Howell Webb ’39

HOWELL DIED of cancer Oct. 2, 1993. One of the first five students in Princeton's divisional program in Humanities, his degree was in English and Humanities. In 1940, he began a distinguished career in secondary and primary education in Bell Buckle, Tenn., at the Webb School, established in 1870 by his grandfather.

Fluent in Spanish, French, and German, he spent the WWII years in the F.B.I. as a counterespionage agent and later served the prosecution at the Nuremberg trials. He then returned to teaching, this time at the Webb School in Claremont, Calif., established by his father in 1922. In 1954, he was founding headmaster of Foothill Country Day School in Claremont, retiring in 1986.

He was a teacher and the author of a Latin textbook, THE ROAD To GAUL. He served as administrator of his own school and served on the boards of three others, and as a Sunday school teacher, a vestryman, an active leader in charities, and president of the California Assn. of Independent Schools.

And still he found time to oversee a sizeable tablegrape vineyard. He died before finishing his book on the impact of Roman and Celtic cultures.

Howell is survived by his wife of 44 years, Betty Docker; son Robert; daughter Betian; and brothers Thompson '39, William '43, and John '45. To each we offer our sincere sympathy.

The Class of 1939