To the Editor:
On Oct. 13, 1995, The Dartmouth asked the question "Is Dartmouth home of the frisbee?" Here's a partial answer.
While many universities, big and small, as well as some individuals and companies--most notably a pie company--claim the invention of the frisbee, only Dartmouth can point with pride to Levi Frisbie of the class of 1771. That's the very first class the College ever graduated, three years after Eleazer Wheelock founded the institution.
If the commencement ceremony that year was run alphabetically, like subsequent exercises, Levi Frisbie was the primordial Dartmouth graduate, the alpha of alums, the first of the four learned young men to accept a diploma at the College's first commencement. (John Wheelock was the last of the first.)
While the archives do not reveal any substantive connection between Levi and the frisbee as we know it, I like to imagine him leaving Hanover, a 23-year-old missionary to the Indians, sporting with his Native American disciples by tossing a disk back and forth between catechisms. Maybe the Indians had invented the frisbee earlier and named it in his honor. (Spelling wasn't a finite science back then.) Maybe not.
For the last 30 years of his life, having dutifully given voice in the wilderness, Levi Frisbie was a minister in Ipswich, Mass., a position which probably didn't encourage athletics or frivolity. He died in 1806, perhaps unaware of that eponymous disk. Perhaps not.
