Class Note 1958

“Size doesn’t matter!” So says Mel Alperin, our gift planning Chair, regarding bequests to the Bartlett Tower Society. The question came up in the class meeting at the fall mini-reunion. “There is no minimum,” he says. “Any amount is okay!” Besides Mel, our Bartlett Tower Society go-to guys are Ben McAdams, Frank Blatz and Gersh Abraham. Or contact Laura Alexander at the gift planning office at (603) 646-3799.


The October 17-19 fall mini was well attended. Dave Bradley and Bob Eleveld were given Williamson Awards for Distinguished Service to the class and College. The Big Green beat Holy Cross to go 4-1. A southbound train actually rumbled through Lewiston Depot in Norwich, Vermont, as the Friday night beer-and-pizza party was beginning. Pete Kelsey at trackside counted 50 tank cars, noting that this station was where, in 1921, his father had arrived to enter Dartmouth. Also at Lewiston, Dave Bradley’s T-shirted doo-wop quartet harmonized beautifully, one of them serenading Ann Bradley on bended knee. Donna and John Anderson put on a scrumptious four-entree class dinner for about 50 at their scenic Breakfast on the Connecticut near Lyme, New Hampshire. Mini maestro Frank Gould says next year’s Homecoming will be October 9-11, with Yale the football opponent. 


Much in evidence at the mini was Jerry Manne, journeying east from Chicago for the week, during which he dined (successively) with Frank Gado, John Murphy and Sally and Ralph Manuel. It was fun, too, seeing Dan Wilder, meeting John Ryan’s Parisian wife Simone, and visiting with their Virginia Beach, Virginia, neighbors Hal Bernsen and Mary Boone. Sally and Gersh Abraham flew in from their new digs in Evanston, Illinois, to their New Hampshire home in Grantham.


At Friday’s class meeting president John Trimble read the names of 11 classmates deceased in the past 12 months and asked for a minute of silence in their memory. One new passing is that of Barry T. Hildebrandt in Poulsbo, Washington, on February 4, 2014. Barry, an avid outdoorsman who worked in book publishing, entered Dartmouth in 1954, spent two years in the Air Force’s Tiger Program, then returned to finish his A.B., says Susan Hildebrandt.


—Steve Quickel, 65 Chapel Road, New Hope, PA 18938; swquickel@comcast.net