Senior State Legislator

The oldest member of the largest state legislature in the country, Prof. Charles A. Holden '95 was first elected Republican representative from Hanover in 1925. He is Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at Thayer School, having taught there from 1900 to 1937, but is still active in politics. In a recent interview by the Manchester Union, he expressed his belief that it is the duty of educators to get into politics. "We keep talking about improving government. What better way is there than getting into it yourself?"

Professor Holden himself first went into politics in 1913, as chairman of the Hanover Precinct Commissioners, when things were "pretty run down" on the Commission. By the time that he had helped to straighten them out, he had acquired a taste for public service. He was a member of the Board of Selectmen from 1923 until 1939 and chairman for the last nine years of that period. In 1925 he went to Concord as Hanover's representative in the New Hampshire House, which, except for the British House of Commons is the largest legislative body in the world.

Now 81 years old, Professor Holden can look back on a constructive record. As an engineer he has always had an interest in better roads and he was the proposer and sponsor of an amendment to the New Hampshire Constitution to prevent diversion of motor vehicle revenues to other

than highway purposes. This was adopted by the Convention and by vote of the people at the 1938 November election. In 1942 he headed a 6-man commission to work on legislation to reduce the 375-400 limit of the House, set by the electorate.

Elected to Phi Beta Kappa while at Dartmouth, Professor Holden has combined \the teaching of engineering with an intensive study of the American form of government. In 1944 and 1948 he was the New Hampshire delegate to the Republican National Convention. An advocate of world federation in January 1945, he filed a bill that would place the New Hampshire Legislature on record as declaring "that all peoples of the earth should be united in a Commonwealth of Nations." During World War I he was supervisor of military training, Dartmouth College Training Detachment, N.A. As State Engineer he was a guiding force in the 21- year-old New Hampshire-Vermont boundary case, from 1916 to 1937.

Professor Holden has served as treasurer of the Class of '95 for a number of years. He has worked on various committees and commissions, and is a member of the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital Corporation. As New Hampshire's oldest legislator he is held in esteem by his colleagues at the capitol, while his record of conscientious service has repeatedly won him the favor of the voters in Hanover.