Douglas Webster ’42

Douglas Webster, a Malaysian rubber planter who marched to a different drummer than most of us, died Feb. 9, 2004, in San Diego.

Douglas prepared at the Sequoia School in Redwood City, Calif. At Princeton he majored in history, acted in Theatre Intime, and was a member of the history club and Cloister Inn.

After serving in the Army infantry in World War II as a first lieutenant, Douglas joined Goodyear Rubber. In our tenth yearbook, he told us was managing rubber plantations; his business address was Goodyear Rubber Plantation, G.R.P. Rengham Johore, Malaya. By our 20th, he was general representative and director of P.T. Baud in Djakarta, Indonesia. Thirty years later, he was "currently a planter" and told us about exposure to communist guerillas during the uprisings in Malaya, "(dangers) probably greater than any I faced during (World War II)."

Douglas said he was "keen on history, conversation, drama, gardening, bridge and swimming." A candid man, Douglas was an outspoken anglophile who wrote how he deplored communism in his book The Wobble, and opposed coeducation at Princeton as a threat to traditions he cherished.

To his nephew, Peter Webster, and family, the class extends its condolences.

The Class of 1942