Summer is nearing its end as I write this. During these past two months I had phone chats with Mary Lindstrom (Guy Swenson’s widow) and Ginia Allison. I email and exchange letters with Bob Gale, who sends us some ruminations from Dartmouth at War. “The older I get, the more I think about WW II. So I often browse in our 2011 Dartmouth at War book. Three quotations stand out. In October 1940 John Brewer saw Jack Stinson packing his car and asked where he was going. ‘Going to Boston to join the Navy!’ John answered, ‘Wait for me!’ Richard Ensor, Army soldier, wrote that ‘all we did was blow up bridges’ in the Philippines in 1944. One day a 10-year-old native boy became their guide: ‘He wore a…hempen shirt…gathered at the waist by a coconut fiber belt…. No pants. No shoes. The grin never stopped.’ Joseph Nason, Navy pilot, was shot down on October 23, 1943, while bombing Bougainville, caught by the Japanese, and later wrote that, ‘of 63 Allied prisoners…only seven survived the horrible conditions.’ On October 23, 1943, I was flown with other Air Corps men from Maine to Scotland to start my European adventures. When I talk with veterans such as Brewer, Ensor, and Nason, I say, ‘You were braver than I ever had to be.’ ”

Then Ginia Allison sent an article from the Valley News with the headline, “Tuck School Changes Admission Criteria to give ‘Nice’ a Chance.” This suggests a different and interesting way to view candidates. Our stereotype of a leader has been someone who thinks tough. Tuck does not think so. This is especially significant today, when we are experiencing so much hostility in the news. This is the first revision of Tuck’s criteria in 15 years. As the paper reports, “The leader who can build consensus in a cooperative environment has supplanted the previous model of the imperious CEO who barks orders from the corner office without regard to how it is being received down the line, according to business school counselors.”

Again, I ask for news from each of you. It is what makes this column come alive.

—Joanna Caproni, 370 East 76 St., Apt. A 406, New York, NY 10021; caproni@aol.com