William W. Edel

William Wilcox Edel was born March 16, 1894 in Baltimore. He attended Friends School of Baltimore, Baltimore City College, Dickinson College and Boston University School of Theology.

Early Boy Scout

Edel was one of the earliest Boy Scouts in America. As a member of Troop 1 of Mount Washington in the summer of 1910, Edel attended the first National Boy Scout Camp held in August at Silver Bay on Lake George in upstate New York. This experimental camp was conducted by Chief Scout Ernest Thompson Seton, the noted author and wildlife artist. The camp included 120 boys and 20 adults, many, from YMCA’s along the northeast, already involved in Seton’s Woodcraft Indians. As Edel put it, “I came to the camp as a Woodcraft Indian and left as a Boy Scout.”

Navy Chaplain

Edel was a Navy Chaplain from 1917–1946.

College President

In 1946, Dr. Edel accepted the position as the twenty-second President of Dickinson College, remaining as such for the next thirteen years, until 1959.

• Phi Beta Kappa, 1915
• Honorary Doctor of Divinity, Dickinson College, 1935

• Edel, William W. My Hundred Years, 1894–1994. El Cajon, CA: L. Mailliw, 1994. Print.