St Paul Academy - Review Yearbook (St Paul, MN)

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D. ROBERT BLANP1ED,S main interest and hobby has been his life in the woods. He now owns a cabin in northern Wisconsin along the shores of Lake Superior. On this 30 acre plot he is planting, replanting, and studying the science of trees. Mr. Blanpied's initial planting of 1500 trees failed, but now he intends to try another type of pine, and keep the land well cleared. His time is not completely taken up by his tree plantingg he often takes pack trips into Canada. He is very in- terested in the wild life which he sees on such trips. Near his cabin there are quantities of deer and bear. In fact, his cabin is only a few feet from what until recently was a bear's cave. Mr. Blan- pied's neighbors in the north woods are mostly Finns. He takes a great interest in these people and their customs. He was only recently introduced to the Finnish bath. After an exposure to prac- tically scalding steam, the bather suddenly plunges himself into cold water or snow. Mr. Blanpied declares it exhilarating. Unfortunately fand yet perhaps fortunate for Academy students, Mr. Blanpied has not tried to master the Finnish language. 1 3? s'i'. 3:91116 905111011 5 iii , A f 2 ar I 1 INS GUN SERGEANT ANDREW M. BOYKE has de- voted his entire life to the army, Since 1911 when he enlisted he has held every non-commissioned grade possible. His 30 years of service have taken him to almost every state in the Union, plus tours in Panama, the Philippines, and China. In 1916, while he was in Panama, he assisted in blazing trails from the Atlantic to the Pacific, often times exploring regions where no white man had been before. He was present at the inauguration of the Philippine Commonwealth and attended the Eucharistic Congress, which had delegates from every part of the world. In the field of athletics the Sarge has participated in Baseball, Football, Bas- ketball, Kittenball, and Curling, and has held managerial or coaching positions in many of the same sports. He also has an earnest interest in small and large bore firing. He coached a team which broke the Philippine small bore record, scoring 1976 out of 2000. He himself was considered for the U. S. Olympic team. Retiring from active serv- ice in 1942, the Sarge came to the Academy. All of his interests are reflected in his duties here. His motto fapplying to all things, is mirrored in his oft repeated phrase, 1 want the cooperation of each and every individualw. I3

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GARRARD BECK is an inveterate fisher with more than an amateur's experience and ability. In Minnesota he has fished for all the fresh water fish. He has caught fiounder and sculpin at Cape Cod, and fishing off Catilina Island has brought him a 40 pound tuna. In the Gulf of Mexico he has caught Barracuda and speared small sharks and ray Hsh. His most unusual feat was accomplished in the Panama Canal zone. Sending his brother to the kitchen for a beefsteak fpresumably for a black eyel Mr. Beck baited a large Tuna hook with the meat. He succeeded in catching, but not landing, a fish, unfortunately of unknown propor- tions. Attacking his hobby from the practical side, Mr. Beck is now taking a nine week course in fishing under Dr. Eddy at the University of Minne- sota. The object of this course fone of the few in the countryj is to explain the habits of fish, how they feed and where. He feels that in a way he is looking into unexplored underwater realms, realms about which little is understood, realms which are not in man's natural demesne. Mr. Beck strangely has no special liking for Hshing for one certain type. He says that he is as happy fishing for salt water fish as he is when grabbing for a goldfish in a bowl. I2 Before becoming head of the mathematics de- partment at school, Mr. Ameluxen held. a very interesting job as an assayer in a Philippine gold mine. He was one of seven white-men working with approximately seven-hundred Filippinos in this mine which contained the richest ore of any United States owned gold deposit, producing al- most five thousand dollars worth of gold to one E011 of mined ore. Mr. Ameluxen tells of many in- teresting experiences in his work, which was unique in itself. In his job as an assayer, he was regularly scheduled to descend some two hundred feet in an elevator shaft and gather samples of ore from a deposit located under a river bed. Pumps were needed to dispose of all the water which leaked into these shafts, and these pumps were run by an elec- trical power system located at the head of the mine. However, earthquakes, which occured quite often in that country, seemed to cut off that much needed power, and as Mr. Am-eluxen puts it, to be caught in an under-ground shaft with water oosing around you gives one a very uuncomfortablev feel- ing. Aside from these few detriments, however, Mr. Ameluxen considers the experience gained at this job extremely important and applicable.

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l That more or less athletic appearance which Mr. Kenneth B. Hunter is so fortunate to possess was acquired, no doubt to the surprise of many, in activities outside the Academy English department, where he has been an able and pains-taking in- structor for many years. Mr. Hunter has partici- pated in many sports, but his favorite, and the one that has given him many years of enjoyment, is that game for both young and old, golf. He started to play at the turn of the century when he was very young, and on holidays he would hitch up the horse and buggy and drive to a course five miles away from his home in Des Moines, Iowa. Today Mr. Hunter still plays a great deal of golf in the summer, and manages to maintain a very respectable score. His attention has not been solely centered around his own game, however, for he has followed amateur and professional golfers for many years in this country and in England, and is a great authority on the famous participants in this sport. Strange as it seems, of all the hundreds of great golfers Mr. Hunter has seen in action, to him, Joyce Wethered, a woman, seemed to have acquired a game closest to perfection. I4 I JOHN S. FITCH was caught by the lure of writing at the age of 17. His first stories were, naturally enough, unconscious imitations, in this case of Robert Louis Stevenson and Sinclair Lewis. Disillusioned by this the thought he would cer- tainly have an audience at ISQ, he began a novel dealing with the life of a relative. He was dis- illusioned again when he discovered that he lacked an intimate knowledge of his main character. In college and post-graduate work, Mr. Fitch's writ- ing was halted by an overload of work and the fact that he had been taught that no classic author employed sentimentalism. This fear of sentimentali- zing paralysed his style. Eventually, however, he embarked upon a play about the Bronte sisters. After working and reworking it for a year he found that a play about the Brontes had already been written and had collapsed after a three day run. Following the play came a period in which Mr. Fitch wrote some fifty short stories and six novels, all rejected. Then in 1937 he wrote a humorous dialect story which was immediately snapped up by The American magazine. Looking at his own writing career, Mr. Fitch cites the old English proverb that Uwriting is a good pair of crutches, but a poor pair of legsv.