Irving Butler Reed

West Point, 1951

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by William Stockdale on February 10, 2016:

Irving "Nub" Reed and I were assigned to room together in August 1947 at West Point, New York. It was an arbitrary assignment to get Classmates from different parts of the country to get to know one another. It was my fortune to get to know someone from North Carolina while I was from Illinois. We also had a third Classmate but I guess he could not stand the two of us because he left before Christmas so we were left together for several months without another influence. We would go "on calls" together to our Squad Leader so that we could become good Plebes. I thought these occasions were serious but Nub did not take them that seriously and broke out laughing a lot. Fortunately the Squad Leader was also from North Carolina so no serious action resulted. After Christmas we were arbitrarily assigned to different rooms with different Classmates so I no longer roomed with Nub. But we were still in the same Company and we shared a lot of experiences over the next three years. After graduation Nub was assigned to the Air Force and I was in the Corps of Engineers. Except for reunions we did not meet again until I retired from the Army and began working for a nuclear power company in Washington State and he became an Air Force Wing Commander at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington. By that time Nub had married a wonderful lady named Carolyn whom Alice and I took to instantly. We would visit Carolyn and Irv whenever we would travel to Fairchild AFB. And Irv visited Alice and me at our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary in Richland, Washington, in 1986. When Irv passed on we lost a very good friend and Classmate. He was a credit to the Military Academy, the Air Force and the city of Spokane. We will miss him.

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