Donald de Beauchamp Campbell

Don in Feb. 1923 with his father Leslie (Click picture to enlarge and to see some other early photos of Don.)

Donald de Beauchamp Campbell, son of Leslie Harland Campbell and Edna Wellington Corbet Campbell, was born on 28 September 1922 in Rockville Centre, LINY. At the time of his birth, his parents lived in Lynbrook, LINY. His father was employed by Bell Telephone Laboratories (history)in downtown Manhattan, and his mother was a homemaker.

Donald attended the public schools of Lynbrook until 1936 when at age 15 he entered Blair Academy in Blairstown, NJ, not far from where his family had spent summers at Lake Owassa in Sussex County, NJ. At Blair, he excelled in academics and was editor of the school paper The Blair Breeze and was active in vocal and instrumental music. After graduation from Blair in 1941, he entered Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, but it was not in the world's grand scheme of things that Donald would be able to complete his college education in the usual timeframe.

When the U.S. entered World War II, Donald enlisted in the Army Air Forces and was called up in 1942. After what he terms a "horrendous" experience in Basic Training at Atlantic City, NJ, he started his cadet training, first at Syracuse University and then into the Central Training Command. He graduated with his wings as a fighter pilot in March 1944 (Class of 44C), went on to further training on the Gulf Coast.

(Don and his piano playing skills were mentioned in a "Top of the Evening" broadcast from Europe by war correspondent Ted Malone on 11/29/44. See the transcript here.)

Finally he was assigned to the 368th Fighter Group, 396th Fighter Squadron, of the Ninth Air Force in Europe in the fall of 1944. Flying a P-47 Thunderbolt in close support of ground troops, he was first in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge, then pulled back to France, and then in Germany as the war wound down. He flew about fifty combat missions before the end of the war and gained a Distinguished Flying Cross for some action over Germany in the spring of 1945. He also spent several months in the summer of 1945 on detached service in England taking classes. Read a couple of Don's letters home: "Don Does Paris" "Don is Nobly Entertained"

Returning to the U.S. in the fall of 1945, he resumed his studies at Dartmouth in January 1946 where he majored in International Relations and, having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa, graduated in 1947 as part of the Class of 1945. Following graduation, Don worked for a Chinese import-export firm in New York City for several months and then went into the W. T. Grant executive training program.

Donald was married on 18 September 1948 at McKeesport, PA, to Miss Mimi Patricia Griesbeck, of Bronxville and Staten Island, NY, daughter of Frank Joseph Griesbeck and Blanche (Caroline) Rems Greiesbeck. In McKeesport, Donald worked for the W.T. Grant Co., but by 1950, he and Mimi decided that they wanted to strike out on their own and, following in the commercial footsteps of Don's Shunk, PA, grandfather and great-grandfather, purchased a small general store in Branchville, Sussex Co., NJ, near where Donald earlier had spent his summers and attended high school. In 1952, their first daughter Leslie Jean was born. Over the next few years, the focus of Don's merchandise gradually narrowed to the point where he was specializing mainly in clothes and gifts, and eventually he sold women's fashions exclusively.

Don at the organ in the Branchville years

The mid-1950s saw the birth of another daughter, Lisa Claire, in 1955 and a move of the family from an apartment above the store to Lake Lenape in Andover Township, some 17 miles or so from Branchville. Big business changes came in the 1960s when Don acquired two more stores -- one on the main street of Newton, the county seat, and one in a small shopping center in Sparta. Essentially, Don now was running a three-ring circus and estimated that he could put 80 miles or more a day on his car without ever leaving the county!

With three stores to run, two daughters to educate, his piano-playing, and various other hobbies to pursue, the 1960s and early '70s just flew by. On 21 Feb. 1977 their first grandchild Donavan Charles White was born to daughter Lisa and her husband Charles White, of Vermont, and Don and Mimi took a very active role in helping to raise Donavan. And it wasn't long before Don and Mimi were contemplating a well-deserved retirement. They had been doing a lot of travelling in an RV scouting out suitable places, such as the Florida panhandle and the Alabama Gulf coast.

The place Don and Mimi stumbled on, mainly because daughter Leslie was attending graduate school there at the time, has since become a usual suspect on all those "best places to retire lists:" Oxford, MS, best known as home of the University of Mississippi ("Ole Miss") and Nobel author William Faulkner. So, with the stores liquidated and the Lake Lenape house sold, in the fall of 1980 Don and Mimi packed up and lit out for Faulkner country.

But there is no rest for the weary. Almost immediately Don not only became involved in playing piano with a local band, but he bought a computer (this was in 1982!) and began the first academic word processing service in town. The word was out: "If you need a paper typed right away, call Don!" And at peak times the Ole Miss kids streamed into the house. In recent years, of course, most students now have their own computers, but Don still works his keyboard magic for some older customers. For relaxation he spends as much of the year swimming as the weather will allow, and he and Mimi are enjoying three more grandchildren -- Salahhuddin (1989), Abdullah (1990), and Mohammed (1992) -- sons of Lisa and her husband Audeh Dakhlallah, of Palestine, who also live in Mississippi.

Don and Mimi did quite a bit of RVing after they moved to Mississippi, but these days they are sticking pretty close to home. While Don is not difficult to find, you'll need to catch him between swimming, computing, cooking, reading, yard work, and shopping. You can e-mail him at: