One reward of writing this column, writing the class newsletter or fundraising for the class is the opportunity to strike up new friendships with classmates we never knew in college. Bruce Miller, our champion fundraiser, recently relayed just such a story. While making calls for the Dartmouth Fund through the years, Bruce discovered a connection and began a telephone friendship with Michael van Buren starting back in 2005. Bruce and Mike didn’t know each other in college, but they share a common interest in World War II history and looked forward to the day when they might meet in person. Mike, a financial advisor living in Connecticut, was an English major at Dartmouth and has always had an avid interest in history. Mike is a volunteer historian with the Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress, interviewing and videotaping the oral histories of World War II veterans. He met the renowned historian Stephen Ambrose in the mid-1990s and became involved in the opening of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, which complemented another of Mike’s interests, the New Orleans Jazz Festival. When Mike learned that Bruce, a marketing and public relations executive, travels to New Orleans every year to give a guest lecture at one of the local universities, Mike invited Bruce to schedule his lecture at the same time as the museum’s annual conference. The conference features a spectrum of prize-winning authors, leading scholars and World War II veterans. Mike and Bruce coordinated plans and met last December at the conference that celebrated the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Mike and Bruce both emphasized, however, that the real highlight of the conference was the presence of four of the five surviving Doolittle Raiders, originally a group of 80 men in 16 modified bombers who flew from the decks of an aircraft carrier in the early days of the war to bomb Japan and demonstrate that the Japanese home island was not safe from attack. It was expected that many of these men and their aircraft would be lost in their attempt to make it to China to land after their bombing run, but virtually all survived, continued the fight and went on to lead full lives after the war. Their extraordinary vitality and resilient spirits were on display at the conference. Mike and Bruce had the rare opportunity to speak with these heroic men while attending the conference and to meet each other in person for the first time.


As always, be safe and send news.


—Rick Sample, Retreat Farm, 1137 Manakin Road, Manakin Sabot, VA 23103; samplejr@msn.com