Football recruiting has brought great players to Dartmouth over the years. But it also is responsible for attracting players who go on to make their marks not on the playing field, but in other areas.
Meet Dimitri Gerakaris '69, profiled for graduation weekend in the local Valley News for creating a wall relief sculpture of John Kemeny, the Dartmouth president from 1970-81, at his forge/studio in Canaan, N.H. Written by former Sports Illustrated writer Robert Sullivan, a member of the Dartmouth Class of 1975 – the class that commissioned the sculpture – the VN story begins this way:
This is a tale of two fellows, a college student and his math professor. The kid in our story graduated from Dartmouth back in 1969 and still lives nearby with his wife. He’s 77 now — an older “kid” — and continues to toil in a home studio and out back at his forge. He is, in his seniority, an artist of considerable renown, a sculptor who for decades has specialized in heavy-metal fine art installations and smaller pieces. His work has graced private households and public spaces from Opryland to Oz.
And here's the kicker:
“I was recruited from a small town in Illinois by Dartmouth football and attracted by the school’s setting and approach, so I attended this college I’d never heard of,” he says.
Gerakaris is listed as a 5-foot-11, 222-pound defensive tackle from Palatine, Ill., on the 1966 Dartmouth football roster.
The Valley News story about him is behind a paywall, but if you haven't been a regular visitor to the newspaper's site you can read the story for free HERE. To learn a little more about Gerakaris, check out a Dartmouth Alumni in Design and Architecture story HERE.
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The college has a release about planned improvements to venerable Thompson Arena HERE. The release notes that the work will include "new locker rooms, team lounges, sports medicine spaces, a weight room, a coaches' suite, as well as a new donor and fan hospitality space on the concourse level."
Green Alert Take: Watching the video that accompanies the release, I couldn't figure out where the "donor and fan hospitality space" could be situated on the concourse level. This still image from the video shows it will be tacked onto the back of the building:
Green Alert Take II: What I've long thought is Thompson needs an addition like that on the front end of the facility to relieve the congestion entering the building. The foyer, where tickets are sold and spectators queue up to get through the doors on cold winter nights, is simply too crowded.
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EXTRA POINT
Waking up particularly early this morning I decided rather than try to get back to sleep I'd pull on my hiking shoes and hit the trail. While I try not to think of my daily hike as being about exercise, it's nice to have it in the books, particularly when it's sprinkling, as it is right now.
