USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > History of the class of 1915, Yale College. Volume 3, Thirty-fifth year record > Part 15
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MORRIS MITCHELL. Manager, supply department, Chicago Na- tional Bank, 120 South LaSalle Street, Chicago, Ill .; residence, 1361 Greenleaf Avenue, Chicago 26.
"I have always regarded Freshman English, which used to be a must course when I entered Yale in the fall of 1910, as a sort of turning point in my life," Mitchell tells us. "Before this I had always thought I would be a lawyer. My father, in fact, was determined to make me the best lawyer in Fayette County, Pa., and had established Daniel Webster as my hero, but before Christmas of that year had rolled around Daniel went out of the window as my No. 1 man, and William (Shakespeare) was firmly established in his place.
"However, the real reason I did not take up the study of law after leaving Yale was the precarious condition of my health. My father had had ambitions of being a lawyer. The opportunities of making money in business had taken him away from his first love, and he had enjoyed considerable success and reputation as a coal mine opera- tor and an inventor of coal-mining and coke-making machinery, but he had never gotten over a none too happy yen for speculating in land. In 1915 he had several thousand acres of timber and farm land in northeastern Louisiana. Accordingly I repaired to these wide open spaces to live the life of a cotton planter, rice grower, and cattle man. Life in the open and on horseback did wonders for my health, but I never took farming as a career seriously-always dreamed of the time when I could disentangle myself from all this and devote my time to what really interested me. Among other things, I discovered some good chess players among the U.S. Government engineers at near-by Vicksburg, Miss. In that city I married Ruth Bracken in November, 1923. And I never deserted my literary idols-rather I read and reread their works in the light of my more mature experiences, became more widely acquainted with them and with others, as Santa- yana, Melville, Romaine Rolland, Bernard Shaw, etc.
"Well, by 1933 I got disentangled all right from my Southern interests; my father's estate had practically evaporated in the Great Depression. I left the South with a few thousand dollars and spent the next two years in Chicago and New York. I had made a couple of lucky and profitable ventures in cotton futures a few years before, so I hoped I might be able to repair my fortunes in cotton or wheat, if a happy chance offered-but no luck. The W.P.A. offered a chance to eat. I was assigned to Hull House, where my informal lectures on
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Jane Addams and the settlement house she founded gained some local popularity. I also became associated with the Hull House Little Theatre. Here some friends thought I had some possibilities as an actor and should try the theatre, but, after consideration, I decided I was too old to enter an entirely new field. Possibly this was a mistake, but the Federal Adult Education program beckoned, with a scant living it is true, but with a thirty-hour week and lots of leisure for other interests. Here I taught Spanish some and with the staff put together a first Spanish book for soldiers and wrote a first Spanish reader-quite a daring enterprise considering the state of our Spanish! I also wrote short stories and poems which steadily refused to be sold. [Mitchell has published some verse in Driftwind, a little poetry maga- zine published in Montpelier, Vt.] Then came several years of various war work; then the last four years in the bank in the supply and reproduction departments."
Mitchell has a son, Morris, Jr., born in Vicksburg on August 5, 1925, who graduated from Wright Junior College in Chicago. "He is a better chess player than I am," he writes, "and also has literary tastes."
As to recreations and special interests, he continues, "I still like literature, the game of chess, the theatre, and burlesque shows. For the rest, I believe in the wisdom of the ancients: the gods are hostile and look with suspicion on the knowledge and advances of men. Of late years a great many caps have been thrown into the air and hands clapped over our so great progress, but this, I think, has been in purely mechanical and technical directions, and, while it may be enormously important, it is still not everything. I have been so bold as to have some ideas as to where and why this age was failing as compared to its immediate predecessors, and in what respects the ancients excelled all later times and why. In a free society to discuss such things might not be out of order or unprofitable. Of course, my ideas on such sub- jects may or may not be of value, but my experiences in trying to advance them have been highly discouraging. I am reminded of the words Euripides puts into the mouth of Medea, which have been translated, as I remember, to this effect: 'Alas, whoever is wise let him not educate his children in wisdom. . .. for aside from other charges of idleness they meet with hostile envy from their fellow citizens.' ... Oh well, perhaps the ideas are all moonshine anyway, or the gods are hostile. Still I have my literature-its geniuses never accuse me of being lazy or a hopeless dreamer."
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DOUGLAS STUART MOORE. MacDowell professor of music and executive officer, Columbia University; residence, 464 Riverside Drive, New York, N.Y.
Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize in music-the first in 1924 for his Suite for Orchestra and the second in 1951 for his opera, Giants in the Earth, Moore has been honored with the degree of Doctor of Music by the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (1946) and the University of Rochester (1948). In 1947 he received honorable mention from the New York Critics Circle for his Symphony in A. His compositions include three operas, two symphonies, three orchestral suites, chamber music, songs, and piano pieces. He is the author of two books, Listen- ing to Music (1932) and From Madrigal to Modern Music (1942), both published by Norton, and is the editor of the College Music Series (Prentice Hall).
Moore was curator of music at the Museum of Art in Cleveland from 1921 to 1925, during the last three years of this period also being organist at Adelbert College, Western Reserve University. He joined the Columbia faculty in 1926 and in 1940 became MacDowell professor of music and an executive officer of the University. He has been president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters since 1946 and in December, 1951, was one of "six American creative artists whose works are considered most likely to achieve a permanent place in American culture" elected to life membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Moore is a director of the Edward Mac- Dowell Association, the American Academy in Rome, and the Ameri- can Music Center, a member of the board of appeals of ASCAP, and an Associate Fellow of Calhoun College at Yale. A member of the Century Club of New York, he served on its admissions committee from 1944 to 1947 and on the board of governors for the next three years.
His marriage to Emily Bailey, daughter of Charles Lukens Bailey, Yale '98, and Mary Seiler Bailey, took place at Vineyard Haven, Mass., on September 16, 1920. They have two daughters: Mary, born in Paris on July 17, 1921, and Sarah, born in Cleveland, August 10, 1923. Mary graduated from Barnard in 1943. She married Brad- ford Kelleher, who graduated from Yale in 1946, following service in the Special Services Section of the U.S. Army and who is now employed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sarah, who gradu- ated from Bennington in 1946, is a free-lance writer, living at home.
"In my period at Columbia I have had three sabbaticals," Moore
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says. "The first, in 1934, was spent in Bermuda, the second, in 1942, in Tucson, Ariz., the third, in 1949, as composer in residence at the American Academy in Rome. In Tucson an old hobby was revived by acting the Eddie Dowling part in "The Time of Your Life' at the Tucson Little Theatre. I have also directed amateur theatrical pro- ductions during the summer on the east end of Long Island. During the time in Cleveland I was a member of the acting company of the Cleveland Playhouse and took parts in Chesterton's 'Magic,' Shaw's 'Pygmalion,' and two other plays.
"One of the happiest activities of my life was the Chaos Club, which was an informal group of 1915 men which started back in 1928 and had a meeting as recently as three years ago. It started with a dinner meeting at the Century Club which was planning some sort of Class function. George Stewart suddenly asked each man around the table to state what he was doing to prevent the recurrence of another war. The replies from men of so many different kinds of activity were so interesting that we thought it might be fun to get a group together occasionally to do the same thing again. Len Outh- waite and John Crosby Brown were the leading spirits, and they assembled Ranny Macdonald, Plute Weiss, Joe Walker, Archie Mac- Leish, Nig Donaldson, Dean Acheson, Doc Swift, Doc Merz, George Stewart, and myself. We used to meet two or three times a year at the Coffee House in New York. The Chaos Club name came from the economic crisis which was so much in our minds at the time.
"There was no formal program at a meeting, but any one could throw a topic into the circle and ask each man for an opinion. There was considerable difference, you can imagine, but a lot of agreement too. I remember in 1931 we elected Newton Baker president and so informed him. He wrote back to us very much pleased and said that he had always thought highly of the intelligence of Yale men.
"After Dean and Archie moved to Washington, we went on with- out them. I shall never forget the vehemence of Len Outhwaite about appeasement of totalitarianism. Long before the rest of us were alerted he was bursting at the seams, and it was very impressive.
"Since the terrible loss of John and Plute we have not had the heart to call another meeting, but I believe that no one of us will ever forget the heady companionship and good talk of the Chaos Club."
WILLIAM CARD MOORE. Secretary and treasurer, Industrial Coatings, Inc. (rust proof and corrosion proof vehicles for paints ),
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2600 Ali Baba Avenue, Opa-locka, Fla .; residence, 761 N.E. 137th Street, North Miami, Fla. (P.O. Box 912).
"I must confess to being very definitely one of the less distinguished members of the Class of 1915"-thus Moore. "As I look back, a bit wryly, I don't seem to have accomplished very much, except to have brought up three small children more or less by myself, starting when they were three, seven, and eight years old, respectively. Yet I freely declaim that I have no regrets, despite the loss of two small fortunes at one time or another, and the commission of more than my share, perhaps, of sins of omission and commission. My life has been en- riched by many laughs and many interesting experiences and contacts in many countries with almost every variety of human being. I sup- pose you would describe me as the type who has 'been around,' and certainly life has never been dull, albeit not always happy. While I am theoretically 'retired,' I am always fussing with some situation or other and have reason to believe I shall soon be heading overseas again. In my various overseas jobs, I regard myself as somewhat of a relief pitcher-at least, some of the jobs I have handled were jobs nobody else wanted or would accept! In general, let's say simply that I'm mighty glad to be alive, and as for the past-well, I wouldn't have missed it for anything."
He adds, "I have traveled extensively during my life-almost every- where, in fact, except the Far East, Near East, Central and South Africa. F'r'instance-all South America, except Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, and the Guianas. All Europe, except the Balkans, Greece, Finland, Holland, Russia, Portugal. (I lived in France and Germany as a child and went to school there.) Practically every state in U.S., Canada, Hawaii, Fiji, Canton, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Panama, Mexico, most of West Indies. Cuba. None of Central America. North Africa, yes. Canary Islands, Madeira, St. Vincent's. No special hobbies (except perhaps photography)."
From 1940 to 1942 Moore was treasurer and a director of Minsch, Monell & Company, Inc., an investment securities firm in New York. He spent the following year in Detroit as contract negotiator for the Motor Transport Service, Quartermaster Corps, U.S. Army, until it was taken over by the Ordnance Department. He then became dis- trict supervisor for the Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Operations under the State Department. This was taken over in Janu- ary, 1944, by UNRRA. He had the same title there until he resigned about May 1, 1944, to become principal requirements representative
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for the Foreign Economic Administration in Wellington, New Zea- land. He remained there for about a year and then for a time in 1946 had a special research job in Cuba for the Middle East Corporation of Cleveland. During the period from May, 1946, to September, 1947, Moore was with the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, Inc. (CARE), serving as chief administrator for Czechoslovakia for a little over a year and then as chief administrator for Germany, with his headquarters at Bremen. He resigned in September, 1947, and returned to the United States to settle in Florida. He has been secre- tary and treasurer of Industrial Coatings, Inc., since August, 1950, and is also a director of the Milk Concentrate Corporation of Coral Gables, but says these are just small interests which he has just to give him something to do.
In December, 1947, Moore was decorated in New York City by the Czech Consul General with the Order of the White Lion for his work in setting up the CARE organization in Czechoslovakia (before the Communist coup). He says that he has done considerable work here and there for the Republican party, but nothing outstanding, that he has been a member of the Presbyterian Church since boyhood, and that he has belonged to dozens of country, lunch, etc., clubs, but now belongs only to the Yale, Downtown Athletic, and Zeta Psi clubs of New York.
He was first married in 1916 in Oswego, N.Y., to Virginia K. Murdoch, daughter of Augustus P. and May Murdoch. They were divorced in 1926. His second marriage, to Audrey Marie Smith, daugh- ter of William S. and Mary Smith, took place in Elkton, Md., August 30, 1941. His oldest son, Daniel Agnew, who was born February 5, 1917, in Pittsburgh, graduated from the Montclair (N.J.) Academy and from Yale in 1939 and since 1940 has been employed by PanAgra in Lima, Peru. He is unmarried. His daughter, Mary Murdoch, born May 20, 1918, attended Lasell Junior College. She was married in 1940 to Robert R. Lake, of Kingston, Jamaica, where he is now a member of the law firm of Lake & Nunes. They have two boys and two girls. The younger boy, William Card, Jr., who was born July 24, 1922, attended the Eaglebrook School and the Newton School in South Windham, Vt., and had a year at the Agricultural School of the University of Connecticut before enlisting in the Navy in 1942. He served three and a half years in the Armed Guard on various merchantmen as a gunner's mate. His marriage to Mrs. Norma Viggue Young took place in Mexico, N.Y., in 1950, and he has a stepson, as
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well as a daughter, Kathleen, born December 5, 1950. Moore's children were all born in Pittsburgh.
STANLEY MORRISON. Professor of law, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif .; residence, 127 Alta Vista Drive, Atherton, Calif. "The last twenty years don't seem to have produced any dramatic events (for me)," says Morrison. "Since the war I have been dividing my time between teaching law at Stanford and practicing tax law in San Francisco."
The latter connection is with the firm of Mccutchen, Thomas, Matthew, Griffiths & Greene, whose offices are in the Balfour Build- ing in San Francisco. Morrison, who has been a member of the Stan- ford faculty since 1924, was promoted from associate professor of law to a full professorship in 1929. During the period from 1942 to 1945 he left the University to practice tax law in Los Angeles as a member of the firm of Miller, Chevalier, Peeler & Wilson. Morrison has contributed to various legal periodicals, is a member of the board of governors of the Wine and Food Society of San Francisco, and belongs to the Bohemian Club.
On September 28, 1922, he was married in San Francisco to Carroll Epler Cambron, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C. G. Cambron. Their older son, Stephen Cambron, who was born in Pasadena, August 31, 1923, was in the Army from 1942 to 1945, serving in India and China. He graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 1948 and two years later received the degree of M.S. at the Uni- versity of California at Los Angeles. He is now an electrical engineer with the Hughes Aircraft Corporation in that city. The younger boy, Peter, who was born June 30, 1926, in San Francisco, graduated from Yale in 1950 and is now at the Stanford Law School. He was in the Navy from 1944 to 1946.
ANTHONY MORSE. Address, 27 Washington Square, North, New York 11, N.Y.
HUNTINGTON TOMLINSON MORSE. Special assistant to the chairman/administrator, Federal Maritime Board/Maritime Admin- istration, Department of Commerce, 4865 Commerce Building, Washington 25, D.C .; residence, 27 West Irving Street, Chevy Chase 15, Md.
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Morse writes: "In February, 1934, I was invited to come to Wash- ington to act as shipping adviser to the then chairman of the Shipping Board Bureau of the Department of Commerce. I later became director of operations, and, when in 1936 the U.S. Maritime Commission was created as an independent Federal agency, I remained with that organization until it was merged with the Department of Commerce in 1950, serving in the capacity of special assistant to the chairman. The Commission constructed a fleet of over 5,000 merchant type vessels during the war. During this period I was also special assistant to the administrator, War Shipping Administration (the wartime ship operating agency), and was liaison officer for the above named agencies with the U.S. military establishments and the allied govern- ments on maritime affairs. My duties required frequent trips abroad, principally to England and later on to the Continent. I have been awarded the following decorations with citations for war work: from the President of the United States-Certificate of Merit; from the Re- public of France-Officer of the Legion of Honor; from the King of Norway-Knight's Cross, First Class, Royal Order of St. Olav; from the Queen of the Netherlands-Commander in the Order of Orange Nassau.
"My present job is special assistant to the chairman/administrator of the Federal Maritime Board/Maritime Administration, Department of Commerce.
"Chief accomplishments: (a) In 1944, as the representative of the United States, I assisted in drawing up and signed an agreement with the allied nations for the establishment of an international allied pool of ocean-going merchant shipping which became known as the United Maritime Authority.
"(b) In 1948 I represented the United States at the United Nations Maritime Conference in Geneva and signed the Convention on the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization, which, when ratified by twenty-one nations, will become a specialized agency of the United Nations in the maritime field.
"(c) In 1950 I was appointed by the President as the U.S. repre- sentative on the North Atlantic Planning Board for Ocean Shipping of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has prepared an approved plan for the mobilization, control, and allocation of ocean- going merchant shipping on a world-wide basis in time of war or wartime emergency."
Morse had an earlier connection with a government agency-in the period from 1919 to 1925, when he was with the U.S. Shipping
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Board Emergency Fleet Corporation; he served as director of opera- tions for a year, as assistant special commissioner during 1920-21, and subsequently as director for Europe. He was an executive with the Munson Steamship Lines of New York from 1926 to 1932 and dur- ing the next two years was in the coal business in New York.
His principal recreations are reading and golf. He is a member of the Presbyterian Church and belongs to the Naval Order of the United States, the American Legion, the Propeller Club, the University Club, and the Kenwood Golf and Country Club.
Morse was first married in 1921 in London to Anna Margarete Lindahl. They were divorced in 1927. On March 9, 1928, he was married in Stamford, Conn., to Sarah Merritt Carter, daughter of Israel J. and Caroline Freytag Merritt. "I have one child by my first marriage-Mary Louise," he says. "She was born in London, Decem- ber 10, 1923, is now married to Waugh Glascock and lives in Howard County, Md. She has been interested in art since childhood and as a result has produced some very commendable pieces of work in oils, water colors, and models in the field of sculpture which have been publicly exhibited, and she has received a number of important awards from the well-known Rhinehart School of Art at Baltimore. She has recently entered the commercial field and has already received a number of commissions."
GEORGE RUDOLF MOSLE. Staff assistant, Northern California area, Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company; also town clerk, Ross, Calif .; residence, 8 Baywood Avenue, Ross.
Mosle, who has had nearly twenty-nine years of service with the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company, is at present on the staff of the general commercial representative of the Northern California area, handling the telephone needs of the armed forces. He was elected town treasurer of Ross in April, 1948, and appointed town clerk the following month.
His marriage to Alison Grossbeck Ackerman, of Hackensack, N.J., took place on October 9, 1920. They have had two sons, the older of whom, Philip, died on January 17, 1924, at the age of two and a half years. The younger boy, George, who was born November 13, 1924, was married on June 30, 1946, to Betty M. Marsh, of Oklahoma City. They have had three children: Terresa Anne, born September 1, 1947, George Harold, who died at birth, and Philip, born May 18, 1951.
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Mosle divides the rest of his report into two sections-hobbies and "shock." Under the first he lists:
"My grandchildren.
"Fishing, which is unsurpassed in our western mountains and coastal streams.
"Photography-still concentrating on 'a good negative,' with some one else doing the developing and enlarging.
"Camping, or better, mountain living. I have recently acquired a cabin, about ten miles south of Lake Tahoe, where the family will spend three or four months each year in the summer, while I com- mute the two hundred miles each way for the week-ends and where I hope to spend six months or more as soon as I am able to retire.
"For an exceedingly interesting and not too time-consuming work, I recommend being the town clerk of a small community. We have a little over 2,000 inhabitants, according to the census. It is fascinating and satisfying."
In the second category: "If you want a shock, have your son go to work in the same organization and then have the people of that organization refer to you as 'George's old man.' Nuf said."
DUBOSE MURPHY. Rector, Christ Episcopal Church, 605 25th Avenue, Tuscaloosa, Ala .; residence, 35 Meador Drive, Tuscaloosa. (P.O. Box 354)
Murphy was rector of Christ Church in Tyler, Texas, from November, 1930, to September, 1937, and of the Church of St. Clement in El Paso for the next five years and since December, 1942, has been at Christ Church, Tuscaloosa.
He is one of the associate editors of the Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church and has had four articles and a few re- views published in it. He has also contributed articles to the Anglican Theological Review and other church papers and is the author of two books, A Short History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Texas, published by the Turner Company of Dallas in 1935, and Life in the Church, the first edition of which was published by the Cloister Press of Louisville in 1945 and the second by Wilcox & Follett, Chicago, in 1950. In 1930 Murphy took an M.A. degree at the University of Texas. He has served on a few church committees and boards.
His marriage to Alice Hartwell Magruder, daughter of A. L. C. and Alice Hartwell Magruder, took place in San Antonio on July 26, 1926. Their daughter, Alice Gardner, who was born in Austin, Texas,
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on August 22, 1927, received a B.A. degree at the University of Alabama in 1948 and that fall went to work for the Tuscaloosa News as reporter and feature writer. She was promoted to woman's editor in October, 1949, but resigned in September, 1950, to go with the Birmingham News as reporter and feature writer. Their son, Leonard Brewster, born in Austin, March 15, 1929, graduated from the Uni- versity of the South with the degree of B.A. in 1950 and is now attending the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass.
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