Dartmouth's Best

Last winter Mercersburg Academy celebrated "Michelet Day." No famed alumnus of the long past was object of their honor, but a living man. He was, furthermore, a 22-year-old college boy, a senior at Dartmouth. Outsiders were puzzled or amused at such hero worship. But those who knew Bob Michelet understood the tribute and considered it fitting.

Robert Henry Michelet was born in Minneapolis in 1912, son of Simon D. Michelet, lawyer and political expert, famed for his analyses of election returns. In 1918 when Lawyer Michelet became secretary to Minnesota's onetime Senator

Knute Nelson, the family moved permanently to Washington. After grade school and a short time in Central High School, Son Bob went off to Mercersburg. There in two years he became a football and track star, treasurer of his class and a graduate aim laude. His schoolmates were proud to vote him the typical Mercersburg student.

His three older brothers had gone respectively to West Point, Annapolis and Princeton. Bob Michelet chose vigorous, informal, outdoor Dartmouth. Even there his clean-limbed 6 ft. 1 in. and 185 Ib. caught passing eyes. Elected captain, he led the freshman football team through a hard season undefeated. In the spring he was elected president of his class, received the William S. Churchill Prize as its outstanding member.

Light-haired, blue-eyed, with a long, lean, handsome face, wearing grey trousers and a green varsity sweater, he strode across Dartmouth's campus from honor to honor. Each autumn he played an "iron man" game at guard on the football team, each winter swam for the varsity, each spring hurled weights on the track team. And each spring his classmates re-elected him president. In junior year he was chosen president of the junior honor society, Green Key.

His professors were as proud of Bob Michelet as his classmates and coaches were. History was his favorite subject but he drew down A's in philosophy, political science, sociology and economics. No aloof paragon, he liked to watch hockey games, play casino, go to the movies, bring girls up to proms and the Winter Carnival. He never missed a chance to lend a fellow athlete a hand with his studies.

When senior year came last autumn his world outdid itself to honor him. The faculty which had already made him a Senior Fellow, gave him a Phi Beta Kappa key. Sportswriters named him on All-Eastern football teams. Varsity swimmers and trackmen chose him captain. His Psi Upsilon fraternity brothers made him their president. His classmates, who had already elected him their president, put him in the presidency of their honor society, Casque & Gauntlet. Dartmouth at large chose him to head the student governing body. When he went up before a Rhodes Scholarship committee last autumn, it saw at once that here was just the kind of man for whom Cecil Rhodes had set up his trust.

Last week his classmates voted Bob Michelet their most versatile, most popular, most respected member, and the one who had done most for Dartmouth. Then they paid him their last and greatest honor, unanimously electing him permanent president of the class. That was extraordinary because Bob Michelet was dead.

Last February, as student president, Michelet arranged a memorial service for the nine Dartmouth men killed in their sleep by carbon monoxide (TIME, March 5). But while other students were filing to the chapel, he was on his way to Dick Hall's House infirmary with a heavy cold. The cold became pneumonia. Empyema developed, clogging his lungs. In two weeks students marched once more to Rollins Chapel, for two hours filed past the coffin where Bob Michelet lay beneath the Dartmouth seal.

President Ernest Martin Hopkins delivered the eulogy: "He had strength of character combined with a sweetness which made it persuasive. He had uncommon mental capacity, entirely devoid of intellectual arrogance. He had that charm of personality which attaches to one of independent judgment. He had that quality of soul which makes a man a spiritual influence, whether within or without the forms of conventional religious expression. Remembrance of him is too vivid to put in the past tense. The memories of him are of a boy whom to know about was to admire, whom to work with was to respect, whom to associate with was to love."

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