Arch and Adah used these photos in their wedding announcement.

Arch Doty ’47 is nothing if not persistent. And patient.

He waited 61 years after graduating from Colorado College to find out what his senior year grades were. Back in the spring of 1947, Doty couldn’t wait around to find out. He finished his last exam at CC, immediately packed his car and headed to Florida to ask a young woman by the name of Adah to marry him, thus missing graduation and the opportunity to get his final grades. When he got to Florida and popped the question, she refused him – for the fifth time.

So Doty went home to Connecticut and got on with his life. He married someone else, had three children, and spent much of his career in the automobile industry. He worked with the U.S. State Department where he served as head of a U.S. delegation at meetings of a United Nations subcommittee in Geneva, where he represented the U.S. automobile industry.

He eventually moved to North Carolina, and later, his wife passed away.

His story surfaced in 2008, when he submitted his book, “The Diary of a Pilot,” for the Bulletin’s On the Bookshelf section. Doty had interrupted his college career with five years’ service in the U.S. Air Force, which included two and a half years flying overseas. His 2007 book chronicles the years between 1943 and 1945, when he was flying nearly nonstop between China, Burma, and India.

Doty enclosed a letter with his book, which included an update to his story. Several years ago he looked up Adah, the former girlfriend, and sent her a Christmas card. She wrote back. They started visiting each other, and 52 years after he had last proposed, he again asked Adah to marry him. This time she accepted, and they were married within the year. They have now been married 11 years, and live in Oregon with their two dogs, golden retrievers named Oedipus and Wrecks.

Doty’s 2008 letter went on: “As you can see, all has turned out well – but I still have the nagging question as to how well I did in my classes during the last semester of my senior year.” He wanted to know if there was any way he could find out what his grades were.

So the office of communications put Doty in touch with the registrar’s office, and in the summer of 2008 he filed an official request for his transcript. Soon thereafter, Arch Doty, class of 1947, received his senior year grades.