John Engelman, ’68, and Mike Gonnerman, ’65.

While some might claim that New York’s Times Square is the “crossroads of the world,” two Dartmouth graduates might suggest otherwise. Dartmouth Green’s crushed-stone walkways could easily wear that unofficial title, based on both alums’ decades of manning the Information Booth on the Green’s eastern edge at College Street. John Engelman, ’68, and Mike Gonnerman, ’65, serve as volunteers who answer questions from visitors and are both also comanagers, scheduling the other 15 volunteers who meet and greet visitors from May through October.

Early on, the college decided that the paying positions would transition to volunteer spots. Eventually, Sphinx, a senior society foundation, stepped in to cover costs needed to keep the service and booth going. The current white kiosk structure was designed by Dartmouth College architect Nelson Aldrich and was built in 1957. It occupies a tiny plot of the Green’s five acres and part of the college’s overall 269-acre main campus. Mike Gonnerman, an economics major with a minor in Spanish, claims there has even been interest from a potential buyer of the building. “In fact, at that time, there was one volunteer who offered to buy and pay for the booth, but the college wasn’t interested in selling it,” he says.

Visitors from Near and Far

John Engelman, a government major, enjoys his time meeting the unpredictable stream of people, most of whom have questions about the school. “I have a lot of time on my hands, and this helps keep me out of trouble,” he jokes. “I’ve been doing this for, I don’t know, 20, 25 years now. It’s a lot of fun because you meet people literally from all over the world and there’s nothing a Dartmouth alum likes to do better than wax nostalgic about Dartmouth College.”

Each on-duty volunteer keeps a written record of where each visitor is from and the nature of their query. Thousands visit every year from dozens of foreign lands and of course the United States, according to Mike. “I had a fellow come up one day and said, ‘It gets cold up here.’ He was from California and he said his son was going to want to try out for the football team. And he said, ‘How do they get here when it’s snowy?’ I said, ‘Well, they take buses.’ He didn’t know that you could take buses in the snow in New Hampshire.”

Info Spanning the Century

Then there are questions about Dr. Seuss, who attended Dartmouth College, class of 1925. If you were to ask John about the famed children’s author’s time on campus, you’d get a story you may never have heard. “So, his [real] name was Theodore Geisel and he wrote for the Dartmouth humor magazine, the Jack-O-Lantern, now known as the Jacko. And at one point, he was sanctioned by the college for some kind of [inappropriate public behavior]. One of his punishments was he could no longer write for the Jack-O-Lantern [which he had been doing] under the name Geisel, but he used his mother’s maiden name, Seuss, and submitted articles for the Jacko under that name. And that is, as I understand it, how his pen name became Dr. Seuss,” John claims.

Among the many photos in the Info Booth archives is that of a Dr. Seuss character, a Lorax doll. “There was a stump on the corner of Main Street and Wheelock, which is right across from the street from the Hanover Inn,” John explains. “It’s the busiest corner in town. The tree apparently was diseased and they took it down and somebody put a Lorax there,” as in the Dr. Suess book on trees and the environment.

The Dartmouth College Information Booth is, as you’d expect, very dog friendly. A bowl of fresh water is always at the ready and some frequent canine visitors literally walk into the booth looking for a dog biscuit that they know is waiting for them.

Volunteers are often asked about the Appalachian Trail, which goes right through Hanover. “We also have Trail Angels who are local residents who help the hikers,” Mike adds. “They provide meals for the hikers and showers and a place to sleep and will drive them to
appointments and so forth. In the post office, there’s a place where Appalachian Trail hikers’ mail is dropped in the corner.”

Volunteers who opened the booth for the 2024 season, from left: Mike Gonnerman, Betsy Gonnerman, Dick Olson, ’68, Ann Malenka, ’80, Greg Ames, ’90, Andrew Steele, ’79, and college worker Dafyyd Wood.

 

And Of Course, Animal House

While most guests ask questions about needed information, Animal House anecdotes have been known to slip out on occasion, as the bawdy ’70s college movie was fictionally set at Dartmouth College. John recalls when a family and their collegebound daughter stopped at the booth to talk and the dad said, “My wife and my daughter are on the college tour. I didn’t want to take it. The only thing I really wanted to see was Animal House.”

“And it so happened that I was a member of the fraternity that inspired National Lampoon’s Animal House. So I sent him over to the fraternity, told him how to get in, told him that if any of the undergraduate members questioned him being there to mention my name. If they didn’t stone him to death, they would welcome him. About 15 minutes later he came back and I said, ‘Well, what do you think of the fraternity?’ He said, ‘It was very nice. And the young men in the fraternity were very, very courteous and very helpful, but it didn’t look anything like the house in the movie.’ I had to explain to him that the movie was filmed at the University of Washington and it was an old, dilapidated house that was eventually torn down and it was not filmed here, and he was terribly disappointed.”

John was also quick to point out none of the flick’s frat-boy characters were inspired by him, confessing, “The fellow who wrote Animal House was a member of the class of 1963 and that was before I arrived at Dartmouth.” For more information, contact the Dartmouth College Alumni Office, (603) 646-2258.