USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > History of the class of nineteen hundred thirty-six, Yale College, fifteen-year record > Part 26
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WILLIAM F. PRESTLEY; 85 Jefferson Street, Hartford, Conn.
I spent four years at the Harvard Medical School after graduation, emerging with M.D. cum laude. Then I interned two years at Hart- ford Hospital, in Hartford, with Archie Deming. Thence, I had four years in the Army in Camp Grant, Fort Lewis, and the Central Pacific, as Commander, 98th Field Hospital, with a final rank of Lt. Col., 1946-48. I residenced in Internal Medicine in Hartford Hospital, and since 1948, I have had a practice in Internal Medicine and Allergy in Hartford, Conn., sharing an office with Bob Walker, 1932 Ac. I was married in 1946 to Betty Wheaton of Putnam, Conn., and we have three children: Ann, eight, Peter, six, and Barbara, three. Hobbies: (between house calls) singing, gardening, pistol range.
CHARLES DRURY PRESTON; 1050 E. Illinois Road, Lake Forest, Ill.
A tedious 31/2-year stint as discipline officer and judge advocate at the U.S. Naval Repair Base, San Diego, Calif., was concluded by
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discharge from the Navy in April, 1946. Some of my former associates in the practice of law had formed the firm of Seyfarth, Shaw & Fair- weather in Chicago during the war, and I joined them in June of 1946. This association has continued to the present. Our specialty is labor relations, as representatives of management. The pace has been fast enough to consume practically all of my productive energy. This work recommends itself if you like lively battles and terrific crises- not for the opponents you meet.
1947 was a momentous year for me. It brought the untimely death of my father, Frederick A. Preston, '06S, an enthusiastic Yale man, a fine businessman and citizen, and a wonderful father. It also brought my marriage to Sylvia Peter, daughter of William F. Peter, '05.
We have two daughters, Margaret A., two, and Marion M., born April 26, 1951. Our Suburban Heights is Lake Forest, where we engage in golf, bridge, and gardening. We commute to keep up with the theatre and art in Chicago.
JOHN HARDING PRESTON; Box 118, Old Greenwich, Conn.
October, 1945, was the date of my separation from the U.S. Army, and on January 1, 1946, two days before the expiration of my ter- minal leave, I started selling for the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co., in New York City, a job at which I am still engaged, having also become an Assistant Manager, recruiting, training, and super- vising other agents.
On January 12, 1948, my second child and second daughter was born.
Outside of my work, my principal extra-curricular activity is in the Army reserve as executive officer of the 364th Field Artillery Battalion, part of the 76th Division. This involves weekly meetings and two weeks summer training.
By way of comment, I would like to put in a good word for Yale. In my work I talk to a great many people, many of them Yale men, and I find them an outstanding group not only in my opinion but also in the eyes of men from other colleges, Harvard excepted.
ALEXANDER TIMON PRIMM, III; 19 Upper Ladue Road, Ladue, Mo.
While these years since the war have been eventful, yet there seems little to put down of great interest. Have continued with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and was made its production manager in 1949 and also placed in charge of its commercial gravure operation. It's a fascinating job and a terrific challenge, with labor and material costs and union problems posing the largest headaches.
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There have been no further additions to the family. Have just recently bought a new home with its three beautiful acres affording sufficient room to exploit my gardening hobby. Get a particular boot out of grafting fruit trees and working a vegetable garden, finding it gives me the complete relaxation so necessary to one in the news- paper business. Golf game has collapsed completely, although tennis remains about the same.
Am awfully gloomy about the state of the nation and world affairs. Wish I could do something constructive towards the millenium of world peace and understanding, but the pace of day-to-day living never seems to permit it.
DONALD F. RABBOTT; 192d Fire Disb. Section, A.P.O. 3, c/o Postmaster, San Francisco, Calif.
From Mrs. Rabbott: As Don is now in Japan, I am sending you the information you asked for. He is stationed in Kokura as deputy and assistant to the colonel in charge of finance. Need I add that our future is most uncertain? We have no children. Have just sold our home in Westchester, and I am writing this on a packing crate.
MAURICE S. RABEN; 17 Wright Street, Cambridge, Mass.
For several years now, research and clinical activities in the field of endocrinology have kept me happily busy at the New England Center Hospital and the Tufts College Medical School. I have been concerned with such matters as the thyroid gland, radioisotopes, the chemical purification of pituitary hormones, and, in a less objective way, the aging endocrine system of a member of the Class of 1936.
With Margaret Walser Raben, and Jonathan David Raben (age two), I live practically in the shadow of an unmentionable institu- tion of learning in Cambridge. There are some advantages to being so situated, however, and we are particularly fortunate to have the academic, theatrical, musical, etc., offerings which are abundant in that area.
JOHN A. RAND; Salisbury, Conn.
Returned to Salisbury after the war, engaged in the milk business, and am establishing a small farm of my own.
We have two girls, who are ten and eight years old, and thus sum- mer were astounded and pleased by the arrival of a small boy.
Am still in the Active Reserve, but getting less active.
Life goes on very regularly in the country-there is not much hap- pening that is noteworthy, but we find it a very full life and seem always to be busy.
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WILLIAM B. RAND, JR .; High Farms, Glen Head, N.Y.
In early 1946, I returned from India and was released from the Remount Service. I married shortly thereafter, and my wife and I had two children-a boy in 1947 and a girl in 1951. After a brief return to Air Reduction Sales Company, I have since been employed by United States Lines Company and am now Assistant to the Executive Vice President.
Polo, which I began playing shortly before I went to Yale, repre- sents most of my exercise, but golf is infiltrating, to the amusement of all but myself. Apart from these two sports, most of my spare time is spent in general maintenance of our home, which seems to be a snowballing occupation.
An occasional business trip to Europe, one of which was responsi- ble for non-attendance at the Fifteenth Reunion, and many friends in the New York area, have, with these other activities, kept my life busy and full.
ALFRED M. RANKIN; 21301 Shaker Boulevard, Shaker Heights, Ohio.
As penance for a B.S. degree, the editor's directive calls for an autobiography commencing in 1936 of not more than six hundred words. This obviously imposes a considerable burden on the writer and a greater burden on the reader, if there be any. Notwithstanding the imposition of these burdens, I'll commence by saying that my family comprises a wife, Clara Taplin, who graduated from Smith in 1938, despite my interference, and who serves exceedingly well in her present capacity, and three boys: Alfred, Thomas and Claiborne, bearing years of ten, five and one, approximately and respectively, who collectively account substantially for my vocation and avoca- tions. When the male members of the family are not serving as com- panions, they act in other capacities, such as alarm clocks, firecrackers and catalysts in general.
Aside from the above-mentioned family and related activities, I find time to practice law as a partner in the firm of Thompson, Hine and Flory, Cleveland, with which firm I have been associated since my graduation from Yale Law School in 1939, and because of my advancing age find myself in about the middle of a roster of some 32 lawyers. My professional time is engaged primarily in the handling of probate, estate, and corporate matters, and very secon- darily in attending to matters required of a Director, serving as such for North American Coal Corporation, The E. W. Oglebay Company, Oglebay-Norton & Company, and several smaller concerns.
My legal career has been uninterrupted except for a four-year leave of absence for service in the Navy during the war. I received
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my naval indoctrination as an ensign in the Bureau of Naval Per- sonnel, Washington, in close liaison with Commander Farnham and numerous other Yale men. If the reader was in the air branch of the Navy and received SNAFU orders early in the war, I probably had a thumb in it. Subsequently, I spent a year as combat information officer on board a "jeep" carrier (Tripoli), engaged in anti-submarine warfare; one year on the staff of commander Air Force Atlantic Fleet; and then ended my naval service where I began, in the Bureau of Naval Personnel, by pure chance, of course.
I'm a member of various social and business clubs in Cleveland and a trustee of the Cleveland Orchestra. By necessity, I have sub- stituted winter tennis for skiing and squash, and golf for week-end farming, although in connection with the latter I still pull an oc- casional weed and pluck a few fresh vegetables. I enjoy fishing on vacations and to date my personal records are: sunfish and trout (measured in milligrams) and a blue fin tun (581 lbs.).
My political views are not in harmony with those of Mr. Truman and I'm as confused about the conduct of our foreign affairs as is Mr. Acheson.
B. COURTNEY RANKIN; 345 Ridge Road Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich.
My principal performances since the 1946 edition of the Class record have been the acquisition of a home, the adoption of an un- believably delightful daughter, and the establishment of some small reputation as an attorney. My domestic and professional lives remain very satisfactory. There have been no job changes, although I am better equipped for the one I hold.
The Yale Alumni Association of Michigan has experienced too much of my attention for the last five years, and I have been other- wise particularly active in the affairs of the local United World Federalists organization and the Detroit Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
My political, sociological, economic, philosophical, religious, literary, and even legal opinions are sometimes controversial still, but they are my own, as I trust yours are really yours. My wisdom and right to hold some of my opinions are occasionally questioned.
In any event, this is a formidable time to be positive, although being so seems to be more normal than not, and I shall be really quite anxious to see how the rest of the Greatest Class has fared and currently says it thinks.
BERNARD RAPOPORT; 225 Waterman Street, Providence 6, R.I. Since the last report, I have been engaged in the practice of In-
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ternal Medicine and Cardiology in Providence, R.I. My family has increased, consisting now of three children-a son, aged seven and a half; and two daughters, aged five and a half and seven months. What little time remains after professional and family activities is spent attempting to play golf.
DONALD A. RAYMOND, JR .; Box 800, Shreveport, La.
The Caddo Oil Company, Inc., of which I am president, are oil producers and drilling contractors, operating in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. I am married and have three boys, ages eight, six, and one.
EDWARD ASHWELL RAYMOND; 4462 Reservoir Road, Wash- ington 7, D.C.
Association with Soviet staff officers in Allied Force Headquarters in Africa and Italy was enough to keep me with the Army after the war as a civilian intelligence specialist, and prompted graduate study on Soviet affairs at night. Periods of active duty with the Joint Chiefs and Army G-3 have permitted some fairly close combat with sundry heresies. At the moment the fight seems to be going fairly well on the official front, and at home I find the way to learn Russian is to marry a girl smart enough to learn it faster than you can, and then let masculine pride do its worst. This strategem succeeded against Mary Frances Siler, Bryn Mawr 1941, in New York City on Febru- ary 3, 1951. A Bermuda honeymoon about that time of year can be extremely pleasant. Brother-in-law Ben McMahon, '40 Ac, and Willis Reese, '35 Ac, were ushers at the wedding.
Bachelor days in Washington largely were spent living at the University Club, next door to the Soviet Embassy. My wife and I bought the eighty-first house we looked at, and succeeded in ob- taining a fairly convenient location. We hope all college friends and acquaintances will note the address and let us know when they come to Washington.
WILLIAM REED, JR .; 335 Douglas Road, Chappaqua, N.Y.
I married Florence Elizabeth Ross, of Scarsdale. Subsequent efforts produced Elizabeth Ann, now fourteen, mightily interested in horses, and a son, Robert Lawrence, seven, interested in sailing, punching the boy next door, and the étude "Chopsticks" on the piano. I am more or less interested in holding the doors and windows on a 240- year-old Cape Cod house during remodeling and during the week relaxing while selling radio time in New York for John Blair, repre- sentative of radio stations scattered around the country.
WHITELAW REID; Ophir Farm, Purchase, N.Y.
Chief excitement since 1945 has been the acquisition of a wife,
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Joan Brandon, in 1948, and the arrival of a strapping young son, Brandon Reid. All spare moments not committed to these major events have been devoted to the New York Herald-Tribune.
DAVID FULD REINTHAL; 2790 East 130 Street, Cleveland, Ohio.
Five years since 1946 have been interesting ones. The sweater and tee shirt business has been a challenge and a headache, but with luck we have given 500 people full employment for this period.
Board memberships on the Cleveland Jewish Vocational Service and the Cleveland Family Service Association are my social work activities.
Politics have changed little. I like to be independent and liberal, but find that means, in Ohio, one votes mostly Democratic. "Ameri- cans for Democratic Action" seems to be a good place to further these independent and liberal ideas, and I have spent much time with ADA, as well as the American Veterans Committee.
Still holding on to a pretense of youth; squash keeps me running in winter, while baseball and tennis make me sweat in summer.
Other miscellaneous activities that keep me on the go are the Cleveland Community Fund, Welfare Fund, United World Federal- ists, etc.
The bachelor apartment draws my friends and an open bar keeps them happy. Life has been pleasant, not exciting and not too satis- fying, but nice enough. I can't kick, though I feel the world will have me back in uniform before too long. But somehow or another, we will all get by and make this a better world to live in.
DONALD W. RICH, JR .; 555 Highland Avenue, Carlisle, Pa.
As of this writing, I am completing a year as Executive Assistant to the Governor of New Jersey, Alfred E. Driscoll. My duties consist of acting as press secretary for the Governor and coordinating the activities of six of the State Departments. Before accepting the present position, I had been Director of the Alumni and Public Relations at the Peddie School in Hightstown and also was Chair- man of the Social Studies Department.
In 1947, I was on the public relations staff at the Constitutional Convention in New Brunswick. This Constitution was also adopted by the State of New Jersey. On April 1st of this year, I will move to 555 Highland Avenue, Carlisle, Pa., where I have accepted the posi- tion as Director of Public Relations for the C. H. Masland Company.
On June 20th, 1950, I married Mary Ellen Weiske of Rippon, Wis., and on March 7th, 1952, we had a son Ronald W. Rich, III.
HOWARD ASHURST RICHARDS; Sharp Mountain Farm, Cres- sona Road, Pottsville, R.D. No. 1, Pa.
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After flunking Physics over a question of rocket in vacuo [Zeleny: see Goddard et V2], Biology over unturned-in-lab drawings, English in appal at H. G. Wells' Shape of World War II to come, I helped Dad push thru Pinchot roads, early WPA work relief, the just finished Pottsville bypass, and a road along the top of Sharp Mountain.
Suggestions apparently acted on include home perms to Harris, '33; ash truck loaders to La Guardia, '34; a foundation for research to Crosby, and Alice and live characters in J. C. Harris Uncle Remus stories to W. Disney, in '38 also nature fotos on order of Educational Research Pictures root growth enlargements and use of oscilloscope.
Father H. Richards, 'OOS, was part of O. Johnson's Stover com- posite, died in '40, leaving farm and real estate problems.
After W.W. II investigated War Assets, found many debits.
Nephew, almost five, on from L.A., son of John A., '37 E, is some- times a smacko creature.
Brother Owen, '40 S, dredging tin ore in Malaya.
Member Wider Quaker Fellowship, and Episcopal Church [with Mother ].
Friend Walter Miles of Yale followed thru on measurement of eye potentials and wave-length of taste.
Gave idea for electric ignition of coal fires '36 to Anthracite In- dustries. Suggested Alcos [extrusion] for cressona.
Asked Prof. Cy Hoyler at Moravian College where graduated in '40 about electronic melting of and joining cloth and other part dielectrics. He went with RCA and helped spark their seamless sewer.
Interested in use of electrostatic charges for dusts, paints.
Enjoyed '46 reunion sings.
DOUGLAS S. RIGGS; R.F.D., Hill Street, Medway, Mass.
Assistant Professor of pharmacology, Harvard Medical School. Married Robin Palmer, author of children's stories. Household pets: Tim, nine, Wendy, six, Betsy, four, dog, cat, two goldfish, one crawfish. Chief interests: teaching, the thyroid gland, the kidney. Chief hobbies: being educated by children, hiking, natural history. Family life: idyllic. Professional life: hectic. Favorite pastime: pro- crastination. Greatest fault: complacency. Greatest virtue: com- placency.
HARRISON S. RIPLEY; P.O. Box 311, Walpole, N.H.
In 1941 I married Mary E. Allen of Marion, Mass. In 1945 I separated from U.S.N.R. as a Lieutenant and entered the University of Maine, whence I graduated three years later with a B.S. in Forestry. I became a forester with the Eastern Pulp Wood Co., Calais, Me., and then in 1951 joined the New England Forestry
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Foundation as an Assistant Forester. I am located at Sunapee Center, serving southwestern New Hampshire and southeastern Vermont as a Consulting Forester.
SIDNEY DILLON RIPLEY, II; 421 St. Ronan St., New Haven 11, Conn.
At the conclusion of the war, I resigned from OSS and returned gratefully to private life, turning down thereby invitations from the State Department to stay on in the Washington scramble. A good part of the winter of 1946 I spent along the Gulf Coast of Texas studying birds (not oil). In July, 1946, I was appointed by Yale as Associate Curator of Zoology in the Peabody Museum of Natural History and also a Lecturer (later made Assistant Professor) of Zoology. In this congenial occupation I have continued to date, at- tempting thereby to organize and develop a first-class representative collection of bird specimens at our Alma Mater, a collection which would be of fundamental importance in its research and teaching potentialities. I have also been teaching, both undergraduates and graduates in general, natural history and specialized courses in zoology.
In alternate winters I have raised funds on my own, and with the help of the University and other institutions, for three expeditions. All of them have been into the general Indian region: India, Assam- Burma border, Nepal, Ceylon, and Arabia, collecting specimens of birds and mammals for our Museum and in part also for the Smith- sonian Institution in Washington. One of the expeditions, to Nepal, was financed principally by the National Geographic Society, and a popular article about it appeared in the January, 1950, copy of the National Geographic Magazine. I have just finished a book on Nepal which will be published in the autumn of 1951. I am currently at work on a technical book on Indian birds as well as another popular book, this time on my collection of wild ducks and geese, which has been growing by leaps and bounds at Litchfield, Conn. The New Yorker, a discriminating judge in such esoteric matters, calls it the choicest such in the country. I hope they are right.
My most important bit of news, though, is that on August 18, 1949, I was married to Mary L. Eddy, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Gerald M. Livingston of Huntington, N.Y. We have had one expedition to collect birds together in the Indian Hills in the fall and early winter of 1950-51, and I hope it is an augury of many more.
THOMAS A. RITZMAN; 5 South State Street, Concord, N.H.
I am still practicing medicine in Concord, N.H., and see no reason to want to make any changes. We have at last acquired our "dream
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house," which is a beautiful old Colonial, a little out of town, and which seems almost too much what we have always wanted to be true.
Political connections are easily summed up. Thanks to anthro- pology at Yale, I am still sure that man's happiness is founded on the opportunity to provide his own security and luxuries; in other words, the opportunity to improve his own lot, and for that reason I am soundly a Republican. Despite the fact that I have a horror of the inroads into our national government being made by the military, I would like to vote for General Eisenhower for president next year. He has personal greatness, unexcelled qualities of leadership, good political instincts, and a truthfulness and simplicity of expression that put him a lap ahead of the field.
I am sorry I didn't make the furious fifteenth but hope to get to the torrid twentieth. I have three children-a second baseman, a doll dresser, and a vase breaker. I hope to see any of you who may be up this way.
ALGERNON SYDNEY ROBERTS; Shadow Farm Cottage, Wake- field, R.I.
In1937, after a year at the Harvard Law School, I went to work as a student clerk in the Central Hanover Bank and Trust Co., in New York. From 1941 to 1945 I was with the Naval Air Force; I trained at Jacksonville, Fla., served as a flight instructor there, then joined a patrol squadron in the Caribbean, and later served with sea plane tenders in the Pacific. I was released to inactive duty as a Lieutenant Commander, and subsequently went to work for Planta- tion Air Lines, in Palm Beach, Fla. From 1947 to 1949 I was with Mary Chess, in New York City. I married Mary Ellen Plant in New York on November 23, 1946, and we now have two children, Amy Warren, three and a half, and Henry Plant, one and a half.
DWIGHT E. ROBINSON; College of Business Administration, University of Washington, Seattle 5, Wash.
By the spring of 1948, I had received my Ph.D. in economics from Columbia-my thesis resulting in a book published by the Columbia Press with the suggestive title Collective Bargaining and Market Control in the New York Coat and Suit Industry. Was teaching at New York University. An offer from Stanford (Palo Alto, Calif.) turned up and we succumbed to the lure of the West. We are now associate professor and Mme. Robinson and Miss Sarah Kip (-pie) Robinson, age five. We are really entranced by the northwest. To those who would pioneer it is good but strenuous-except for air-
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plane and motels essentially as in movies. In spite of J. P. Marquand, there's a bunk for any podner of Y.C.G.C.
PAUL CONATY ROCHE; 1511 Potomac Avenue, Erie, Pa.
With the Fifteenth Reunion of Yale's greatest class so recently and successfully consummated, the only regret is that so many mem- bers within reasonable radius of New Haven didn't get around to attending, especially the rank and file of the first graduating class of Yale's School of Engineering, who were conspicuous by their absence. Among those present and accounted for it was interesting to observe that, excepting the acknowledged tycoons who require no evaluation here, right down the line the class is composed of hard- working men who qualify as definite heavyweights in their specific fields.
Autobiographically, employment for this member took up with the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company at Akron, Ohio. Nothing much happened during my tenure there except that I was shut up in the plant during a two-month's strike one time.
Demonstrating characteristic farsightedness, this initial opening was selected on a rather profound basis from three senior year offer- ings through The Bureau-which is to say that the one with the highest salary tab was accepted, but quick. Setting about a process of grooming for the presidency of the Firestone Company seemed a challenge, and that was before once-around-the-family-for-shoes would eat up $110-then a month's salary (who had heard of income tax?). Working in their Industrial Products Division, I followed a deliberate program of keeping myself available for policy decisions and leaving the routine to the local help. This approach was so suc- cessful that inside of four years my time was practically 100% available. However, higher executives were not dying fast enough, so the obvious solution was to favor another company-like, say, a smaller one.
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