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Francis “Frank” Wihbey, who worked at the University of Maine’s Fogler Library for more than 30 years, died Jan. 12 in a hiking accident outside San Francisco, Calif.
Wihbey, 65, served as the head of government publications and other documents until he retired in October. He previously worked in the library at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn., before he was attracted to Fogler Library by Maine’s beauty, said his wife, Karen Wihbey, of Orono.
Wihbey likely died of internal injuries after falling more than 100 feet on the Torrey Pines trail, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, which first reported the accident. He was reported missing Jan. 14 after he was not on his flight back to Maine. The San Diego Fire-Rescue Department found his body on the side of a 300-foot cliff the same day.
Wihbey was an avid hiker, according to family and coworkers. One staff member at the library said Wihbey had logged “hundreds and hundreds of miles on the Appalachian Trail.”
“He liked the challenge,” his wife said. “Certainly Maine’s a rather rugged place to hike, so that was really an opportunity for him to do something beyond his ordinary daily life, and something a little more challenging.”
“He’s always had a very great feeling for nature and the outdoors, and that expressed itself in the hiking as well as his volunteering at Audubon and maintaining a part of the A.T. here in Maine,” said Joyce Rummery, dean of Fogler Library. “So that’s always been a big part of who he was.”
Wihbey majored in physics in college and originally served as the science reference librarian.
“He was very organized, and he was really interested in knowing everything about everything,” Karen Wihbey said.
Wihbey used his time on the trail to write. He self-published a book, “Rainbow Walking: 15 Days on the Appalachian Trail,” which detailed his time spent on the 100-Mile Wilderness — the wildest section of the Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Baxter State Park to Monson, Maine.
“He was an extremely precise writer,” said his son, John Wihbey, a journalist for NPR’s “On Point.” In several years’ worth of writings, his son said he found “about two grammatical errors — and this is an informal journal — in the course of reading hundreds of pages. He had an elegance of style.”
“The very last word he ever wrote in his journal was ‘learn,’” said John Wihbey. “And I think that’s pretty symbolic.”
Wihbey was in California visiting his daughter Lynn, a doctoral student at the University of California Riverside. Wihbey’s other daughter, Kristina, is a first-year medical student at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
“The staff here is very saddened by the loss. We will miss him. When someone is in your life — as a colleague or as a friend — for more than 20 years, it does leave a big gap in your life,” Rummery said.
