The Air Force and the nation suffered a real loss on July 10th, 1954, when Captain RICHARD THERON CARVOLTH, III crashed while making a night instrument take-off at Oxnard Air Force Base, California. There is no doubt that had he lived Dick would have made a large mark on the military service and very probably the nation. But there is no necessity to dwell on what he might have achieved: in twenty-eight years he lived a fuller and more worthwhile life than most do in sixty or seventy years.

Born in Blakely, Pennsylvania, on June 24th, 1926, Dick was brought up and went to school there. With both his parents in prominent positions in the school system, a lot was expected of him, both in class and out. He never disappointed anyone and graduated from Blakely High School as valedictorian, his closest competitor for academic honors being a Miss Margaret Dudley, who both envied and disliked him for his grades and the ease with which he attained them. Five years later, Margy and Dick were married on his graduation from the Military Academy.

From Blakely Dick volunteered for the Navy V-5 program and was sent to Brown University. By the end of his first year he had won an appointment to West Point as a qualified alternate and joined the Class of '49. By the end of Plebe year, Dick had such high grades that the only question was not who would rank first in the class, but who would rank next after Carvolth. He devoted fully as much time to such activities as Sunday School teaching, the Howitzer, and the Honor Committee as he did to academics, but by First Class year his outstanding record made him a Corps myth while still a cadet. Who in the class of '49 will forget standing during the Awards Parade while Dick received his "wheelbarrow" full of trophies? To no one's surprise he also won a Rhodes Scholarship, which he took up after his graduation and marriage. At Oxford he again distinguished himself academically, and managed to visit and observe almost all of Western Europe in his spare time.

On his return from England nothing would do but that he must be a pilot, and preferably a jet pilot. Dick didn't embark on his pilot training lightly, or just from a love of flying. As in everything else he did, he considered all sides, and then decided that as a career officer in the Air Force, knowledge and experience in the primary field of Air Force service was an obligation as well as an advantage. He never regretted that decision.

But Dick was more than just a "brain"; in fact one had to know him well or hear of his record to discover it. Nobody who knew him could ever dislike him, and his cheerful outlook and mature dignity naturally won him many close friends. He loved an argument and would take either side in most subjects; he enjoyed the little things of life as well as the big, and entered whole heartedly into whatever he did. His religion was a part of his life, and he was one of those unusual Christians who lived his beliefs daily. One couldn't pick a quarrel with Dick; he had too much of a sense of humor to let you or himself become angered.

It is impossible for anyone who knew Dick after graduation to think of him without thinking of his wife, Margy. Dick and Margy were a pair who complemented each other in every way, and the appearance of a son, Ricky, made Dick a complete family man. His relationship to both his old family and his new one was the warm and sincere kind for which everyone strives. There are not many people about whom all his friends can sincerely say, "I am a better person for having known him". Dick was one of them.

-D. L. M.

Personal Eulogy