John Dibble was born in New Jersey in 1890, the son of Theodore Hoyt and Clara Wilkinson Dibble. He grew up in Camden, NJ. Theodore Dibble passed away prior to January of 1910. In 1910, John and his mother lived at the home of his grandparents, Leander and Mary Wilkinson in Camden.

John attended the E.A. Stevens School, and graduated from the original Camden High School in 1909, which later became Clara S. Burrough Junior High School. While at Camden High, he participated in several after school activities, including the class debating team. As a senior he took part in the Senior-Junior Debate.

He went on to study medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating from Penn, he interned at Episcopal Hospital in Philadelphia. After completing medical school, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1917. He graduated from the Army's school for Flight Surgeons at Roosevelt Field on Long Island, NY. He served in Germany with the Army of Occupation after World War I. When occupation duty ended, Dr. Dibble remained in the Army, and would be a soldier for the rest of his life.

Dibble served in various posts throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including a stint as the Chief of Medical Service at Fort McKinley in the Philippine Islands. Colonel Dibble was named as Surgeon of the Third Army just after Pearl Harbor. John Dibble had married a girl from Camden, Mary Walford, and they always maintained a Camden address throughout his career. His last trip home to Camden was in May 1942.

On 7 February 1943, Colonel Dibble was killed with 16 others when the transport plane in which they were riding crashed in the Pacific Ocean approximately one mile offshore at an unnamed Pacific Base. His body was not recovered. His name is listed on the Tablets of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial in Honolulu, HI.

He was survived by his son, Captain John Dibble, then serving at Fort Hood TX, and a daughter, Mrs. John Corbey, whose husband was at that time a Major in the Army, his uncle, George Wilkinson, and a brother, Theodore Savage Dibble.

Honors

During World War II, the Palo Alto General Hospital was renamed Dibble Army Hospital to honor Colonel Dibble.