State-Wide Hunt Opens for Undergrad, Missing 19 Days

Son of an ex-governor of Maine, football and Varsity crew letter winner, and India Philology major Sylvester Gardiner '46 appeared on the "missing" circulars of the State Police issued last night 19 days after last being seen alive.

Last to talk to the 22 year-old College junior were his mother and younger brother, Thomas, on the night of January 23 at 10 o'clock in the family's Boston residence at 184 Beacon Street. The family's greatest fear is that Sylvester Gardiner may have gone through treacherous ice after he left them, possibly to indulge in moonlight skating on the Charles River.

Police in the Boston Missing Persons Bureau last night declared it "likely" that dragging operations would commence along the Basin and further up the River on this supposition.

Gardiner's Eliot House roommate and fellow Grotonian, James M. C. Ritchie '48, recalled yesterday that he had eaten dinner with Gardiner on the night of his disappearance, but that they parted from their fourth floor room an hour later, Ritchie remaining to study.

Ritchie said Gardiner was concerned about the Latin paper he was preparing, but that he was in good spirits with his two most difficult exams behind him.

No light could be shed last night on Gardiner's movements for the next hour and a half. But at 10 o'clock he surprised his family in the living room of his home, and asked hastily about the whereabouts of his ice skates. He departed without spending more than a few minutes.

Whether he actually walked out with his ice skates draped around his neck, intending to use them that night, or whether he was merely locating them for a future spin, an anxious family count of several pairs of ice skates in the house closets has failed to ascertain.