Ed Heald

Do you remember when you first arrived on campus?

My folks shipped my stuff, and I took a bus from Ohio to WRJ. My wonder as I strolled around the campus before heading out on the first round of freshman trips that I was really there still resonates inside me.

Photos of the Class of 2025 Arriving on campus recently.

Mark Waterhouse

We drove up from CT and got my stuff moved into 110 Richardson. Roommates Dave King and Ted Kuss hadn't arrived yet. We then headed out to dinner at a place along the river in Norwich - don't remember the name. Took a drive around the green and in front of the Hop saw a guy in his freshman beanie. Stopped to say hello - it was Rob Peacock, who went to dinner with us.

Gerry Bell

In the third picture, there are two students who do not belong at Dartmouth College defacing the "beautiful natural beauty" of Parkhurst Row.  Where is Al Dickerson pitching a hissy about this miscreant "Parkhurst Two"?

Boy, those were the days, huh?  When something like that was the biggest problem extant?

On my arrival day, I rode up with Mike O'Brien and his folks while my parents drove my dad's pickup filled with all of the "stuff" Mike and I were bringing (because we could!) -- stereos, reference books, sports equipment, and, at my mother's insistence, bed linens.  I said, "Mom, they have linen service there, you know."  She said, "I know, but I also know you.  You'll never get around to ordering it and you'll sleep on the bare mattress."

I said, "Nah, I have my sleeping bag for the freshman trip."  Somehow she didn't see the humor.

Ced Kam

Frank Molloy, a classmate whose name escapes me (American from Australia, played clarinet in the band with me), and I arrived together at Hanover-Lebanon Airport on a flight from LaGuardia. We took a taxi into Hanover and ate dinner together at Lou’s

Bill Rich

I took the train from Boston with one suitcase. I have no idea what was in it.

Jack Hopke

It was a great relief finally to be dropped off at South Wig after a tense, embarrassing, chancy ride up from NJ in a borrowed, loudly clunking beater of a station wagon with separated parents.  I remember the beam of pride on my mother’s face as we emerged from the commercial strip of So. Main and she purred, “We’re here.”

My roommate, the late John Crepps Wickliffe III, hadn’t returned yet from the freshman trip, but I found a note waiting for me in our room that read, “The latest Playboy’s in the bedroom and I have the real lyrics to ‘Louie, Louie.’  There’s a jug of cider hanging outside the window to ferment.”

Tom Stonecipher

Ed—Thanks for asking the question.  It has filled my morning with with memories of a most exciting time and of my parents, now deceased, who drove me out in the family Buick from Indiana.  Tom

Dave Peck

My parents drove me up early, in time for freshman trip...a wonderful introduction to the College, a chance to meet a small group of fellow '68's, and a larger group at Mooselauke, where I still remember the black and white movie about a "rescue" in the Adirondacks...the rescue being gathering the bones of some unfortunate who fell off a cliff.  By the time I got to 214 New Hampshire Hall, the other 2 beds had been claimed by Gordie Rule and Dick Jones.  I forget which one I got (top bunk?), but it wasn't the best choice.  Freshman Week was great...round of snaps after a speech about the College's history, running around the campus...great bonding.

Tom Stonecipher

Remember those early freshman events which let us demonstrate our sensitivity to and respect for gender? That movie they showed us in the Hop about something happening in Mexico, maybe a western, where a lovely, dark-haired Hispanic woman in a low-cut Mexican, boofy blouse danced, and we all hooted and stomped until they told us to quiet down?  That first mixer where we lined up at the busses and made the women walk a gauntlet of horny freshmen as they made their way to the gym?  So ahead of our time, no?  Did any of us marry someone from Bennington? Congrats on outgrowing the times we were in.

David Stanley

Over the years I have met two women who attended schools in Massachusetts and were at the mixer Tom mentioned.  They were not impressed but it did leave a lasting memory.

Joe Grasso

My main memory of that mixer gauntlet is of upperclassmen from fraternity houses intercepting and directing the arrivals to frat houses while I stood speechless.

Left a lasting impression on me as well, though for slightly different reasons.

Jim Lawrie

Regarding that mixer. As I recall most of us thought the women would be let off at the front door and so lined up at the north end of the gym. When the first girl arrived at the top of the stairs at the other end of the gym, there was a stampede (with exception of the few cognoscenti who knew where to assemble) to greet her. I’ve occasionally wondered her reaction was to a few hundred slobbering freshman boys racing at breakneck speed toward her. I discovered later that the reason for the back door arrival was that the buses could pull up right next to the door and the girls could be funneled directly into the gym with no opportunity for upper classmen to squirrel them away before the pack got a shot at them (“… down from the hills they came, surge on surge …”). What a bizarre and dysfunctional system for meeting young women!

 My first day in Hanover (actually, my second or third since I had an opportunity to visit the campus the year before in the summer) was somewhat less memorable than the trip to get there. I departed San Francisco International early in the morning on a 707, having spent the night before tuning up for the Dartmouth experience by consuming a substantial (for me) quantities of beer with my friends. I arrived in Boston and somehow found my way via the T to the bus station. Would that we had those roller bags so prominently featured in one this year’s photos. My awful red plaid suitcase was huge and full to overflowing. Out of ignorance, I ended up on the milk run to Hanover and it took almost as long to get there on the bus as it had to fly from San Francisco to Boston.

The next day was wasted by finding my way to White River to look for a trunk, shipped by rail, that had already been delivered to the basement of Gile. In today's vernacular, pissed I was! My most vivid memory of those first days in Hanover was the fruit stand in front of Tanzy’s on Main Street. No idea why I remember that. Then followed the magnificent freshman trip with hike up Moosilauke, climbing the Flume trail and traversing the ridge on the AT over Mt. Flume, Mt. Liberty, Mt. Lincoln, and Mt. Lafayette. Having done a lot of hiking in the Sierras, I remember snobbishly thinking that these are mere hills, no cliffs, no granite massifs (the Old Man in the Mountain kind of excepted, may he rest in peace). Just had a flash of memory, our trip leader: Gary Schwandt, I think.

Bill Rich

I remember attending one of those mixers upstairs in the gym - and observing another on the sidewalk as the buses unloaded. Like others, I suspect, my impressions were that the gauntlet was bad, but the cheering and booing were embarrassing and pretty shameful, and that it was quite clever of the two fraternities across the street to invite a few chosen girls to see what a real party was like. We were young and badly behaved, but I think most of us have grown up by now. I have often wondered how many of the girls on the bus lingered a little too long at those fraternities and missed the ride home.

Dave Peck

I blame my lack of success at the mixer because I wore white bucks, thinking that would make me stand out in the crowd and make me a chick magnet.  Not.

Gerry Bell

I remember that mixer for slightly different reasons.  I had a girlfriend I was crazy about (as those who attended Joe Medlicott's writing workshop at our 35th may remember).  She had transferred from a college in PA to UVM so we could see each other frequently, so I wasn't going to "cheat on her" by attending the mixer.  But I did walk down from Topliff to the edge of the Varsity House lawn to take in the scene I had heard such advance stories about.  As Tom, Dave, and Bill have described -- particularly the cheering and the booing -- not our greatest moment.  Pretty boorish; I could immediately understand where the term "Dartmouth animals" had come from.  I still don't believe this happened because Dartmouth had admitted 800 slobbering drooling sexist pigs; but it is quite possible they had admitted hundreds of easily suggestible, easily led, immature boys.  It is a little scary to think that much the same chemistry is at work when a cult is formed.  Or militias.  Or Proud Boys.  Or whatever.  So .. really not our proudest moment.

Or the administration's either, because I don't remember their being that perturbed by the mixer.  Instead, they were focused on whether or not to hang eight idiots who had painted "68" on some rocks at Mt. Moosilauke.  I hope I've written enough comedic memoir about that episode that it's clear I'm not bitter; actually, I'm quite proud that I've risen above my "letter of censure."  But I am still bemused by the Dean of Freshmen's sense of priorities.  No wonder the mixer took the form it did.

Howard Anderson

I arrived with an entourage that included my grandmother, born in 1893 and forced to quit school at age 14 and go to work as a domestic. She spent a lot of time sitting on the porch of the Hanover Inn while the rest of us were out doing various things. She found the campus beautiful, but was less impressed with how most of us were dressed, which did not fit the image she had formed of what Ivy League gentlemen should wear. Grams was especially appalled by the number of students she saw wearing loafers that had to be held together by duct tape. “They look like a bunch of hobos,” she told me. Can’t imagine her reaction if I described the basement of the DKE house, which I had been dragooned into mopping by a couple of brothers who saw me wearing a freshman beanie.

Sherwood Guernsey

My father and mother drove me to Hanover just before the Freshman trip and deposited me with a suitcase at Wheeler Hall where I joined roommate Buck Strewler (surgeon to be, who never seemed to study but got good grades).  I remember the freshmen trip mostly because of meeting other classmates on the hike and John Sloan Dickey’s talk at the end of the trip. I was proud to be there from a small town in upstate NY...and my dad memorably said to me as he left: “a mighty oak from an acorn grows”. I remember laughing to myself at his dramatic prose as I walked away, but of course in retrospect, I knew he meant how proud he was of me.

As for the gauntlet, it was thoroughly, amazingly unbelievable. Animal house indeed.  But I was there freshman year…uncomfortable but there. It was the major reason I supported coeducation for Dartmouth.   The good news for me was that I soon met on a blind date a young woman from Mt Holyoke whom I later married, and she used the bus coming up to the mixers as transportation to meet me!!!

Warren Cooke

I was fortunate to get to know Dartmouth a year early.

During the Summer of 1963 I worked up the river in Thetford Hill, Vermont for a teacher from my Philadelphia school at his ancestral Vermont home.  I became familiar with Dartmouth by way of concerts at Hopkins Center (Vincent Persichetti was composer-in-residence) and a variety of other visits to the campus.  I loved the place.  I had an interview on campus with an (I think) assistant dean with a view to expressing my interest in applying.  I can’t remember his name but I do remember that in reaching to shake hands I managed to stomp on his foot. Figured the ball game was over right there.

When my parents drove me up from the Philadelphia area to Hanover to start in 1964 (which took forever; I-91 was in the future) I mainly felt happy to be back in such an idyllic place, which I had gotten to know. I was pleased, too, that my Wheeler Hall roommate, then and for the next 4 years, was a classmate from that same Philadelphia school, Jon Snellenburg.

The only fly in the ointment was that my plans for Dartmouth had included getting together with my Thetford Hill girlfriend. Nope.  By the time I arrived she was dating a Marine.  Eventually I got past it.

Tom Stonecipher

Ah, the women we left behind!  My great Indiana friend and fraternity brother,John Russell, went skating with me at midnight on Occum Pond one winter evening while we tried to puzzle out the eternal and unanswerable questions about the girls we then loved who were back in Indiana.  Of course we had no answers, but the longing and suffering were very real, very bonding, and, with long, long hindsight, totally nuts. Both girls are off in the ether, never a part of our adult lives, but The Really Big Russ and I, friends unto death.

Dick Jones

i remember being pissed that i found out about the freshman trip too late to signup. my parents drove me up from Baltimore in the family station wagon (1963 ford). i did not have too much stuff, clothes, a small record player, my saxophone, and a typewriter. and yes, the trip was long, including the required stretch up state route 5 in Mass, pre-91. My father knew the way because he was class of ‘42.  They installed me in 214 New Hampshire, at which point my father showed me his old room, 205 New Hampshire, coveted because it had a fireplace, and told me the story of his first day on campus in 1938 when there was a hurricane that damaged New Hampshire Hall and most other campus buildings. my roommates Gordon Rule and Dave Peck (yes, that Dave Peck) had not arrived yet, they may have been coming back from the freshman trip. I was shuttled about getting a class schedule and seeing other buildings.

Somewhere in the first few days, we were sitting in the room in the afternoon, window wide open and we learned about the county wide fire call siren on the roof of the adjacent steam plant when it went off causing me to jump what felt like a foot off my chair…

Peter Wonson

This has been a fun thread, what with the almost dozen and a half recollections that seem sharper than the fog in my brain about our early days in Hanover. I had seen Dartmouth in the summer before our junior year in high school. My dad was Class of '40, and we took fairly frequent summer trips from Minnesota back to Massachusetts. That year we drove up to Hanover. I was gob smacked by what I saw and applied early decision.

I drove East in September with a high school classmate, who was going to take a postgrad year at Vermont Academy, in his family's big boat of a station wagon, similar no doubt to Dick's family wagon. Back then it was a three day trip, and we made the most of our "freedom." Because he had to be at school earlier than I did, and because I didn't want to miss that road trip with him, he dropped me off with my small steamer trunk in front of Wheeler Hall (I assume...that part's foggy).

Thus I had two days before freshmen were to report, and much of that time I spent walking around campus very intentionally, getting to know where places were, striding purposefully and swiftly like I'd been around that block more than once. My intent, of course, was to avoid to the extent possible the involuntary servitude that would face all of us once we had to wear beanies. As I recall, my preparations were almost 100% successful. I got nabbed once by some brothers at AD, but beyond that I evaded the long arm of the upperclassmen.

Unlike Dick and likely most of you, I was neither pissed that I had missed the trip nor on it. I simply had no interest. My loss, I suppose, though to this day I feel no regret.

John Engelman

I've tried to resist waxing nostalgic about my arrival at the College and the days gone by...but there have been so many interesting memories that I had to add mine.

My twin brother, Steve, and I were dropped off at the Chicago airport by our parents. They asked if we knew how to get from Boston to Hanover, and once we assured them that we did, they said goodbye and told us they would see us over Dartmouth Night weekend. Upon arriving at Logan, we walked to the terminal where our flight to Lebanon departed. There we met two classmates - Tim Burch and Fred Applebaum. We shared a cab to Hanover, and I made my way to Mid Mass, where I almost immediately ran into a '66 who had gone to my high school. He took me to the housing office where I picked up my room key, moved into 201 Mid Mass, and almost immediately fell asleep.

The next morning, I was walking down Mass Row when a car stopped, and an upperclassman asked if I was a '68. He then drove me down to his fraternity house at the end of Webster Ave. (AXA), and got me to work painting a room, while making sure I had plenty of beer. After the better part of an hour, and several beers, I headed up Webster Ave., only to be dragged into another fraternity, I think Kappa Sig. More work, more beer. Then another house, perhaps Beta.

By the time I got back to my room, I was covered with paint, dirty and sweaty, drunk, and smelling like a fraternity basement. Opened the door to find my roommate and his parents had just arrived. Needless to say, I did not make a great first impression.

Reflecting back on those early days, what we were subjected to by upperclassmen was clearly hazing, but at least for me, it was agreeable hazing, which allowed me to get a sense of one aspect of Dartmouth life that was not available to us as freshmen, once the term had started. I also met some classmates and upperclassmen who became friends and really eased my transition to Dartmouth. Those traditions (freshmen beanies and working for upperclassmen) are no longer around, and Dartmouth is probably a better place as a result. But I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.

Roger Witten

So, when I arrived at 106 South Mass, I was anxious to meet my roommate, Ben Johnson, and I was miffed that Railway Express had yet to deliver my things.  I met Ben and shared with him my assessment of Railway Express.  Ben's dad, I was to learn, was the CEO of Railway Express.  Things got better when we got past that and we were roommates for three years.

Peter Dunn

I am embarrassed to say it was all a blur—and still is...

My parents dropped me off.  I remember walking down Tuck and thinking this was the most beautiful place in the world…

I went to the top of Hitchcock, met my roommates Mark Clark and Gary Fouty.  Also met some of the best people ever across the hall, Mike O’Brien and his roommates.  Then went to the John and found a guy trying to straighten his hair.   I wondered what I had gotten into.

It is amazing how these things stick in our minds a half century.

Gary Horlick

I think the tours of different campuses before applying were not very common back then, so I and many of us had never seen Dartmouth in person until we got there. My Dad drove me up [my parents were road trippers which was great preparation for Dartmouth!] and I can still see clearly in my mind my first sight of the Green as we went up Main St. As we all know, no pictures capture fully how beautiful our campus is.

The next day the first day of my freshman trip started with a hike straight up the Skiway, in the middle of which the sophomore leading us took a break to upchuck! So, we redistributed the beers in his backpack and soldiered on.