Alfred Edwin Sheldon

West Point, 1955

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Henry A. Hollensbe on March 22, 2009:

Al and I were room-mates plebe year. In retrospect, he seemed too gentlemanly to be a cadet at West Point. Not that he wasn't proficient in academics, military aptitude, and athletics, it was just that he seemed someone from a higher plane. We both went Air Force and I lost track of him after flying school. I learned later that he had earned his wings - no surprise there - and had become an F-102 pilot. As I wrote to Helia, I couldn't picture Al getting behind a Russian bomber and blowing it out of the sky. Not that he wouldn't or couldn't - just that he would have been above such things. Still later I learned that he was at Claremont - which I assumed meant that he was at the college. I have no information, but I imagine him as a professor - English, perhaps, or English Literature, wearing an elderly tweed jacket, with leather elbow patches. Maybe a pipe - though I really doubt the pipe. First Class year I spent a weekend with him and his family in Ridgewood. For a small town boy from the midwest, the weekend was a glimpse of what gentility and upper middleclass meant. I missed him before and now I shall always miss Al. Henry A (Hank) Hollensbe, 20296

admin