Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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Harvard's Mountaineers Are World Renowned Some special elixir in the atmosphere around the rocks and icy crags on which the members of the Harvard Mountain- eering Club spend so much of their time must get into the blood after prolonged exposure, for few College activities have led their devotees to such far corners of the earth, or continued to call them from their business and professional careers after leaving Harvard. Since the founding of the Club in 1924, its members have left their pitons in crevices from the Andes to the Himalayas, and made such important contri- butions as that of Bradford Washburn and Robert Bates' expedition to Mount McKinley in 1941 to test mountaineering equipment for the U. S. Army. For undergraduate mountaineers, the HMC offers basic training in the Quincy quarries and makes short climbs on Mount Washington, Cannon Mountain, and other New Eng- land summits. The Club runs a cabin at Mount Washington, on which members base their skiing and climbing trips. Dur- ing the war, '46 mountaineers were limited to these week-end expeditions, and no major climbs could be attempted. By 1946, however, an HMC climbing party including Club President William Latady and former Presidents Andrew Kauffman, Mal Miller, and William Putnam made the second known ascent of Mount St. Elias in Alaska. The following summer, Putnam took a party on twenty-four first ascents in British Columbia's Coast Rangeg and 1947-48 Club President john Ross and six others flew into the Canadian Lloyd George Range and, besides climbing, made surveys and collected botanical specimens. The years ahead will undoubtedly see '46 alumni participating in more of these major climbs, which have brought the HMC world-wide renown. Mountaineering Club President William R. Latady during the ascent of Mount St. Elias and Hayden Peak in july, 1946. Outing Club members relax after a hiking trip. Varied Outdoor Pursuits Attract Outing Club Members Smaller in numbers but indefatigable in spirit, the Harvard Outing Club carried on a reduced schedule during '46 College years, but by 1947 had restored most of its many and varied activities, devoted to getting away from College and enjoying the outdoors. Short Sunday trips include biking around the Boston region with girls from Wellesley, Rad- cliffe, and Sargent, hiking in the Blue Hills, and Snowshoeing and skiing trips in the winter. The annual Harvard-to-Welles- ley bike race is an HOC institution, as are frequent square dances, boasting a large turnout from all the Boston area colleges. The Club arranges rock climbing, with complete instruction for beginners, on trips to Rattlesnake Crags in the Blue Hills, often in preparation for summer climbing in the Rocky Mountains and Grand Tetons. Freshmen, drawn to these activities by the physical training credits granted by the Hygiene Department, have stayed to become the Club's enthusiastic supporters. Low Cost Rentals HOC membership has provided '46 devotees not only with excellent opportunities to get together with other men interested in the outdoor life, but also with the material bene- fits oflow-cost rental of Club skiis, knapsacks, tents, and other equipment, discounts in many sporting goods stores, and the weekly issues of the Dope Sheet, a bulletin listing activities at Harvard and elsewhere in New England. An important postwar addition to the Outing Club's facilities has been the construction of the Kushner Memorial cabin, at the base of Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire, for summer hiking and winter skiing. With more to offer than ever before, the HOC again stands ready to run any out- door activity in which its members are interested. -12861

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Harvard Chess Experts Dominate the intercollegiate Tournaments Not a few members of '46 felt themselves during the war years like pawns being moved about a chessboard, but it was a small and select elite that were able to move the pieces about the boards themselves. These were the members of the Harvard Chess Club, who despite their own dwindling numbers and the disappearance of most of their opponents, put Harvard by the end of the war in position to win perma- nently the intercollegiate Belden-Stevens Trophy. Awarded for competition between Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Columbia, to be retained by the club winning it for live successive years, the trophy had been retained for four years by the Chess Club as it faced its 1947-48 season. The Chess Club's 1943 team gained possession of the cup by a 3-1 victory in New York's Marshall Chess Club. A 2-2 tie the next year permitted Harvard to keep the trophy. The Club won over Yale in 1945, and tied with Yale, defeating Princeton, in 1946, to gain its fourth leg on the trophy. Ten Seconds to Move As Chess Club membership grew again after the war, the members renewed their intra-club competition to de- termine the strongest players, who form the team. Harvard also entered teams in the Boston Metropolitan Chess League, and won first and third places in sectional competition. The club stages exhibitions, and has sponsored a round of the National Open, which saw some of the nation's best players pitted against each other in the Lowell Housejunior Common Room. For undergraduate competition, the Club has put on Rapid Transit Tournaments, ten seconds being allowed for each move, and hopes to arouse interest in Inter-House competition. Frank Pierce '46 fin V-12 uniformj plans his winning attack as the clock ticks off the minutes in a wartime Harvard-Columbia chess match. Nicholas Van Slyck '44 conducts at a Music Club Chamber Orchestra rehearsal. The Music Club Runs its own Chorus and Chamber Orchestra Harvard's Music Club celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1948, and could look ahead to an active future, sponsoring its own chorus, Harvard's only chamber orchestra, and a popular series of House concerts. Founded in 1898, the Club has numbered among its members in the past such famous names in music as composer Randall Thompson '20, music critic Virgil Thompson '22, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and Harvard Professor Walter Piston '24, and the well-known conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein '39. The gilt palms of past successes withered during the war, however, and not until the 1945-46 season, under the leadership of President Nicholas Van Slyck '44, did the Club revive. Former member and composer-pianist Professor Edward Ballantine '07 served as faculty adviser, followed by Assistant Professor Irving Fine '37. The Radcliffe and Har- vard Clubs jointly presented Stravinsky's Periejzlaone in 1945. With talented pianist Noel Lee '46 as president in 1946-47, the Club formed its chamber orchestra and adopted a policy of playing yet unknown contemporary music and rarely performed older works, pieces which the public might not otherwise hear. At the Fiftieth Anniversary Concert in the spring of 1948, a successful program included the Bach Triple Concerto in A-minor for Hute, violin, and piano, with Noel Lee at the piano, a work never known to have been performed, and also the very new Soneztine for Clarinet and Strings by Club member Nicholas Van Slyck. The Club's choral group pre- sented in succeeding years a Stravinsky mass and the work Lex Nocei by the same composer. House concerts and monthly talks and performances by Boston symphony musicians rounded out the Music Club's full schedule.

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Harvard Now Has More Extra-Curricular Groups Than Ever Before No exception to Harvard's tradition of rich diversity in extra-curricular interests, the Class of 1946 busied itself during its years in Cambridge in dozens of organized activities from mathematics to movie-making-some short-lived and informal, some with years of tradition on the Harvard scene, but all a part of the educational program in a liberal arts college. Among the publications, '46 saw the birth of two new literary magazines, Wake and Sigmzture. Hugh L. Whitehouse Stan Karson '48 instructs Harvard AVC delegates to the Massa- chusetts State Convention in 1947. The AVC was the most successful of the veterans' organizations in its membership drives. '46 and jack Adkins '46 helped found the former in the fall of 1944, and J. Robert Leed '46 was in on the conversion of the magazine from publication of weak student efforts to the printing of the work of established writers, such as E. E. Cummings, as well as lesser known contemporary authors. Signature sprang up in September, 1947, as a joint Harvard- Radcliffe operation, devoting itself at first to dramatics and writing on the College scene. Burt Glynn '46 did a series of striking cover photographs of Radcliffe lovelies. Another new postwar activity was Harvard's first motion picture producing group, founded in 1947 as Veritas Films by a student group including Louis Baker '46 as chief cameraman. Changing their name to Ivy Films to avoid threatened legal complications, the society has written and produced its own script, A Touch of the Timer, a fictional commentary on the futility of the industrial civilization and its labor-management misunderstandings. The scientific clubs have always provided bankers' holidays for the talented few who understood Math. 2 and completed their laboratory courses without blowing them- selves up. The learned monthly lectures of the Mathematics Club bore fruit in 1947, when three of its undergraduate mem- bers won Harvard a first prize in the Putnam mathematics 412871- competition of the Mathematics Association of America. The Engineering Society evolved into a graduate and faculty group during most of '46 experience, but the Pre-Medical Society was reborn in 1945 to a program of lectures by dis- tinguished doctors, and arranged for its members to observe autopsies in the Harvard Medical School. Among the new scientific groups was the Social Relations Society of Harvard, established in 1947 to further informal contact with professors and field trips to psychiatric clinics and social agencies, among its other projects was a popular course selection guide pre- pared by '46-man Abraham Rogatnick's Course Committee. Also new in Cambridge was the Students' Association of the Natural and Social Sciences, sponsoring lectures of general interest on the interrelation of the natural and social sciences and the problem of the scientist in society. Sporadic Activity Among the special activities clubs, the Stamp Club reorganized itself as the Philatelic Society in 1945 and was able to present an exhibition in Widener Library in December, 1947. The Photographic Society recruited members for an active future, and the Bridge Club emerged from smoke-filled rooms at the Business School to plan for a future Harvard Bridge Team in the Intercollegiate Tournament. The jazz Club attracted a large membership in 1943, and presented sessions with famous jazzmen such as Art Hodes, Mezz Mezzrow, and Peewee Russell, as well as a jordan Hall Professor Frye of Boston University demonstrates the peculiari- ties of vector algebra to Mathematics Club members in the Lowell Common Room.