William D. McCabe Jr. ’59

Bill, a retired Navy officer and structural engineer, died Dec. 18, 2022. 

Born in Los Angeles, he grew up in San Antonio, Texas. He graduated from Texas Military Institute, where he was a member of the football, baseball, and rifle teams and was captain and co-commander of the ROTC unit. At Princeton, he majored in geological engineering, was a member of Cannon Club, and commanded the Navy ROTC drill team. Among his roommates were Kit Bond, Cliff Mahoney, Harry Seay, and Bob Ziegler.

Following graduation Bill spent eight years as a Navy line officer, serving aboard the carrier USS Midway; at the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Range in Puerto Rico; again at sea as a destroyer engineering officer; and then on a destroyer squadron commander’s staff. In Hawaii, he met and married his first wife, Judy. They separated in 1981; Bill remarried to Ursula Strobel in 1983.

Bill had resigned his Navy commission in 1967 and enrolled in the civil engineering master’s program at the University of Texas. Earning a degree in 1970, he went on to work as a supervisory structural engineer for the U.S. Forest Service, concurrently renewing his Navy ties by accepting a commission with the Navy Reserve Civil Engineering Corps. He retired to Portland, Ore., in 2001. 

Bill is survived by his second wife, Ursula; his daughters Molly ’96 and Kathleen; and five grandchildren.