Brigadier General William Whipple, Jr. (Louisiana and Magdalen ’30) (1909-2007), a retired Army officer and public servant, died August 23, 2007, in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of ninety-eight. He had been a longtime resident of the Princeton area.

A fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, General Whipple was the chief engineer for the construction of the 1964-1965 World’s Fair in New York. During World War II he had served as a member of General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Allied Headquarters, where his logistical planning helped to shape the course of battle in Western Europe. After the war, while assigned to General Lucius Clay’s headquarters in Berlin, he advocated the idea that U.S. policy toward the devastated German nation should be restorative rather than punitive. General Clay and others agreed, and the Morgenthau Plan to make Germany an agrarian nation was scrapped in favor of what became known as the Marshall Plan. General Whipple referred to his role in this development as “probably the most important thing I ever did.”

Many of General Whipple’s peacetime assignments were in civil works, a traditional area of activity for the Army Corps of Engineers. Before World War II, he served for several years in the Omaha District, with responsibilities for navigation and flood control projects in the Missouri River Basin.

On returning to this country in 1947 with the rank of colonel, Whipple was sent to the Pacific Northwest where, among other things, he led the planning for water resources development of the Columbia River Basin and coordinated and edited the massive report of the project. He later held a civil works assignment in the Office of the Chief of Engineers in Washington, D.C., and, after being promoted to brigadier general, served as Division Engineer for the Southwestern Division, which included most of Texas and five neighboring states.

Retiring from the Army in 1960, after thirty years of service but with no intention of slowing down, General Whipple became the chief engineer for the construction of the 1964-1965 World’s Fair, under the redoubtable Robert Moses. The two men had a troubled relationship, but the construction of the Fair was completed capably and within budget.

General Whipple subsequently served as Director of the New Jersey Water Resources Research Institute at Rutgers University, and participated in a number of professional associations, including serving as president of the American Water Resources Association. In 1982, he joined the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, where he played a key role in implementing a statewide water supply master plan and other key projects. His final employment was with the Greeley-Polhemus Group, an engineering consulting firm, in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

As a recognized authority on water resources, General Whipple authored more than a hundred books and articles, which have been an invaluable resource for those concerned with water supply, navigation, flood control, and power generation, all to be achieved in a safe, economic and environmentally responsible manner.

Even after retiring again in 1996, General Whipple continued to write and to participate in conferences relating to water resources. In his final book, Comprehensive Water Planning Regulation (Government Institutes, 1996), he proposed a holistic approach to water resources planning aimed at breaking the gridlock between achieving general benefits from water resources projects and accommodating environmental concerns.

Born in 1909, Whipple grew up on a sugar plantation in Cinclare, Louisiana, bordered on one side by the Mississippi River. His father, William Whipple, an MIT engineer brought up in the New York area, had come south to become the factory superintendent of the sugar refinery on the plantation. His mother, the former Genevieve Randolph, was from a land-owning family in Louisiana. The second of five children, William Jr., graduated from West Point in 1930. He went on to study economics and philosophy at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and several years later did a year of graduate studies in engineering at Princeton University.

General Whipple was a member of Trinity Episcopal Church of Princeton, and of the Old Guard of Princeton.He is survived by his wife of twenty-three years, Dr. Alice Goodloe Whipple. He is also survived by four children, Anne Andersen, William Whipple III, Claire Stech, and Philip Whipple; and by eight grandchildren and five great grandchildren. He was buried with full military honors in the Arlington National Cemetery.

ALICEWHIPPLE
WILLIAMWHIPPLE III
RICHARD S. ARMSTRONG

Memorial donations may be made to Trinity Episcopal Church, the Salvation Army, or to a charity of the donor’s choice.