Page 11 - 1954 VES Meteor

Alumni News
(Continued from poge I0, col. 3)
1936
The Rt. Rev. William Jones Gor-
don, Jr. has been chosen among the ten top young men of America for 953 by the U. S. Junior Chamber of Commerce. H e is known as t h e "Fiy- ng Alaskan Bishop." In the past four years he has flown over I00,000 .miles carrying his work among the Eskimos, Indians a n d w h i t e p e o p l e . H e h a s not only been spirituaI leader of the Eoiscopalians, b u t has also filled in ~~ a teacher in the Alaskan native iChool with 75 children under his care. He has done medical work for a vil- ~ge of 275 Eskimos who were 175 miles from the nearest doctor. He has been Lighthouse keeper. He has been Superintendent of the Point Hope reindeer herd, radio operator, ~nd Chairman of the Office of Price Administration. A very busy young
man!
It is now Dr. Bates McCluer Gil-
liam, PhD. Mack received his degree as Doctor of Philosophy from Prince-
The Bookworm's Corner
(Continued from poge 4, col. 3)
Which, as we all know, ain't true; ask any private school teacher.
To see the connection all one must do is to make one's brain work after the twisted fashion of the gears in a wormy wit. The problem deals with the decline in reading and readers (and literate bookw~rms.)
This worm was f1rst made sorely conscious of the problem when he skimmed through the pages of E. B. White's latest delightful fling, The Second Tree from the Corner. His attention was arrested by White's re- port of a conversation with a college president who pointed out flatly (why no tears?) that in fifty years only 5<}'o of America's population will be read- ing. Out of a possible 180 million only a minute population of 9 milli.on will be reading those books wh1ch have helped make Western Civiliza- tion achieve its present greatness. What will the other 171 million be doing, involving themselves in Mr. Barzun's list of "American play hab- its"? Who will the 9 million be, La- Farge's fellow private school gradu- ates? And what will become of old L. V. if VES should be turned into a finishing school dedicated to proper T-V deportment? (Sorry; video- worms are not yet in style.)
The sorry thing about Mr. Barzun's otherwise delightful article was the fact that he failed to list reading as one of the pleasure time pursuits of Americans, along with "touristing," baseball, and lectures. One hopes that his article was deliberately in- complete and not final.
One notes, pessimistically, a com- mon thread in Barzun's trio, the thread of an American habit recently become an acute problem-the fact of a growing "spectatoritis." From the woman rocking all day in the tourist hotel's comfortable chair, from the avid baseball fan, from the enthralled lecturee, from the person suffering with T-V-incited suspension
Thomas M. Alexander, Jr., has made the Dean's List again at M.I.T. Congratulations, Tom.
Robert M. Hughes, II, is the proud father of a daughter, Patricia. He will get out of the navy in the sum- mer of 1954 and expects to go to Law School at U. Va.
(Continued on poge 14, col. 3)
of the powers of ambition to a main- ly non-reading, non-literate , non- articulate society is not TOO far a jump after all! ..
Literacy is more than the obdlty to read: it is the ability to compre- hend in our own language plus the desire to recognize books as the cornerstone of our culture.
This worm, su rrounded by picture magazines and picture books of all kinds, remembers, wit h a satirical twitch, another of White's essay; in Quo Vadimus. White notes here that magazines get smaller and smaller until they are readable in a matter of minutes, until the macrocosm of meaning in the world comes pre- digested and sugar-coated so as not to disturb the "even tenor" of our ways. In his earlier book, White re- vealed to us a ray of optimism when he pointed out that large magazines soon returned to "explain" the cap- sulized meaning of the small ones. In his latest, he does not allow us that hope. If we are to prevent the ulti- mate childishness of our civilization, we must begin to work out its salva- tion with diligence. W e must re- member that Spengler's ideas were not prophecies; they were only opin- ions about the ultimate ends of cer- tain unchecked tendencies.
White points out that, if there were only one reader in our entire civilization, he would be worth saving. He could be a "king" bee in a large hive of drones, a purveyor of intellect to the mechanistic civilization around him, a single b u t powerful symbol of contradiction to that anti-ration- alistic attitude which Europeans say characterizes the present American culture.
And where can he be saved? La- Farge points our attention to the pri- vate school. As an educator as well as an author, LaFarge indicates that his college students can't write and that they can read "well enough," but not well enough to grasp con- nections, underlying meanings, or to understand allusions to material out- side the narrow confines of the sub- ject matter of a textbook. In a word, they are illiterate. They aren't dumb; they are merely indications of the general mediocrity of our literacy. We are going to have a Iorge crop of tares in our field of educational wheat: semi-illiterates in a world where clear thinking and wisdom are
ton last Lawrence
Congratulations.
week .
Raleigh where Hinky surance business.
is
in
t h e In-
1938
a n d Franc es
Blanchard
of Richmond, Va., have a daughter, Sarah Hallum, born December 22. Congratulations.
1941
David Collin Barnes, Jr. was mar-
ried to Priscilla West Hubbard of Heathsville, Virginia. The wedding was November 28.
Robert Paschal Shook was married to Adele Winton Wells in Wayzata, Wisconsin on January 16.
Fleming Saunders and Sara Wilson Harold, of Norfolk, will be married on February 27 in Norfolk.
1942
Hinsdale (Hinky) Joslin and Mar-
garet Elizabeth Wilson were married on October 23rd. They will live in
1944
William Shepherd Drewry, Jr. has
opened an office for the General p r a c t i c e La w , a t 2 0 3 1 9 t h S t r e e t , Virginia Beach, Va. Lots of luck Shep.
1947
Lt. Perrin Gower has returned from a tour of duty in the Air Force in Korea. He was decorated for flying 80 in an F-86. He and his family are now at Valdosta, Go.
(Continued on poge I5, col. I)
THE METEOR
13
ALUMNI