Class Note 1965
The last summer before we began our trek to become men of Dartmouth passed quickly for most of us. Bobby Lewis’ “Tossin’ and Turnin’ ” was No. 1 on the charts from early July until nearly the end of August. It accurately described our world. On the Fourth of July the Soviet ballistic-missile submarine K-19 developed a catastrophic leak in the nuclear reactor that killed eight crewmen. The ship rejected American offers to help and made it to port with the aid of a Russian diesel submarine. On August 13 Walter Ulbricht’s East German government closed the border and began erecting the Berlin Wall, symbol of the divided world in which we spent the next three decades. While we noted that Valery Brumel jumped 7 feet, 3 inches to set a new high jump, we did not notice that Lady Diana Spencer, future Princess of Wales, was born on July 1. Many of us started reading Georgio de Santillana’s The Crime of Galileo as we prepared for college.
Glenn Currie has published his fifth book, Granite Grumblings, in which he does what many of us wanted to do, depict life in Emmet Country for the folks back home in Colorado or Virginia. Having now lived in New Hampshire for more than two decades, Glenn has used his insight, sensitivity and humor to provide a look at the state we came to love, its charming people, and, in the process, at ourselves.
Our next mini-reunion will be on Dartmouth Homecoming, October 21-23, and will again be based at Pierce’s Inn. We will have a pre/post-bonfire wine reception, a cookout before the Columbia game and a cocktail party-dinner on Saturday evening. We will hold the class meeting at Pierce’s on Sunday morning. Additional events may include a golf outing and a Homecoming parade hay wagon. We hope to have a panel discussion featuring Dartmouth students who are veterans of the current wars. Start making plans now. Being in Hanover with old friends in the fall is a special treat. Please mark your calendars and join us.
Stay in touch with Jane and George Wittreich for details about the mini. They recently returned from a tour of New Zealand and Australia, where they enjoyed seeing the different flora, interesting fauna and spectacular scenery as well as learning about the various “down under” cultures.
In an effort related to our hoped-for panel of recent vets, we continue to work on (and try to create a manageable format for) a questionnaire to explore the experiences and attitudes of our classmates about one of the most formative influences of our adult lives—the military and, particularly, the Vietnam War. We plan to email it to everyone this summer and hope you will participate and share your recollections and views so that we can all benefit from our collective accumulated wisdom. We hope to create presentations and discussion panels for future gatherings based on the results.
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
