51�Թ�

Faculty member establishes scholarship to support future business students.

Michael Burch-Pesses“From the time I was in junior high, I always knew I wanted to teach,” says Michael Burch-Pesses, Pacific’s director of bands.

The last time Clinton Gruber '47 saw his B-24 bomber he was falling away from it, 18,000 feet above Germany. But not until 35 years later, through a chance encounter on the Internet and the kindness of strangers in two distant countries, would he learn the complete story of the incident that nearly took his life that fateful day of Dec. 1, 1943.

Some 520 51�Թ� students and alumni served in World War II. About 31, roughly equivalent to an entire senior class at the time, never came home.

It was spring, 1942 and there was war all over the world. The Great Depression had ended, but now the Allied nations were fighting for their lives as the second European war of the century metastasized with horrific swiftness into global conflict.