Paul N. Colby Jr. ’50

“Nick,” as we knew him, died March 7, 2015, in California.

He graduated from the Pennington (N.J.) School. At Princeton, Nick majored in mechanical engineering, played 150-pound football, and belonged to Elm. After graduation and a short work stint, he entered the Navy as an ensign and served as an assistant navigator on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific for 18 months.

Nick’s New York Times obituary described him as “a plastics wizard.” His career started in the early ’50s, when he designed and built a plastic pontoon bridge for the Army. Most of his 60 years in the plastics industry were devoted to processing machinery. In 1978, he and his wife, Illene, founded the Spirex Corp. in Youngstown, Ohio, which manufactured and marketed machine components worldwide. Leaving their son to run the business, they moved to California in 2001.

Nick held seven patents for injection molding. He served as president of the Plastics Pioneers and was elected to the Plastics Hall of Fame in 2009. He was a skilled pilot, played golf, and, by his own assessment, traveled “quite a bit.”

Our condolences go to Illene; son Paul; daughters Gale and Sarah ’90; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.