Eagle Scout: May 6, 1940
Birth: December 5, 1925
Death: December 5, 2010
Burial: John Knox Presbyterian Church Columbarium
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“Scouts Conduct Court of Honor”
(Image via The Spartanburg Herald, 14 May 1940, p.2)
William Stillwell Vincent was born in Savannah, Georgia, on December 5, 1925, and grew up in Spartanburg, the son of Frank Brooks Vincent and Laleah Pratt Stillwell. He earned the Eagle Scout rank with Troop 1 on May 6, 1940, at fourteen.
Vincent graduated from Spartanburg High School in 1942 and served two and a half years in the Navy, finishing first in his class at the Northwestern Midshipmen’s School and serving as an Ensign at Guantánamo Bay. He then graduated with honors from Clemson College in 1948. He married Katherine McElroy, whom he met while she was a student at Converse College, in 1947; they were together sixty-three years.
He spent forty-one years with J. P. Stevens and Co., from his graduation until his retirement in 1989, and served for many years as a Presbyterian elder in Greensboro and Greenville. In retirement he took up the cello again after a forty-year absence and played seventeen seasons with the Anderson Symphony Orchestra, the last two as principal cellist. He died on December 5, 2010, his eighty-fifth birthday.
Sources: The Spartanburg Herald, May 14, 1940; his obituary in The Greenville News, December 9, 2010; and Troop 1 records.
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