Claire Dibble White
Claire Dibble White, who worked as an operating room nurse alongside renowned surgeons, died at home in East Hampton last Thursday after a short battle with cancer. She was 80.
A longtime resident of East Hampton, she was brought up in the village, and, after graduating from East Hampton High School in 1954, earned a nursing degree in 1957 from the Flower Fifth Avenue School of Medicine nursing school in Manhattan.
A child of the Great Depression, Ms. White “learned the value of education and the meaning of hard work and resilience early in life,” her family said.
After working in several large metropolitan hospitals, she accepted a job in 1961 in the Sinclair Oil Company’s medical division in Manhattan, where she met the man she would marry. He was her boss, Willis A. Dibble.
The two were married in October 1964, and lived in New York City, Ridgewood, N.J., Calabasas, Calif., and Macungie, Pa., before settling in East Hampton in the summer of 1977.
Ms. White worked at the Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, at Topanga Medical Center in Calabasas, at the Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown, Pa., and then at Southampton Hospital. “She thoroughly enjoyed her colleagues on 3 North and in the operating room,” her family wrote.
After Mr. Dibble died of leukemia in April 1979, she dedicated herself to raising their only child, Elizabeth. In May 1983, she married Harold J. White; their marriage ended in divorce in 1992.
Ms. White loved reading books — especially biographies — and watching old movies that she borrowed from the library. She enjoyed going to the cinema, traveling, playing golf, and swimming in the ocean.
Her family and good friends were important to her. A “graceful and curious woman” who enjoyed dancing and the music of icons such as Frank Sinatra, Ethel Merman, and Judy Garland, she was “famous for her limericks, her nursing stories, her quick wit, her integrity, and her genuine laugh,” her family said.
Fun loving, feisty at times, and frank, she was “never shy or retiring,” they said, and “did not suffer fools gladly.”
She was intensely competitive, they said, a trait that came to light early when she played basketball in middle school, and served as a cheerleader for football and basketball in high school.
She was a longstanding member of Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton, the Amagansett Beach Association, the Ladies Village Improvement Society, and the South Fork Country Club.
A daughter of Delia Durkan and Herbert McGuire, she was born at Southampton Hospital in April of 1936.
Ms. White is survived by her daughter, Elizabeth Dibble Milne of Mumbai, India, formerly Bombay, and her daughter's husband, Stuart Milne, with whom she was very close, and by three grandchildren, and by two stepchildren, Joan Dibble Smotzer of Dallas and Willis A. Dibble Jr. of Glenside, Pa., and sister, Margaret Hayes of Memphis. A sister, Marjorie (Chico) Miller, died before her.
A wake will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. tomorrow at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton. A funeral Mass will be said at 10 a.m. on Saturday at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton.
The family has suggested memorial donations to East End Hospice, P.O. Box 1048, Westhampton Beach 11978.