Walter N. Colbath (Diving, 1926-29)
Winner of three NCAA diving championships, Colbath ranks as one of the great collegiate divers in the history of the sport. As a sophomore, he placed second in the Big Ten Conference and won the NCAA title. The following year, he won both Conference and NCAA titles and gained a place on the U.S. Olympic team for the 1928 games in Amsterdam, where he won a bronze medal.
As team captain in his senior year, he joined the Wildcats on a 7,000-mile Pacific Coast tour in which he repeated history by placing second in the Conference and capturing the NCAA title. He later spent time as a swimming coach and served as a naval commander in World War II. Colbath went on to successful careers in radio and in the steel industry, in which he began a firm in Riviera Beach, Fla., that helped to develop the Bahamas. He died in March 1986, in Florida, where he lived with his wife, Vesta, also a Northwestern graduate.
