Bill Hibel wrote a most interesting letter telling of his activities. He entered Colby with the Class of 1944. If you still have your Colby Oracle for 1941, you will find him pictured with his Tau Delta Phi frat brothers. In my last column I mentioned that everything changed after Pearl Harbor, and Bill was one of many that left Colby. He enlisted in the Army and served three years, with half that time in the Pacific theater. He returned to Colby in February 1946 intending to resume where he left off. However he had met “a beautiful cadet nurse.” All thought of college was gone! They’re still happily married 65 years later and living in Florida. They have two children, both with a Ph.D., as well as grandchildren with advanced degrees. Fifty-seven years later Bill went back to night school and got an A.A. degree “just to have something to hang on the wall.” * Third time never fails, they say, and this was the year that Nancy Pattison McCarthy and I actually got together here in Rockport. She comes to the area each summer to visit her sister. We got together for lunch, with her daughter, Nancy, doing the driving. We spent a couple of hours just chatting and reminiscing. * Colby had a spectacular event this August in Rockport, Maine, at the Megunticook golf course clubhouse, hosted by Chase ’53 and Nan Murray Lasbury ’53. It was a large gathering in a spectacular location with speaker Professor G. Calvin Mackenzie and wife, Sarah Vose Mackenzie ’70. The subject was “Revisiting and Rethinking Vietnam.” They had just returned from a six-month sabbatical there, both as Fulbright Scholars. Most interesting, as most of us know so little about that country as it is now.
Fall 2012