Life After Webb – Round Three
Retiring on the occasion of my 50th Anniversary of my first graduation from Webb, my wife, Jill and I left Webb – for the third time – in 2011. We returned to our home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and have been catching up on homeowner’s chores that had been neglected for 13 years. With three colleagues from the Naval Academy, I’m coauthoring an undergraduate textbook, Practical Naval Architecture, which, hopefully, will serve to tie together undergraduate courses over the four years of a normal naval architecture program. With frequent, and where possible, internet-based, references for the details of specific naval architecture specialties, and problem sets to exercise basic concepts, we hope to summarize and combine many years of course notes across the full scope of undergraduate naval architecture.
Jill and I have returned to our favorite avocations – community theater and choral music – in the Annapolis area and have taken up golf to fill our spare time. We continue to enjoy sailing our Mystic 20 catboat and entertaining our six grandkids on our power boat. On my bucket list are (1) learning to play the piano, (2) completing the segments of a world cruise, and (3) getting back to oil painting. I have been honored to be asked back by Dean Neilson to share Webb philosophy and “lessons learned” with each incoming freshman class–and, oh by the way, to develop some confidence in their freehand drawing abilities (which may be latent, but are already very impressive). Life is good! It was all made possible by William H. Webb.