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Floyd Whitney Dotson ’42

Floyd Whitney Dotson ’42, April 10, 2009, in Mansfield, Connecticut. Floyd received a BA from Reed in sociology and anticipated attending Yale in fall 1942 on a graduate scholarship. He took a post as a fire lookout with the forest service that summer, and was drafted into the U.S. Army three weeks later. Floyd was sent to the Southwest Pacific with a special unit, the army amphibian engineers. “I had occasion to see the elephant, if I may revert to a common Civil War phrase,” he wrote of his time at sea. “But never more than the beast's tail from a beach.” Floyd met his wife, Lillian Y. Ota, at Yale in 1946. “For me, it was love at first sight, and I have never changed my mind.” They married in 1947 and had one daughter. Floyd earned his PhD from Yale in sociology, and was professor of sociology at University of Connecticut-Storrs for 33 years.

Appeared in Reed magazine: November 2009