At age 14, the first time she met Clyde Williams, Ruth Gatton knew he was the person she wanted to marry. "He was a little harder to convince," she laughs, but by the time she was 18 and he was 20, they were engaged.

This year the two are celebrating their 52nd wedding anniversary. The couple who introduced them at that long-ago party also married, and today the Williamses, who reside near Houston, visit these close friends during their trips to Baltimore.

Clyde and Ruth have strong ties in the Baltimore area, where both grew up and lived until Mr. Williams was transferred to Michigan by his employer, Bendix, in 1974. They were back in Maryland, in Fort Washington, from 1979 to 1985, when his job took them to Texas.

Among their closest friends on the East Coast are men and women they met at Johns Hopkins after World War II when Clyde, returning from service in Europe, entered the School of Continuing Studies to pursue a bachelor's degree in business, which he completed in 1956. In 1948 he was elected to the business fraternity for part-time students, Delta Sigma Pi, where investment clubs, golf clubs, and lifelong friendships were formed.

"There was a very close feeling among the friends who had survived this horrible war," Mrs. Williams reflects. "People were very ready to help each other, more so than seems the case these days. The friendships were very important, and they still are."

For many years, the Johns Hopkins Club was a popular meeting place for these friends and colleagues. "We had dinner at the Club probably 40 Sundays a year, plus holidays," Clyde Williams remembers. The wives would visit in the library lounge after dinner, he says, while the men went upstairs to play billiards.

Today, besides making annual gifts to Johns Hopkins, the Williamses have been particularly generous to the School of Continuing Studies on an unrestricted basis. Their most recent commitment is an especially substantial one that will provide an endowed fund for student aid at SCS.

"We would like to help somebody else out," Mr. Williams says. "I was fortunate to attend Hopkins on the GI Bill, and when I earned my master's, Bendix paid for it." He was in the first class of the School's pioneering Master of Liberal Arts program, graduating in 1965. "The folks at Bendix said, 'This degree doesn't have anything to do with business,' but they were glad to pay for it because of the other skills--writing and speaking, for example--that it gave me."

Now officially retired, Mr.

Williams still consults part of each year for his old company, now known as AlliedSignal. He has served on Hopkins' National Alumni Council and, as a member of the University's National Alumni Schools Committee, interviews prospective students in his region. He also makes himself available to SCS students seeking career advice.

The Williamses enjoy travel and have seen many areas of the world. Ruth Williams volunteers with the local Meals on Wheels and with the Houston Symphony League. "We have a wonderful

docent program," she relates. "We do a puppet show to introduce first-graders to all the various instruments. It's so much fun and the children seem to love it."

In Baltimore this fall, the Delta Sigma Pi chapter at SCS--one of the oldest chapters in the country--will celebrate its 75th anniversary. The Williamses, and the friends they made in the fraternity 50 years ago, have played a large part in its history- -and it in theirs.

The Alumni College in Tuscany, Italy, last July was an extra-special occasion for former Peabody student Joan Wolman Hollander and her husband, Bernard, celebrating their 50th anniversary, and for Duncan MacRae Jr., A&S '42, and Jane Sharp, just married in May. For them and the other 36 alumni and friends of Hopkins who made the excursion, it was fascinating sights, sounds, and flavors of an Italy both old and new. Amy MacRae, Duncan's daughter, who traveled with her husband, Gerald Brown, put her experiences into poetry:

To Tuscany

As we bid farewell to the land of
Brunella, Chianti,
olive oil and cheese,

As we gaze at perfect, sun-dappled hills,
clouds, and soaring swifts,

We wish we could capture this simple life in
a poem, a
photograph, a view out a window, a
memory, a painting,

We feel connected to the past--to thoughts,
actions and ideals
of people who lived and painted and
sculpted and worshipped
here half a millennium ago, and yesterday,

And we know we will return here some
day, to Tuscany.