"I've lived a long time," eighty-five-year-old Paul B. McNicol (SMG'40) says on the telephone. He doesn't seem surprised to be told he sounds much younger. "Maybe it's because I keep busy raising kids," he says. His first wife died when their five children were nearly grown; his second wife had five of her own, the oldest roughly the age of his youngest. Now, when his eldest is fifty-eight, Paul and Laura McNicol are raising two grandchildren. "This third family is more fun," he says. "It was a different generation when we raised the others: we were the father and mother, and they were the children." This time the structure is less formal. And, since he is legally blind and she has severe arthritis, the children, in their early teens, have some grownup responsibilities, among them writing the checks and entering family accounts, including those related to real estate holdings, on the computer.

	Paul McNicol (SMG'40) named a scholarship fund for his late son, Steven Briggs McNicol, seen here.

McNicol spends much of the time at their home in Los Altos, California; his wife and the children, about two and a half hours away, at their thirty-acre ranch in El Dorado City, where the children are being educated by tutors. "But we go back and forth a lot." Livestock on the ranch includes twenty-five sheep, cattle, horses, a pony, cats, and a Vietnamese pig. "That gives the kids a lot of responsibility."

While raising those three families, McNicol says he's "retired five times," meaning, of course, he's never retired at all. Who's Who in the West lists him as a real estate consultant.

As a ROTC scholarship student at BU, he was a commissioned Marine officer from his graduation in 1940 until he retired as a colonel in 1962. He earned an M.B.A. at Harvard in 1953, his course of study interrupted by a year in the hospital because of war wounds. That year was marked by two achievements: he read a book a week, each on a subject he knew nothing about, and he proved wrong the doctors' prediction that he'd never walk again.

"I went all over the world with the Marines," McNicol says. "It was fascinating; if there hadn't been a Marine Corps I would have invented it." He was a member of the four-man team that designed the Corps' first electronic data processing system, which, he reports proudly, became the model for the other branches of the military. In those early days of computer use, how did he know what to do? The answer is obvious: "They said, 'Do it.'"

After retiring from the Marines, McNicol spent two years with Ford/Philco Aerospace, then joined a real estate firm, and has been an information management consultant for both business and nonprofit organizations and head of his own real estate company, which included doing building project management. "That was fun," he says. "I'm a frustrated architect." Along the way he has taught at several colleges.

He credits much of his success to his SMG professors. "I found out the S.O.B.s were the best teachers. Those guys helped me become a man. In the Marines I helped boys become men," he says. "Then when I was a consultant I taught thirty-six- to fifty-six-year-old boys."

Several of his children have followed him into the military, among them Steven Briggs McNicol, a star college athlete who became a Marine pilot. Riding his bicycle home one night, he was killed in an accident. "He was great, a role model, a funny kid," McNicol says. "When we talk about him, we smile. There are no sad stories about Steve." In 2001, he established the Steven Briggs McNicol Scholarship Fund at SMG. Partially funded through a charitable gift annuity, the fund will be fully endowed by his bequest.

At a recent alumni dinner in California, McNicol told the group about establishing the scholarship. "Afterwards, a couple came up to me and said that had inspired them to do the same thing. That made me feel good," he says. He hopes this article will inspire others.

— Natalie Jacobson McCracken