The Princeton Class of 1963

Date: 4/2/2008
Year: 2007-2008
Issue: 11

April 2, 2008

At Alumni Day, Feb. 23, DENNIS KELLER received one of Princeton’s greatest tributes, the prestigious Harold Helm Award for meritorious service to AG. At the occasion, President Tilghman said this of our remarkable former class president: “Dennis has risen above and beyond the call of duty on every single occasion when Princeton has called upon him.” At the annual Service of Remembrance that day, MIKE PARTNOW represented us in remembering WALT ACUFF, SQUIRE KNOX, ALAN MCCLAIN, and DOUG O’KIEFFE, whom we lost last year.

From St. Ann’s School in NYC, BILL EVERDELL writes, “Still teaching, now to the children of former students.” Bill just initiated a fascinating adult-education course called “The Monarchical American President and How It Got That Way.”

BOB STAFFORD reports that BECK GILBERT has just been named chairman of the board of fellows at Harvard Medical School. Beck’s passion for his own medical education, reducing med students’ debt levels, and adapting medical education to the video-game generation are the key factor in this ascension to leadership.

Here’s a great story. Writer Dan Jenkins was researching a legal project involving claims of religious conscience in the federal courts and civil-rights tribunals, with particular regard to the Amish. He found a copy of DICK ADAMS’ careful and well-written 1963 Princeton thesis, “The Amish vs. Social Security,” in the Goshen College library and described it as “like stumbling into a gold mine.”

Through the Internet, Jenkins got in touch with Adams, now a judge, a family-support magistrate in Middletown, Conn., and the two have corresponded. Says classmate Dick, “It is exciting to have my all-consuming senior year project (that earned me the privilege of keeping a car near campus and driving it whenever I wanted to leave town!) prove useful half a century later.” Now all of us will be waiting for our senior theses to be discovered.
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