USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > History of the class of nineteen hundred thirty-six, Yale College, fifteen-year record > Part 25
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By way of avocations, I have introduced my Southern wife to skiing and am still able to enjoy (to a more limited extent!) the usual summer sports activities.
ELMER WATERMAN PECK; 453 East Highland Avenue, Red- lands, Calif.
Since 1946 I have directed the earth-sciences department at River- side College (anthropology, geology, geography, and astronomy). I take classes on many Saturday field trips along the coast, onto the Mojave Desert, or into the San Bernardino Mountains, and have be- come especially interested in Southwestern prehistory. I'm writing this at our camp, in the moutnains, at 6000-foot elevation, where my wife and I enjoy our favorite sport: horseback-riding.
Märtha (wife) is professor of nutrition and dietetics at University of Redlands.
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Chief hobby: Participation in local amateur grand-opera. In 1950, I sang rôle of Pimen in Boris Godounov, and this spring did Count Monterone in Rigoletto. In this connection I'm studying voice at University of Redlands.
As enthusiastic "Pan-Americans," Märtha and I are constantly working hard to improve our Spanish for our trips "south of the border."
No children-but claim uncleship to five in America and nine in Sweden. One twelve-year-old Swedish nephew recently spent a year here with us in California, and his sister may come next year.
Opinions: Robert Hutchins for President. I am aghast at the prevalent emotional tendency to adopt a too-easy "Hopalong Cassidy approach" to foreign policy, involving a maximum of "itchy-trigger- finger" and a minimum of brain work. Unfortunately Eurasia isn't the "ol' south forty," all people who disagree with us slightly aren't automatically "varmints," and international relations don't operate on the same principles as a horsey "Western." I admire the mature British attitude, which accepts complex world realities as coming in various subtle shades of grey rather than childishly distorting everything into a straight black or white. Why risk an all-out atomic war just for the right to remain childish? How tragic it would be for us to spark off a civilization-destroying conflagration largely because of our refusal to think maturely!
ROBERT H. PECK; 712 Cabarrus Avenue, Mooresville, N.C.
I'm City Manager here; I'm married and have two children.
WILLIAM HAZEN PECK, JR .; Yellow Cote Road, Oyster Bay, N.Y.
Billy now has a brother, Charles Shelton, born December 12, 1947, and a sister, Virginia Hyde, born October 3, 1950. Having no love for New York City as a place for children, we moved out to Oyster Bay in 1947, and after renting for a period, in September, 1948, purchased a house reputed to date back to pre-revolutionary days. Since that time we have been extremely busy at work on house and grounds, "doing over" and trying to bring back to good condition what had been allowed to run down over the last few years. My school-day summers are being repeated, as my own family now re- turns regularly to our Vermont summer home. That gives a chance to keep up interest in hiking and camping in the Green Mountains, still a great source of pleasure to me. My law practice continues. The association with my father ended with his death late in 1949. In July, 1950, I moved to 36 West 44th Street, New York City, to
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practice with a friend of long standing under the partnership name of Sprague and Peck.
RALPH S. PENN; "Sunset," R.F.D. 5, Goshen, Ind.
We are enjoying the fifth anniversary of our residence here getting acquainted with the youngest Penn, Christopher Harlan. He arrived last October and commands the usual share of attention. Our pet family project is the gradual renovation of our old brick farmhouse to accommodate some modern conveniences. Since my business is making controls for home heating systems, the new furnace is my problem. Thank goodness Mary likes the old and the quaint, for it is she who sees to it that we keep the simplicity of the old home.
Our recreation is largely in the form of family "outings." We like to explore the country lanes of a Sunday afternoon and only resort to the highway to reach new territories. Jonathan, five, has a common plea: "Come on, Daddy; let's take a ride and get lost." My golf has not changed a bit in fifteen years, being in the week-end duffer class. Fun, though.
My views on the American scene are more reactionary than ever as events add blunder upon blunder in our national affairs. If the Russian communists are half as bad or half so powerful as we are told by the Administration, then the time is long past to have entered a crusade to rescue both Asiatics and Europeans from this scourge. The situation as it appears today makes no moral or logical sense to me.
My business of making automatic controls depends entirely upon other businesses making and selling machines for some purpose which require automatic controls. The popular use of any such machines is dependent upon the availability of cheap forms of power broadly distributed. I can say from direct observation that the opportunity for human action is unlimited in this field alone. All we need is the restoration of the freedom for action and the incentive to action.
HAROLD PERLMAN; 617 George Street, New Haven, Conn.
Since 1947, I have been engaged in a small manufacturing business in New York City and do some traveling. Special interests are the theatre and the Organized Reserve Corps. I am unmarried.
WALTER PERRY, JR .; 129 Rumstick Road, Barrington, R.I.
Five years have changed the size of family, address, employer, amount of hair-but not the wife, occupation, or waistline. Walter Perry, III, first son and third child, arrived September 30, 1949, and already has an imposing array of Y sweaters.
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The change of location is the result of my having come to the Providence Washington Insurance Company to take charge of their investment portfolio, a job which keeps me extremely busy and is entirely to my liking. It has the further advantage of bringing us to New England, which suits the entire family, and finds us the happy, though frequently harried occupants of a big, 75-year-old house, not far from Narranganset Bay.
Political activities have not found their way into my schedule, though sporadic attempts to enlist support of a campaign to urge economy on our elected representatives have been made. I consider this one of the most pressing problems of the day, and something easier to believe in than the platforms of any of the political parties.
Social activities are of the standard sort, trending toward sports, with membership in the Rhode Island Country Club, Barrington Yacht Club, and Prouts Neck (Maine) Country Club, of which latter I am a director. Golf is the principal sport, partly because of back and knee ailments which may be thanked for terminating my connection with the Marine Corps. It's an ill wind, etc.
KENNETH G. PETERS; 21 Stuyvesant Oval, New York, N.Y.
Since the last book I have been married to Muriel Reno, who went to Yale Graduate School in 1944-45, and have a small son named Michael, aged three.
LOVETT CHASE PETERS; 15 Lindworth Lane, St. Louis 17, Mo.
In September, 1949, I joined Laclede Gas Company as Financial Vice-President (Laclede supplies gas utility service to 320,000 cus- tomers in the St. Louis area). I had been with Bankers Trust Com- pany in New York since college. My background had been largely in utility securities and loans, though I was a general loan officer and new business securer when I left the bank. I have been trying to help rehabilitate Laclede's finances in the last two years. It is both inter- esting and challenging, since Laclede, under its former holding com- - pany, had been exploited by experts. Have raised $13,000,000 of new money for the company, and doubtless will have to raise more if we can obtain more gas to sell. Demand for natural gas is far in excess of the ability of the pipeline companies to serve it to us and the other utilities. It is a lot of fun being closer to the firing line, where results are more apparent than is the case in the banking business.
On the domestic side, Ruthie and I have a house in the suburbs of St. Louis. We have one girl and two boys, the youngest, Danny, hav- ing arrived August 4, 1950. We are enjoying St. Louis very much and people have been extraordinarily nice to us. We play a great deal more tennis than in the East. Summertime still finds us at Martha's Vineyard, where we enjoy the sailing.
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I seem to be involved in about every third charity drive-Red Cross, Community Chest, Yale, etc. Glad to do these, but wish some way could be found to raise charitable funds with a few less man hours.
Am not a conformed joiner, but still belong to more organizations than I can do justice to. The most time-consuming organization at the moment is the Economics Committee of the American Gas Asso- ciation, which is its long-term planning group. Politically, I guess, I haven't changed much. Speaking for Missouri, Truman seems to be a prophet without honor in his own country. Would hate to see Eisenhower or Taft next year, but would prefer either to HST. On balance, believe our conduct of foreign affairs has been reasonably good and is improving. Feel Russia made serious long-term mistake in encouraging China to invade Korea. It is hard to see how such a move can benefit Russia over the long pull, and this is a long-pull struggle we are in.
JOHN EDWARD PFEIFFER; P.O. Box 207, New Hope, Pa.
Science director of Columbia Broadcasting System and an editor of Scientific American since 1945. At present free-lance science and medicine writing. Still married; still one child, aged six, and boy; still unaffiliated with anything but scientific societies. Write fre- quently about anything from calculating machines and rolling mills to blood banks and brain surgery. (By the way, Yale is a first-rate source of information, particularly on brain surgery.) Between writ- ing sessions come ping pong, poker, swimming, occasional ice skating. After long struggles, finally joined American-movie boycotters. See about ten movies a year, nine foreign. Biggest disillusionment since 1945-visiting Yale on June 26, 1951, I browsed for a while at the Co-op. Piles of "Dianetics" in prominent display; alas poor Gibbs. Gundelfinger was better. But this isn't an exclusive Eli blindspot. Cambridge has similar displays. Still hoping the Republicans run a candidate worth voting for. Even we Democrats wouldn't mind a change, but a joke's a joke. Has everyone read "Worlds In Collision"?
ELDREDGE C. PIER; 103 Mountain River Road, Hamden, Conn.
My Naval career coexpired with my terminal leave in December, 1945-or so I then supposed.
After a few months of glorious indolence, I went to work at, of all places, Yale. My duties had to do with the administration of the Art Gallery, a remarkable element of the University in which the functions of a museum and a mausoleum are uniquely combined; exhibits occupy the upper floors while the late Col. and Mrs. John Trumbull together lie entombed below.
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1936 FIFTEEN-YEAR RECORD
Two years in the sepulcher were sufficient to induce in me a new outbreak of chronic Wanderlust. I experienced a craving to visit some exotic corner of the world beyond the limits of civilization as we know it; some spot, in short, where the ways of the people are not our ways, where the customs are quaint and the speech is unfamiliar.
Naturally Bridgeport suggested itself to me, but I rashly chose India instead.
After stops of a few days here and there enroute, we-my long- suffering wife blindly accompanied me-duly reached our mysterious goal, arriving in something less than grand style on a ferryboat from Ceylon.
India proved well stocked with all the fascinating features we had been led to expect, but some features fascinated us rather less than others. Low on the scale of fascination were the railroad trains, which are hot and dusty and divided into compartments, European fashion. Compartments normally sleep four and sex is ignored, at least as far as assigning space to passengers in concerned. The only alternative to promiscuity is purdah, a sensible convention, perhaps, but foreign to our natures.
Despite such petty problems as this, we knocked about the country for a couple of months and saw much that was intriguing, as well as a little that was disquieting. We returned via Bangkok and Japan, with an idyllic interlude at Waikiki for purposes of recuperation.
Our itinerary did not include Korea, so what happened there the next year cannot be hung on us. Returning to the Navy, I reported for duty in September, 1950, at Bremerton, Wash., where I briefly helped demothball ships. Two months later I was ordered to Wash- ington, D.C., for duty in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, where I languish at this writing, with my temporary residence in Alexandria, Va.
JOHN M. PIERCE; 137 Channing Avenue, Malvern, Pa.
Have a wonderful wife and two sons. One is almost nine years old and the other nine months. Naturally refer to my sons, as my wife is considerably older. Older than my sons, that is. As for clubs, am not a joiner and until the old exchequer reaches a more elevated position will remain more or less anonymous. Enjoy relatively good health, complain about the cost of living, wonder what the H ??? is going to happen next, and have hopes of being able to contribute to the cause of Yale sometime, but for the past and present it is out of the ques- tion. Not much on this Biography stuff, as all I could really talk about would be my family, which is really OK. Am in the Real Estate busi- ness in Paoli, Pa., and am moving to Paoli soon.
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JOSEPH RICHARD PIERPONT; 1104 Bay Ridge Parkway, Brooklyn 28, N.Y.
In 1946, we were established in a comfortable apartment, and I was back in a civilian job. The war began to seem more and more just a faraway memory. But it wasn't too long before there was a change in our easy-going way of life: in May, 1947, Eleanor pre- sented me with a daughter, Carole. It took several months before we decided the baby wasn't Dresden china, but from that time on we enjoyed her company tremendously. So we were both quite happy when another daughter, Patricia Lynn, was born last April. After a stormy two-month siege of colic, Pat settled down, and has become a very affable member of the family.
By this time, the city had lost a good deal of its charm for us, as parents, and we finally found just the home we had been looking for, in North Merrick, L.I. As of next month, we join the ranks of the suburbanites; since most of our friends have already taken the same plunge, the change probably won't seem as drastic as it might have a few years ago.
In the meantime, I had been offered a responsible supervisory posi- tion in the Claim Department of the Hartford Accident and Indem- nity Company's New York branch, and I left the Home Indemnity Company in 1948. About the same time, I "discovered" golf, which by now has become my favorite pastime. I have yet to break a hun- dred, but it's a good game-especially when more vigorous sports are beginning to seem awfully strenuous.
All in all, it's been a nice half-decade, now that I look back-and I'm anticipating the next chapter with interest.
JONATHAN W. PINE; 101 Deepdene Road, Baltimore 10, Md.
I was in the Navy for six years (1940-1946), coming out as Lieu- tenants Commander, U.S.N.R. Now doing sales work with Samuel Kirk & Son, Inc., which is located at Kirk Avenue and 25th Street, Baltimore. I am still single.
RICHARD A. R. PINKHAM; Van Wagenen Avenue, Rye, N.Y.
(Synopsis of preceding chapters: Dick Pinkham, lithe, sardonic Vale man, goes to Gotham, makes good in the advertising dodge, weds, begets twice, becomes one of the major naval heroes of World War II-American Defense Ribbon, Victory Medal, others-becomes a newspaper man. Now go on with this frank, heartwarming story.)
Gad, a third little wiggly red Pinkham was born triumphantly male right after my last report. Promptly yclept David, he was hotly pur- sued out of the womb two years later by Gad still another l.w.r. Pinkham, demurely female, name Elizabeth. I challenge the loins of
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Eli to improve upon a family of two boys and two girls. They are at once the bane of and reason for existence.
But no more of that obstetrical stuff. We found out what was caus- ing it.
These five vintage years went fast as Circulation Manager and later as a Director of the Herald Tribune. Good years on a good paper. But this year, it came time to press on to the most fabulous field of all, to wit, TV. The National Broadcasting Company pays my bills these days. Please keep right on reading the H.T., won't you? But when you're not, be rational, switch to National.
Otherwise there has been nothing much that anybody would be interested in. On weekends I am usually to be found locked in mortal combat with a spinnaker, or attempting to put spin on my serve and take it off my drive. I am not yet under the care of a psychiatrist, nor has my stomach surpassed my hair in abundance, but aside from these, a normal member of the class.
I smoke too much and sleep too little; loathe gardening and love golf; cocktail parties bore me, poker evenings are my dish; I have a dogged devotion to the New York GIANTS, but my faith in the Re- publican Party is wobbly (although I still vote their way).
I find myself nearing forty.
(Will Dick and Bunny have yet another child? Can they pay off the mortgage on the house? Don't miss the next chapter in this thrilling, wholesome story in the NEXT edition of the 1936 history.)
SAMUEL AMES POND; 16 Charles Street, New York 14, N.Y.
Why it took me so long to get married, I'll never know. My bride -of six weeks standing-alleges I was subconsciously waiting for her. She must be right. Her name was Dorothy Linke, she came from Plainfield, N.J., and she went to Smith; which puts me into some kind of a pattern. Our age difference is such that I was forced to claim membership in the Class of 1946 during the courtship period- a collossal lie which I trust my good classmates will understand and forgive.
Since I left Yale, life has been divided in four partes: more educa- tion at the Stanford Business School; two years of work in a chemical company; four years in the U.S.N., mostly aboard a torpedo boat; and the last five years with PanAm. Somebody is always the excep- tion to the rule. I am the only Yale man in PanAm who is not at least a V.P. My function is to debate with unions, one that I enjoy, as I do the organization which employs me.
Kip and I live in Greenwich Village. That's a far cry from the haunts of San Francisco. We are both Democrats, something which I became shortly after the war. That reverses the trend of the young
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man who becomes more conservative as the year rolls on. HST wor- ries me a little, however, so I am currently more receptive to Re- publican blandishments. Skiing in such spots as Aspen and Sun Val- ley, and fishing in the High Sierra are the best forms of recreation- without doubt. Thank goodness for the airplane that makes such places available (that's a plug).
Looking back, it becomes increasingly clear that the four years at Yale makes up the period for which I am most grateful. Only a honeymoon could have prevented my appearance at the Fifteenth Reunion-and it did. Here's looking forward to the Twenty-fifth.
ARNOLD PORTER; 153 Bowen Street, Providence 6, R.I.
Having completed my surgical training in Boston in November, 1948, I bought a house with the help of the bank and acquired an office in Providence, R.I., for the practice of surgery. Appointments to the surgical staff at the Rhode Island Hospital, Roger Williams General Hospital, Miriam Hospital, U.S. Veterans' Hospital, Providence Lying-In Hospital, and the South County Hospital were obtained in the ensuing few months. Certification by the American Board of Surgery and membership in the American College of Surgeons was accomplished in 1950, as well as membership in local medical and surgical societies.
My family is as last reported: one wife and three daughters, ages 13, 9, and 5 years.
Extra-curricular activity is confined chiefly to golf taken up seri- ously in the Spring of 1951 after recovering from a broken leg in 1950. Summer weekends are spent in Narragansett, where the rest of the family spends the summer.
CHARLES T. PORTER; East Pepperell, Mass.
I worked for E. I. DuPont at Belle, W. Va., from June, 1936, until September, 1937, living in Charleston, where I knew "Dek" Thompson, Yale '34, and Walt Savell, Yale '35. I returned to Yale as a special student at Sheff, where I took pre-medical courses and went to Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1942. I was con- sidered physically unacceptable by the armed forces in 1943 and started a general medical practice in Pepperell, Mass., upon finishing my interneship. In July, 1940, I married Elizabeth Ham of Brook- line, Mass., who died of leukemia on March 10, 1948. On July 16, 1949, I married Barbara Cooney Murchie, daughter of Russell Cooney, Yale '14, and sister of James Cooney '39, David Cooney, Yale ?, and Daniel Cooney, Yale '50. I have two step-children and one fourteen-months-old child of my own.
Yale acquaintances in this area are few. Howard B. Wood, who
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recently deserted engineering to become a floraculturist, is one, and Hugh Gregg, '39, mayor of Nashua, N.Y., another.
I still enjoy wielding a tennis racquet and playing chess, but a rather busy practice leaves little time for these activities.
JOHN POWELL; 119 Vine Street, Bridgeport, Conn.
I married Margaret Godfrey in 1947, and our children are Ellen Jo, now two and a half, and J. Robert, three and a half. My hobbies are golf, Time magazine, children, and-I need more time !- house remodeling, etc. Other activities are Rotary, U. Club of Bridgeport, squash, beer, etc.
After graduation I worked for Price, Waterhouse & Co., in New York, until March, 1944, where I was busy with pencils, figures, and so on-all very interesting, but not conducive to an enjoyable life, at least for me.
I was in the Naval Reserve until July, 1946, as a Lieutenant. My post was inspection service-a desk job-at Chance Vought Aircraft, in Stratford, Conn. I got little thanks for a lot of hard work, but gained a great deal from the experience, and found many fine friends -viz., Margaret G.
After my discharge, Price Waterhouse sent me to Los Angeles, up to November, 1949, and then brought me back to New York for a year. This was just the same thing all over again, so I declared my inde- pendence and started for myself as a C.P.A. in Bridgeport, Conn. I became associated with John H. McGloon, C.P.A., and am at last enjoying the fruits of my labor, personal friendship opportunities and hobbies not previously available to me in the big city. Perhaps I should have made this move sooner. Anyway, it can be said that I'm enjoying it.
I obtained a private pilot's license during 1945. My wife, an ex-WASP, taught me. I haven't flown, however, since Chance-Vought days.
DALLAS PRATT; 222 East 49th Street, New York, N.Y.
"Write your autobiography in 300 words." Well, I live a bachelor existence in a comfortable old New York house. I pay my taxes regularly. I get up at 8 a.m., eat breakfast .... "Stop! We don't want this. Confine yourself to the important events, the significant intersections. You're describing the interstices." I'm not sure I agree with you. In an atomic world one learns to cherish the un- eventful. However, I'll try again. . .. In 1936, I read a book which had a great influence on my life. "No, no! You're off the rails again. We want only the events since 1946." But surely you want to know why I did what I did? How can the "events" be understood? "Please,
·
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avoid the perpendicular pronoun and give us the facts." Oh, well, here they are in a paragraph:
Staff psychiatrist, National Mental Health Foundation. Psy- chiatric Consultant to students, Columbia University, 1947- 1950. Lecturer in Education, New York University, 1951. Author of various articles on mental health. A perennial member of committees-on education, on mental health and religion, on a neighborhood house, on comics, on recreation, and so forth. Cur- rently Chairman of Friends of the Columbia Libraries. Becom- ing increasingly interested in the application of psychiatry to international activities. Spend three months every year in England and France.
There are the facts, but they don't tell very much about me. "Ah, the 'real me.' Don't be too sure! Let's see ... psychiatrist to Colum- bia (that's a curious choice), psychiatrist to a national organization, now international psychiatry. Isn't there a touch of megalomania in all this, Doctor?" Looks like it, doesn't it? Where do you think I'll end up? "Probably as psychiatric consultant in a space ship! ... Now, how about voicing an opinion for us?" Here's one: America has gone to the dogs. "Pessimistic and not very original." Not necessarily pessimistic, although I think we Americans have been in a spiritual dog-house for quite some time. But with all the mud- slinging that's going on in high places, maybe the kennel is the best place to be. And perhaps we'll return from there to the big house bet- ter able to live like human beings, and with the feeling that, in this half-starving world, breakfast every morning is an event. .
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