- Date Of Death: June 29, 2021
- State: Maine
Bath—Rev. Dr. George F. Dole, 89, died peacefully on June 29, 2021, at Mid Coast Hospital. Despite the brevity of his final illness, his family was able to gather by his side.
George was born in Fryeburg, Maine, to Louis A. Dole, pastor of the Fryeburg New Church (Swedenborgian), and Anita S. Dole, the author of an extensive Bible study still in print. In 1937 Louis became the pastor of the Swedenborgian church in Bath, resuming a connection with the city established when his own father had been minister there. Thus Bath became George’s true hometown. At Bath’s Morse High School George discovered two of the great constants of his life: his delight in learning and his talent for running. He capped a senior year of athletics by graduating as valedictorian in 1948, at the age of sixteen, and went on to Yale on a full scholarship then offered by Pepsi-Cola.
At Yale he competed in track at the varsity level and majored in classics, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1952. He took his twin passions to Oxford University, where he studied Hebrew and, in just one notable event, won the Oxford-Cambridge Mile. This particular achievement earned him a place as one of six participants in the historic race at Iffley Road Track in 1954, when Roger Bannister was the first to “break the four-minute mile.”
After George received his M.A. from Oxford, he was accepted into the doctoral program in the Department of Assyriology at Yale. On his return to the United States, he met the third and greatest constant of his life: his sister Louise introduced him to Lois Seekamp, then a registered nurse who was babysitting for Louise’s children. Lois had grown up in the Swedenborgian Church of the Neighbor in Brooklyn, New York. She had even been named after a congregant there, Lois Burnham Wilson, who is now widely known for having co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous with her husband, “Bill W.”
George and Lois married in 1957. The death of George’s thesis advisor, and the replacement of that faculty member with a new advisor who was not amenable to the topic of George’s thesis, led the young couple to strike out on a different path.
