Class of 1899

James Wesley Colona, son of Robert W. and Anna Ellen Colona was born on January 13, 1872 in Stockton, Maryland. Before entering Dickinson College in 1896, James attended Wilmington Conference Academy, a Methodist preparatory school in Wilmington, Delaware.

While at Dickinson, Colona was heavily involved in campus life. He was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon and of the Belles Lettres Society. He also worked in the library. A third baseman for the Dickinson College varsity baseball team in 1897, Colona had a fielding average of .791. Colona was also involved in the Dickinsonian, and was the chairman of the Devotional Committee of the YMCA. A devout Methodist, he is mentioned in the Dickinsonian as preaching at a local church in Mt. Holly Springs on September 17, 1898. He graduated in June, 1899 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree.

Colona then attended Drew Theological Seminary where he graduated with a B.D. in 1902 and began service as a pastor. From 1901 to 1902, he was the pastor at the Methodist Episcopal Church in Round Hill, Connecticut. He then was a pastor at an Annamessex, Delaware church from 1902-1904 and then headed a church in Princess Anne, Maryland. Colona was also a superintendent of the Wilmington School District for six years and pastor of churches in Wilmington and Smyrna, Delaware.

Forrest Craver was born September 24, 1875 one of the four children of Frank and Mary Craver, in Scanlin, Pennsylvania He attended Berwick High School, Wyoming Seminary and Dickinson Preparatory School before entering Dickinson College in September 1895. While at Dickinson College, Craver excelled in both athletics and academics. He was a fine scholar, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and captained the track and football teams. "Cap" also served the Union Philosophical Society, and as treasurer of the college YMCA, editor of both the Hand Book, and the Microcosm, and president of his class during sophomore year. He was also a member of Phi Kappa Sigma.

Harry W. Nice was born in Washington D.C., on December 5, 1877 the son of Methodist minister Henry Nice and his wife Drucilla Arnold Nice. The family moved to Baltimore, Maryland soon after and he was educated in the public schools there. He was prepared for college at Baltimore City College and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1899 in 1896. He studied at the College for only one year. He left to study law at the University of Maryland, where he graduated with a LL.B degree in 1899.

Nice began a long and distinguished political career with the Republican Party when he was elected to the Baltimore city council in 1903. In swift succession, he served as secretary to the mayor of Baltimore, supervisor of elections in the city, and as a state's attorney. In an initial run for governor in 1919 when he went down to narrow defeat to his law school classmate and grandson of a Dickinsonian in the class of 1853, Albert C. Ritchie. He then distinguished himself as a tax appeal judge between 1920 and 1924 but came to national prominence in 1934 when he defeated the sitting the Democratic governor, his old rival Ritchie, on the unlikely platform that Ritchie was not doing enough in Maryland to aid in President Roosevelt's national recovery efforts. His effective political career came to an end before the end of the decade, however, when he was defeated for re-election in 1938 and again in the 1940 Senate race in Maryland.