Frederic Merrill Sibley Jr. ’34

Fred Sibley, our class poet and former poet laureate of a century-old literary club in Detroit, died Nov. 2, 2003, less than a month after his 92nd birthday.

For several years after WWII he was president of the family business, F.M. Sibley Lumber Co. in Detroit, Michigan's largest retail lumber business. In 1946 he founded the Sawtooth Lumber Co. in Idaho and was active there as senior partner until 1980. In 1983 he published An Iambic Odyssey, a volume of verse with an orange and black cover and several Princeton poems.

In 1989 he wrote these lines after attending our 55th reunion: "Old Nassau lures us back each year/ To youth recalled in ecstasy./ This heritage we hold so dear/ Is graven in our memory./ Oh, cherished University,/ We bow in reverence and awe./ God grant us the sagacity/ To guide and prosper Old Nassau."

Fred was married in 1948 to Joan Stroh, and the couple had four children, Frederic M. III '71, Julie, Jeffrey, and Lorraine, all of whom survive.

As we approach our 70th reunion, these lines Fred wrote may be fitting: "How will our last reunion be/ As we approach eternity?/ Through frailty and senility/ The self may reach inanity . . . "

The Class of 1934