Robert E. Wildermeth, Class of '48, Pre-Medicine — the Stanford Quad yearbook

Found on a shelf at the Stanford Alumni Center in August 2026 by Chuck, Briana and Bryson — the senior-class pages of the 1948 Quad, under the banner “Class of ’48 — PRE-MEDICINE.”

The entry:

ROBERT E. WILDERMETH Off campus Marietta, Ohio

The surname is misspelled — Wildermeth, not Wildermuth. A German name got one vowel wrong in a California yearbook, which is a small instance of the thing that happens to this surname repeatedly across the record: Wildermuth, Wildermeth, Wildermoth, Wilder Muth.

Which face is his

The portraits sit in a grid to the right of the name column, four across. The bottom row of this group corresponds to the four names listed beside it, left to right:

Name in column	Portrait
William J. Whalen · Village · Palo Alto	1st — dark-haired man
Robert E. Wildermeth · Off campus · Marietta, Ohio	2nd — fair-haired young man, dark suit, light tie
Margaret C. Winston · Lagunita · Berkeley	3rd — the woman
Peter Y. Yee · Off campus · Reno, Nev.	4th

The mapping is checkable rather than guessed: Margaret Winston is the only woman in the group and she is the only woman in the row, and Peter Yee falls fourth in both lists. With two independent anchors at positions three and four, Robert Earl is the second portrait.

He was 24 when this was printed, three years off a B-24 navigator’s seat over Biak, Leyte and Mindoro.

“Off campus” — and now we know where

The single most useful word in the entry is “Off campus.” Robert Earl had married Dorothy Marie Davis on 20 April 1946, months before arriving on the GI Bill; married veterans did not live in Encina or Toyon. His registrar’s card supplies the actual addresses — Box 276, Pine Lane, Los Altos, and a S. Stanford Avenue address in Menlo Park — the first Bay Area addresses this archive has ever held for the family.

Pre-Medicine

The banner is a small piece of biography by itself. He was listed under Pre-Medicine, applied to medical school in his senior year, and was turned down. He took the BA in Biological Sciences, conferred 1 October 1948, and went into industry, then back into the Air Force. Twenty-four years later he finished a B.S. in Medical Record Administration at the University of Central Florida — the medical career reached at a slant, from the records side.

Sixty-seven years after this page was printed, his grandson joined the Stanford faculty. Bryson and Briana were in the room when the page was found.

Source: The Stanford Quad, 1948, senior class section; photographed at the Stanford Alumni Center, August 2026. Companion documents: the registrar’s transcript card and the 1948 diploma.