Tag: 1945

Camp Hale, the site of the training of the 10th Mountain Division, is now going to be renovated and I am part of the committee that is deciding what should happen to it. It is now a national monument and it was very important to the development of the entire ski industry in Colorado. Senator Michael Bennet ’87, a group of local historians, the forest service, and so forth, are going to meet in September about the particulars and specifics to make this site attractive and informative for the general public. As a member of the committee, I am one of the few remaining veterans who was at Camp Hale during World War II.

The 10th Mountain Division trained at Camp Hale for about two years before we went to Italy for our assignment, which was to drive the Germans out of the Apennines, across the Po River Valley, up to the Alps, and then to the other pass to prevent them from getting into Austria and joining the German troops. We did this in five months, until the war ended.

I will keep you informed over the next months about the progress and particulars of the efforts to renovate the old Camp Hale site. The best book on the subject of the 10th Mountain Division is Soldiers on Skis by Flint Whitlock and Bob Bishop. I recommend that you get a copy to learn about this unique and elite military history. I hope to have specifics by our next issue of the magazine.

Slán go fóill.

Since my last column, it has been very gratifying to me to receive the number of favorable comments from so many alumni. When you get to be probably the only member of the class, it’s better to receive information from outside its confines than to just sit and talk to yourself. I have no word from any individual from the class, the actual class of 1945, so I speak for all or none as you wish. As a result of the recent publicity I received in dealing with matters of the 10th Mountain Division and Camp Hale becoming a national monument, I can now tell you that the Denver NBC station is planning a documentary concerning the 10th Mountain’s influence on not just land and monuments but also the impact on the economy that the development of the ski industry in Colorado has bought. When the members of the 10th Mountain Division came back from Italy, numbers of them came back to Colorado and settled into building ski resorts. Such places as Vale, Copper, Arapaho, et al., were built by entrepreneurs who saw a need and filled it. Not only ski resorts but the entire ski industry—for instance, manufacturing new and better skis, improving boots, safety harnesses—all the gear associated with skiing came under their observation and development. As a consequence, Colorado has become famous for its ski offerings and famous in all areas of the ski industry from the planks people now ski on to the post-skiing fireside delights that the resorts offer.

I am proud of my association with the 10th Mountain Division, am happy in being part of all that it has offered and brought to Colorado, and am satisfied that out of all this will come some significant development of the old Camp Hale site. It was a pleasure for me to get to know two alumni senators, Michael Bennet ’87 and John Hickenlooper ’74.

As we used to say in parting, “Ski heil.”

Slán go fóill.

Your scribe, Bud Lovett, has been hard at work getting Colorado’s Camp Hale established as a national monument. Bud worked with the state’s senators, Michael Bennet ’87 and John Hickenlooper ’74, on this project. He said more details to come next issue.

It would have been one of my 100th birthday wishes to gather with my friends.

Each of us six—Bill Cunningham ’47, Peter Hemmenway ’48, Frank Bowles ’44, Phil Dundas ’48, Tex Reynolds ’48, and I—would come together at Sal’s to play a round of liar’s dice and quaff a cheap beer. We were all teachers from 1947 through 1986, and we had seen great changes over those years. Each had taught secondary, three had gone on to college teaching, and we agreed that time back then had been given to subject matter that required thinking for oneself, not as you were told to think. We urged students to study facts, not opinions. We hoped that they would learn that in a world so little understood there should be room for two to be mistaken. Two on the same side or on opposing sides? Two people? Two causes? Two subject matters? Two truths? Party over, we broke up still clinging to our belief that subject matter is better for fact rather than opinion, which can lead to preaching morals or ethics, or racial outrage or sexual anguish. Some subject matter is better suited to the classrooms of religion or medicine, or even the home, we argued among ourselves. We lamented the passing of the time when students accepted that they had not lived long enough to know who was or was not qualified to teach what, nor should free speech be free only when it says what you want to hear. We had worried, too, about the current stage of political correctness. Why multiple valedictorians? Why euphemisms for words denoting sex or gender, or race? Have we become so fearful of being accused of being prejudiced that we make verbal pablum of robust words; and that is simply obsequious censorship. We last remnants of the class of 1945 urge the inclusion of factual history as subject matter, for we hear echoes of the suppressions of our past. Remember the fraternity landmarks? We 45ers remember what we fought for. Censorship was not among our ideals. Nor are foul discourse, rampage, or gun madness.

Slán go fóill.

We were very sorry to hear of the passing of Edward J. Huth on November 2, 2021, at the age of 98. His wife Carol wrote to us to say, “Ed always spoke very highly of his years at Wesleyan. He was particularly influenced by Fred Millet who thought highly of Ed’s writing ability, using him to copy read a book he was publishing. Millet also included one of Ed’s papers in his Christmas greeting. Wilbur Snow was another teacher Ed remembered with gratitude.” Our most sincere condolences to Carol and their family.

My birth came in July 1922, so 2021 was my 100th Christmas and still no pony. That sobering thought set me thinking about “time’s wingèd chariot.” There was a time when the focus in the high school classroom was on teaching the fundamentals—reading, history, English composition—and setting an example of what it meant to be a good student and decent human being. During the early 1950s, Bill Cunningham ’47 and I were teaching at Chicago Latin and were eager to send good young men to Wesleyan. With the help of Don Eldredge ’31 and Jim Wood 1915, we first persuaded David Noble ’56, followed by Jack Dearinger ’57, Bill Wallace ’57, and Norm Wissing ’57, to attend Wesleyan. Over the past dozen years, Dave and I have corresponded occasionally, and currently Jack and I are in contact. Sad to say, Norm has died, and of Bill, I have known nothing since he entered Wesleyan. They were good students and good men. In 1986 the University of Chicago named me Outstanding Secondary School Teacher. You four taught me how to become that teacher. Thank you. I miss the classroom.

Slán go fóill.

FRANCIS W. LOVETT | lovettfrancis@gmail.com

2444 Pratt St., Apt. 232, Longmont, CO 80501 | 970/939–6674

This column marks the beginning of my 99th mortal year, my 32nd year of secretarial jottings, and I’m nesaki (Mohawk word meaning “standing on a high hill, looking backward”). I have climbed and stood, walked, even slept atop numbers of the Rockies, bits of the Alps, all of the gentle old Adirondacks, and several of New England’s White and Green heights. Always, the view, were it at dawn, midday, or sunset, was an inspiration, sometimes an admonition, occasionally a windblast scare; but it never failed to lift the horizon to the level of my vision. And that’s why we go high. My walking the top of the world is years gone and my visions are memories; clear, keen, and colorful memories. The eye of the mind is indeed a treasure.

Returned to the Hill of Class Notes, I look backward to September of 1941, when a generally happy, sometimes boisterous collection of youths were buying affordable textbooks, completing class schedules, visiting fraternity houses, trying out for teams or music groups, and making new friendships that were sure to hold forever, according to the Wesleyan songs. The Depression was fading; Hitler, and occasionally Mussolini, were newsreel interludes at the movies. But that was there, we were here, and the class of 1945 settled into planning four years of the Wesleyan adventure. Seven weeks later the explosions at Pearl Harbor blew the class of 1945 into fragments that scattered graduations all the way through 1949. We went to the war to end all wars, and some of us never returned to Wesleyan—some too damaged, some to other colleges, some already at rest in honored cemeteries, or in unknown places in other parts of the world. We were one class for a brief time, but our fragments have added luster to the entire 40s decade of the Wesleyan adventure. So, from my secretarial hilltop I look out and back, and I see that scattered, tattered class again a whole force, the like of which will not be seen again.

Slán go fóill.

Those with class notes, please contact: 

FRANCIS W. LOVETT | lovettfrancis@gmail.com

315 14th Street, Unit A, Windsor, CO 80550 | 907/460-9338