Dr. Dibble has led an adventuresome life, much of it overseas in what most people would call "exotic places."  To begin with, he was born in Madras, India, to missionary parents and lived there for four years.  He grew up in northern Illinois during the depression years, was a star half-miler, co-captain of the football team, president of the Junior class, President of the Student Council in his senior year.  

Upon graduation from high school in 1943, he enlisted in the Navy and was sent to Duke University in the V-12 College Training program.  The end of WWII found him in the Fleet Marine Force as a corpsman at Camp Lejeune, preparing to join the forces which would invade the Home Islands of Japan.  Fortunately for him and a half million other men and women, the war ended before that bloody battle began.

Upon discharge from the Navy, he attended the University of Illinois medical school and graduated in 1949.  Five days later he married Edna Baird, an orthopedic nurse he had met in school.  They were married for fifty-two years, until 2001 when Edna died.

Dr. Dibble took a two-year internship in the coveted Cook County Hospital. When he finished, the Korean War was in full swing so he was called back into the Navy and went almost immediately to Korea to join up with the First Marine Division.  He spent sixteen months in combat and when he came back he was wearing ten medals, two of them personal decorations for action against the enemy.  Later, six more were added to the "cabbage salad" on the left breast of his uniform.

Although he had planned to go into general practice, two senior surgeons in Korea recognized his talent for surgery and encouraged him to enter that specialty.  He did so, and spent four years back at Cook County Hospital and became a Diplomate of the American Board of Surgery.

It was in Chicago that their two children were born:  Eric in 1955 and Barbara in 1957.  Both have become professional biologists.

Dr. Dibble entered into private practice in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in 1957, practicing there until 1980 with three years out in the 60s for work in a mission hospital in Tanzania, East Africa, and three months in 1977 in Nigeria.  In Eau Claire he was Chief of Surgery for two years at one community hospital and then seven years at the other one. 

Then, tiring of the 80-100-hour weeks, with too little time for family life, church work, and sports, in 1980 he left his practice and went to Guam for two years.  There, life was simpler, the pay was less but so was the work-week.  He and Edna learned to scuba-dive and made over 200 deep sea dives. 

From Guam Dr. and Mrs. Dibble went to the King Abdul Aziz Hospital in Saudi Arabia for two years.  They lived on a Saudi army base near the small city of Tabuk in the northwest part of the Kingdom, in what was the Land of Midian in patriarchal biblical times.  They continued to scuba-dive, this time in the Red Sea, only two hours from Tabuk. 

In Saudi they made enough money to pay off all their debts and were on track to do self-sponsored missionary work.   

For the next fifteen years, Dr. and Mrs. Dibble  served in mission hospitals wherever he was needed for as long as he was needed, terms ranging from three to six months: twice in Liberia, Belize, Honduras, and Niger, and four times in Ecuador.  He "hung up" his scalpel in the year 2000.

Dr. Dibble still calls Eau Claire home.  A year and a half after Edna died he married Margaret Michealson who had also lost her spouse. 

Dr. Dibble has had seven books published, five by royalty publishers and two by a subsidy publisher.  He has also had published almost a hundred articles, short stories, essays and poems in both regional and national magazines, including Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, The World and I, Field and Stream, Medical Economics, and Grit.

Four of the books are non-fiction, three fiction.

His latest book, The Same God? Comparing the Bible with the Koran, published in June, 2006, fills an almost empty niche in works so badly needed for mutual understanding between Christians, Jews and Muslims.  To find out more about this book, return to the Home Page and click on the book's title on the left.  All the other books are listed there, also, along with information as to how to obtain them.