John Marshall Hills

The years have brought no change of character to conversation in the after-luncheon group of the Graham Library. It has always ranged from good-humored controversy over the day’s events to exchange of ideas on new developments in science, discovery or invention, and from that to reminiscence of other times suggested by all such topics of present interest. But the personnel of the after-luncheon gathering inevitably shifts in the remorseless flight of time and, with John Marshall Hills, one of its lately most familiar figures has followed Putnam, Hinchman, SpackmanMember profile currently not available; contact Archivist for information on this Centurion, Metcalfe and a score of others with whom memories of the older-time Graham Library group are intimately associated. Dr. Hills was invariably present at the post-prandial conference, to which, in his characteristically explosive voice, his special contribution was apt to be odd recollection concerning times now far away. The doctor’s own experiences had been curiously varied; they ranged from brief participation in the Civil War to maritime ventures in the days when wooden merchantmen sailed for the whale fisheries or for a business cruise around the world from his native Newburyport. But, with him as with most of the rest of us, these were only pictures of the past; during many decades he had been a plain New Yorker.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1932 Century Association Yearbook