Kingswood Oxford High School - Retrospect Yearbook (West Hartford, CT)

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WILLIAM M. MORCOM Bill” entered the school with the original Class of ’39 way back in the fifth grade. He was the first president of the class, a responsibility in those days when we were so little and school life so strange. During the remainder of his stay in the junior school, he distinguished himself by regular attendance in Saturday morning detention and by gaining several Wyverns in both major and minor sports. He served as president again for several different terms, and in the eighth grade he led the victorious Lancaster football team and the hockey team. In the senior school Willie” entered extra-curricular activities; he became circulation manager of the Kings- wood News, managed the Dramatic Club, and began studying the piano keeping up meanwhile his interest in rifle. In athletics he played end and fullback on the intermediate football team, gaining his letter in his sixth form year; a knee injury in 1937 prevented him from taking an active part in sports during the fall term. He has also been numbered among the ranks of the famous club basketball group, playing through three seasons without sustaining any serious injury. (His opponents, how- ever, were not quite as lucky.) Outside of school William, when he isn’t running around with beauti- ful young ladies, tries to keep a decrepit model A” Ford from falling apart. He has a mechanical bent and is very much interested in engines, especially marine engines. He is also quite skillful at drawing boats and cars. To prove that his mind isn’t entirely mechanical, Bill goes in for swing music; he can play it as well as listen to it. Bill intends to follow his brothers to Princeton next year where he will try for a B. S. in engineering; and, after taking a look at his scholastic record (rumor has it that he has been seen on the Honor Roll this year), we feel pretty certain that he will succeed. 24

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GROVER V. LASSEN, JR. Bud” came to Kingswood in the seventh grade from Sedgwick School and immediately joined the York Club. From that point on, his ingrown-toe- nail” story (really a fact) has been a milestone in the path of excuses from exercise. Bud has taken soccer and tennis for some time and has worked himself up through the various stages to become manager of the tennis team. Although no great scoops have come his way, probably because they arc not a necessity for his job, Bud has been on the News staff as a reporter since his third form year. This debonair gentleman who always seems to turn up with some- thing new every so often (and we do mean often”), rolls around in another sport item; namely, a ’38 convertible Ford coupe with a swell little radio in it that used to make tutoring period pass quite rapidly and pleasantly. Besides being student mail carrier this year and a member of the famous French class, his News position keeps Bud pretty busy; and, as he plans to enter Princeton University from Kingswood, this keeps him concentrating on the more serious line of studies. Bud spends parts of his summers fishing for salmon in New Bruns- wick. His favorite fishing spot is at a grand sport camp, eighteen miles up the little southeast branch of the Mirimichi River. The latter parts of his summers are spent at the famous Strand” at Waterford, Connecticut, which is on Long Island Sound. Many of Bud’s friends arc acquainted with the Strand”, because last June he gave a house-party there; and 1 under- stand that every one enjoyed himself immensely. A main feature of this party was seeing the Yale-Harvard crew race. Incidentally, this sport is one of Bud’s few weaknesses. W V 1 23

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WILLIAM L. MORSE Smiling Bill” joined the Class of 39 in the fourth form and immedi- ately obtained a place on the soccer squad; for the last two years he has been awarded letters as a halfback. As a freshman, Rugged” participated in intermediate basketball during the winter term; the next year he went up one step and played on the first basketball squad; and this last year he soared to unprecedented heights — he became a hoopster in that group com- posed of the cream of Kingswood’s athletes, the third basketball team. Many were the bruises Rugged gave the tender and inexperienced in those vicious fights on the floor of Soby Gym. Bill’s choice of a spring sport has changed every year: first it was inter- mediate baseball, then it was softball, and this year he is spending his time in a futile effort to catch the birdie” on the indoor badminton court. Rugged does not, however, confine his dazzling exhibitions of speed and drive only to the athletic fields of Kingswood. Any one who has taken a hair-raising ride in his ’34 Plymouth can corroborate this state- ment. It is a point of honor with Bill never to go less than eighty miles per hour on the straightaway, and his average velocity around corners has been estimated by conservative observers at about forty. This celerity is, no doubt, a great asset in his trips to Wesleyan to visit Ingy”. A full-fledged member of the U. S. Power Squadron, Rugged has a wonderful time skimming over the briny deep in his father’s motorboat. Unfortunately, the water craft does not go as fast as Bill’s flivver; but it has the advantage of being unhampered by pestiferous stop signs. Middlcbury College will be honored with Bill’s presence next year, and we feel sure that his high-speed” person- ality will carry him to success. 25