Fifty years ago, during our first summer away from Hanover, the realization that we had become part of an extraordinary organism—the Dartmouth family—began to set in. The world in which we were to live was also taking shape during July and August of 1962. England was negotiating its entry into the Common Market. On August 5 Nelson Mandela was arrested in South Africa for inciting riots. He would be sentenced to life imprisonment. A Time magazine cover depicted Virginia Sen. Harry Byrd with the banner “Congress & Kennedy: Defiance.” 


The cultural world was changing as radically as the political. On July 10 Telstar was launched, permitting transmission of live television from Europe—and opening the way for the global networks that dominate our lives today. In August Ringo Starr became the drummer for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones made their first appearance in London. In Los Angeles Marilyn Monroe died on the day Mandela was arrested. 


Two of our Vietnam vet classmates who spent that summer on an NROTC cruise recently marked milestones. Ken McGruther reported that he and Jorunn Bockelie have decided to spend their lives together. That would be sufficient cause for celebration, but their story is something of a fairy tale. Ken and Jorunn first met when she was an exchange student from Norway during his senior year in high school. The romance continued at long range until near the end of our junior year in Hanover, when she wrote that she was going to marry a man from her hometown. They had no further contact until a reunion last September. She had been widowed four years earlier and Ken had been divorced. Somehow, in a crowd of more than 350, they met and “felt an immediate spark.” Ken related that Jorunn was wearing the heart locket bearing the photo he had given her on the last night they were together, inscribed “June 26, 1961.” After spending more time together they decided that 50 years was long enough. They recently exchanged vows and rings. Congratulations and best wishes. 


Glenn Currie, who also spent that summer with the Navy, has published another book, titled Granite Grumblings: Life in the “Live Free Or Die” State. Glenn has a wonderful way of capturing subtle feelings. He recounts a sentiment many of us have experienced in our musings about Vietnam. Eva Cassidy’s rendition of “Over the Rainbow,” he wrote, seemed to have been sung “for those whose voices and skills were lost to wars and disease and sometimes just bad luck: for John Seel and Dennis Barger and too many other friends from Dartmouth whose lives were cut short by Vietnam…and all the other sons and daughters whose lives were never fully lived.” 


In May classmates Lee Arbuckle, Steve Fuller, Jim Griffiths, Jim Hamilton, Brad Hawley, Tom Long, Jim Markworth, Tucky Mays, Tim Mclaughlin, Marsh Wallach and Bill Webster gathered with families for a great mini-reunion in Williamsburg, Virginia. 


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@erols.com