Education: Class of ’56

Two years ago, on his 89th birthday, Chauncey Mitchell Depew, Yale ’56, received an invitation from fellow Elis of the class of ’89 to join their number, be their brother, attend their class reunions as adopted patriarch. Mr. Depew accepted this “beautiful and welcome hospitality.”

Mr. Depew is distinguished. Lawyer, politician, public and post-prandial orator, he has seen many years full of service and honor. And the class of ’89 is a distinguished class in its own right, patriarch or none. Of its 120 mem bers, there were at one-and-the sametime 17 occupying seats on benches of the judiciary. It has contributed 27 district attorneys and corporation counsels to our legal aristocracy. Lately it has styled itself “famous class”* without fear of contradiction.

Thus the consociation of Mr. Depew and the class of ’89 might have seemed simply a flocking of like-feathered birds but for a letter written last week by Mr. Depew to his new brethren on the occasion of their annual dinner in Manhattan. This letter gave the impression that ’89 had had a secondary motive, akin to the kindly one that actuates hospitable neighbors who invite a lonely widower to share their Thanksgiving turkey.

Mr. Depew wrote:

The proprietor of the Taft Hotel, New Haven, wrote to me that this was a decennial year for my class of ’56, and he would be glad to reserve rooms for the members of the class, and a banquet hall for our dinner. I answered that there were only two of us living and only one who might come.

On my 89th birthday the class of ’89 made me a member. It was a beautiful and most welcome hospitality. It is renewing my youth; it takes 33 years off from my age and associates me with the healthy and vigorous maturity of the class of ’89. Dr. Faust sold himself to the devil to gain the results, and the use he made of it sent him to Hell. But the inspiration and joy of camaraderie with the class of ’89 is the full realization of the Yale spirit.

Fraternally,

(Signed) CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

Unfortunately this letter appeared in public print—unfortunately, because in it Mr. Depew was guilty of a most uncharacteristic error that might well have injured the feelings of three persons; unfortunately, because the three persons had grounds for regret on two accounts; unfortunately, because the three persons were all classmates of Mr. Depew in ’56, two the existence of whom Mr. Depew had patently forgotten or overlooked.

In failing to state which of his classmates he did recall, Mr. Depew left each of the three prey to the impression that Mr. Depew knew him for a living man no longer. And to each of the three it was quite apparent that Mr. Depew had lost his heart, if he had not sold his soul, to healthily, vigorously mature ’89. So that even were a ’56 reunion patched up after all, they could hardly hope to find their old classmate the contented, wholehearted companion of years gone by.

But Mr. Depew’s three living classmates made no public plaint or protest. They may have pondered wistfully the oblivion which time brings to all men. They may have reflected sadly, “And some day even Chauncey will have been forgotten.” They may have wondered which of them would outlive the others, perhaps to be chaired around Yale Field mid cheers and bunting as Oldest Living Graduate. At all events, in their three corners of the country, Mr. Depew’s three living classmates held their aged peace. They were: Dr. Virgil M. Dow, retired medico of New Haven, Conn.; James L. Rackleff, lawyer of Portland, Me.; and Nathan L. Hazen, agriculturalist of Philo, Ill., who, though he discontinued his studies at the end of his first year of Yale, still remembers. . . .

* Some of its more potent members: Thomas E. Donnelley, Chicago printer; George P. Douglas, Minneapolis lawyer; Joseph R. Ensign, Simsbury, Conn., manufacturer; Samuel H. Fisher, Manhattan lawyer; John R. Galt, Hawaiian banker; Edward J. Gavegan, New York Supreme Court Judge; Robert L. Luce, Manhattan lawyer; Edward L. Parsons, San Francisco bishop; Charles C. Paulding, Manhattan railroad lawyer and nephew of Mr. Depew; Gifford Pinchot, Pennsylvania Governor; Robert Treat Platt, Portland (Ore.) lawyer; James Gamble Rogers, Manhattan architect; Charles H. Sherrill, Manhattan lawyer; George W. Woodruff, Pennsylvania Attorney General.