.com or 212-819-8657) or the gift planning office directly (gift.planning@dartmouth.edu or 603-646-3799).


Please send me a note about what you have been doing. Hope to see you in Hanover in June!


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