Richard P. Bissell - (1913-1977)
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Abraham Lincoln High School in Council Bluffs, Iowa
I. Biography
Richard Bissell was born on June 27, 1913 in Dubuque, Iowa. His father was Frederick Bissell. His mother was Edith Mary (Pike) Bissell. As a child Bissell loved playing near or in the Mississippi River (much like the descriptions of Mark Twain). Bissell attended The Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from it in 1932. He then attended Harvard and graduated with a B.S. in anthropology in 1936. Through his early adulthood Bissell worked in a Venezuelan oil field as a seaman on an American Export Lines freighter, and as a mate for the Central Barge Company (on the rivers of the Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, and Monongahela). On February 15, 1938 he married Marian Van Patten Grilk. He then became vice president of the family business, the H. B. Glover Company of Dubuque. Although Bissell eventually moved from
Dubuque, he always spent his summers in Dubuque near his river.
II. Literary Works
A Stretch on the River (1950)
The Monongahela (1952)
7 1/2 Cents (1953)
High Water (1954)
Say, Darling (1957)
Good-bye Ava (1960)
You Can Always Tell a Harvard Man (1962)
How Many Miles to Galena (1962)
Julia Harrington, Winnebago, Iowa, 1913 (1969)
This essay was submitted by a student of Rod Cameron, a teacher at Abraham Lincoln High School in Council Bluffs, Iowa.