William Whipple 'Whip' Abbe
William Whipple “Whip” Abbe, 91, of the Passavant Retirement Community in Zelienople, formerly of Cambridge, Md., and Bethesda, Md., passed away Wednesday.
Born on Sept. 29, 1923, in Washington, D.C., he was the son of the late Truman and Ethel Brown Abbe.
Mr. Abbe was a 1949 graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan College in Lincoln, Neb.
He proudly served his country in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1945.
He worked as a geographer with the Defense Mapping Agency from 1950 to 1956. Then he worked with the U.S. Department of Commerce, Business Defense Services Administration from 1957 to 1959. He worked in Pakistan and Jordan with the U.S. Department of State, Agency for International Development from 1960 to 1967.
From 1968 until his retirement in 1985, Mr. Abbe worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Topographic Laboratories at Fort Belvoir, Va. While in this position, he served in 1969 and 1970 as geographic adviser to the Applied Scientific Research Agency of Thailand in Bangkok.
From 1985 to 2003, Mr. and Mrs. Abbe lived beside the Choptank River in Cambridge, Md. While there, he was quite active in the chamber of commerce, was president of the Dorchester County Historical Society and was also president of the Dorchester County Skipjack Committee, which was responsible for building the last Skipjack or oyster dredge boat which was built in the 20th century. The Skipjack is a living memorial to the watermen and boat builders of the Chesapeake Bay.
Mr. Abbe was an amateur photographer and had an extensive collection of domestic and foreign color slides of numerous places he had visited around the world. The collection was donated to the Photo Antiquities museum of Pittsburgh in 2005 and is now available for public use.
Since 2003, Mr. and Mrs. Abbe have lived at the Passavant Retirement Community in Zelienople. While at Passavant, Whip remained quite active, taking up sculpture and being an active member of the Men's Support Group and member of the new building committee.
He leaves behind to cherish his memory, his beloved wife, Harriette Holmes Abbe, who he married in 1948; his five children, Charles Cleveland Abbe of Scappoose, Ore., Christopher Holmes Abbe of Freeport, Maine, Pamela Abbe of Waynesburg, Timothy Abbe of Seattle, Wash., and James Daniel Abbe of Healy, Alaska, and his four granddaughters, Shea Abbe Zwerver, Cory Holmes Abbe, Carmen River Abbe, and Caroline Frances Abbe.
Abbe — A memorial service for William Whipple “Whip” Abbe, who died Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2014, will be at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday at Seaman Memorial Chapel at Passavant Retirement Community, 105 Burgess Drive, Zelienople. At the conclusion of Mr. Abbe's memorial service, all attendees are invited to join his family for a luncheon at the Scholl Convention Center.A memorial service will be celebrated in March by the Abbe family in Washington, D.C. Those who are interested in joining the Abbe family should contact them for future details by e-mail at ccabbe11@aol.com.Funeral arrangements are entrusted to the Boylan Funeral Home, Zelienople.Expressions of sympathy may be shared with the Abbe family at www.boylanfuneralhome.com.
