Dink Starns was one of my Explorer Post leaders, including during the time of the 1963 Quetico trip. He was a big influence on my life and I was sad to hear that he has just passed away.
Dink worked for a publishing company and led the way on our 52 books project. We would identify 52 books for the coming year, which were important to read, would be of interest to adolescent boys, and were all available in paperback. Dink would bring in a copy of each for a display. We then had a program in which people talked about the books they knew. It was an unusual activity for an Explorer Post, and a novel way to increase interest in reading.
Here is one of the lists, probably from 1963, formatted as we saw it then. Each year would be different, although some books would have multiple appearances.The choices ranged from classics that we should have read, but hadn’t, to books that seemed risqué at the time, such as Fanny Hill or the Communist Manifesto.
Skimming the list below, your eyes might pass over Mutiny on Bounty. But that was significant. The remake of the Mutiny on the Bounty film had been released in 1962. It was based on the popular novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Those of us who had read that book or seen the movie knew all about the evil Captain William Bligh. The selection below is Bligh’s own account, which tells a quite different story, and caused us to ask those fundamental questions: What is the truth? How can we know?. Reading Bligh was a much better introduction to critical reading than some didactic programs that lead students down a prescribed path in an ironically uncritical fashion.
This particular list has selections from the Bible (Ecclesiastes), from ancient Greeks (Plutarch, Plato), and modern classics (Hugo, Kipling, Shaw). There are books by atheists and devout believers. There was a fairly good representation of international perspectives, given that all the books had to be in English. Some books might not rank high on quality or message, but they could get boys to read. Some were school classics, but many were read in school only when they could be safely hidden behind a large history or math book.
Books that seem non-controversial today brought a frisson at the time and place. The Ugly American, written just a few years earlier, called into question the patriotism that led to the Vietnam War and a boom to the Fort Worth economy dependent on an air force base and airplane and helicopter manufacture. To Kill a Mockingbird was not just a good story; it was a challenge to the prevailing racism in a city that thought if itself as the beginning of the West, but was still part of the segregationist South.
The overriding theme was that reading was fun, something to do and share with others, and something that would help you think in new ways. Those ideas were not widely accepted then, especially among boys of that age. Dink helped change that for me and many others.
- Auntie Mame
- Beau Geste
- Bligh, W. Mutiny on Bounty
- Brestit, History of Egypt
- Bridge over the River Kwai
- Buck, P. Good Earth
- Cervantes Don Quixote
- Chesterton, G. K. Father Brown
- Cuppy, W. The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody
- Ferber, E. Giant, Cimmarron
- Fisher, Gandhi
- Fitzgerald, F. S. Great Gatsby
- Fleming, I. James Bond
- Generation of Vipers
- Genghis Khan
- Golding, W. Lord of Flies
- Great Expectations
- Green Mansions
- Hilton, J. Good-by Mr. Chips
- Hilton, J. Lost Horizon
- Hugo, V. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
- In Midst of Life
- Irving, W. Sketch Book
- Keys of Kingdom
- Kipling, R. Kim, Jungle Books
- Last Hurrah
- Lee, H. To Kill a Mockingbird
- Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letter
- Magnificent Destiny
- Max Schulman
- Melville, H. Moby Dick
- Morehead, A. Blue Nile, White Nile
- Nutting , A. Lawrence of Arabia
- Orwell, G. Animal Farm
- Orwell, G. 1984
- Packard, V. (any)
- Plato Dialogues
- Plutarch Lives
- Rand, A. The Fountainhead
- Roark, R. Something of Value
- Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye
- Seven Days in May
- Shaw, G. B. Androcles and the Lion
- Six Days or Forever
- Solomon Ecclesiastes
- Stillwell Papers
- Stone, I. Sailor on Horseback
- Teahouse of August Moon
- The Little World of Don Camillo
- Twain, M. Huckleberry Finn
- Ugly American
- Voltaire, Candide
Chip's journey 
Michael Alexander: I was surprised by your comment. For me, it only reveals your false impression of Fort Worth in 1963. In the early- to mid-1960s, Explorer Post 52 at Trinity Episcopal Church, was a satellite of the university community that surrounded Texas Christian University. Although Fort Worth was always proud of its nickname, “Cowtown,” which reminded us of its roots as an important stop on the Chisholm Trail, during the late 1800s, by the 1960s, it was far from being just a cowtown. And, BTW, we don’t all wear cowboy boots and live on ranches.
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This list was the actual from one of the years, 1963, I think. I had kept paper copy and later typed it as is. I wish I had the other ones, and even the list of books that were considered and rejected.
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Thank you for this list. I remember Dink presenting his 52 Books List a couple of times during the late 1960s, when I was a Post 52 member. Of course, it was always a bit different. The majority stayed the same, but there were always new ones. Now that he is gone, I wish I had one of those lists. How many of the books on your list do you think were also on Dink’s list? I can identify several: Auntie Mame, Beau Geste (I read that when I was sophomore in high school, at Dink’s recommendation), Generation of Vipers, The Fountainhead, The Catcher in the Rye (which was all the rage in the ’60s), Seven Days in May, and a few of the others. I remember that he had The Egyptian, by Mika Waltari, on his list. In 1965, when I was a new Post member, I remember that several of us attended a high school football game together. I was an insignificant fly on the wall, as I was only 16 at the time. Dink and Larry Kleinschmidt started talking about Waltari’s The Egyptian, and rather than watch the football game, I listened intently to their conversation. In my mind, these were pretty cool, well-educated, erudite, witty, cultured guys. I wanted to be like them. At that point, they were my secret heroes, and in order to be cool, like them, I needed to start reading more. Now, I sit in my personal library of over 4,000 volumes. It all started with Dink. He will not be replaced.
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Quite a list! For Ft Worth in 1963!! I am surprised that he was able to keep his position. GK Chesterton and Ayn Rand? Sure, but there are some seriously subversive books on that list. Auntie Mame for god’s sake! Sex, booze and raucous irresponsibility!!! More dangerous than Marx – Karl or Groucho.
That makes two recent deaths of people important to you – one in the present and one from the past. My condolences.
Summer ending: is sanity returning to Wellfleet.
Mick
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