Wilbur Nesbit dies following heart collapse

Wilbur Dick Nesbit, Evanston poet, prose writer and lecturer, vice president of William H. Rankin & Co. advertising, died suddenly of heart failure following a collapse late Saturday afternoon at Wabash avenue and Madison street, Chicago.

Death came half an hour later at the Iroquois hospital to where his son Robert was summoned and reached his side before his passing. Funeral services were held Tuesday afternoon from the Oriental Consistory, Chicago, followed by burial at Acacia cemetery.

Mr. Nesbitt was 55 years old. He had lived for 24 years in Evanston and resided at 554 Sheridan square. He is survived by his wife, Mary Lee Nesbit, and three sons, Richard of Montana, Robert of Chicago, and Wilbur D. of Evanston. He was born in Xenia, Ohio, September 16, 1871.

Mr. Nesbit's work in writing began in a small Indiana town from where he went to New York. Later he came to Chicago where he conducted a column on the old Inter-Ocean. He was later a writer and columnist on the Baltimore American, of the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Evening Post.

During the World war he was in charge of the Liberty Loan drives in the middle west, and at that time the poem by which he is best known, "Your Flag and My Flag," became widely known. He has published a good deal of newspaper, magazine and book verse and has been in demand as a lecturer and toast master. He was president of the Indiana Society of Chicago and the Forty club, a member of the Cliff Dwellers, the Arts and White Paper clubs of Chicago, the University club of Evanston and the Columbia club of Indianapolis.