Sons of Thayer

No story of Thayer School's first hundred years would be complete without mention of its graduates whose impressive engineering achievements all over the world have earned a high respect for the School. Their accomplishments have continually reaffirmed the validity of the Dartmouth-Thayer School education.

Without the assistance they have given the School through their personal efforts on its behalf, as well as by their material contributions, there might well be no Thayer School story to tell. Alumni loyalty and support are familiar aspects in the life of Dartmouth College, but nowhere in the Dartmouth family has the loyalty been more pervasive or the support more vital. The Thayer Society of Engineers was formed in 1904 "to further the interests of the Thayer School of Civil Engineering, to promote social intercourse among its members, and to keep them informed as concerns the work and needs of said school." The word needs might well have been written in bold type, for the Society has consistently, throughout its 67 years, applied its energies and resources to meeting the needs of the School. In 1945, Thayer School Dean Garran Wrote, "I believe it is literally true that, lacking the extraordinary support organized among its members by the Thayer Society, the Thayer School might now be a subject of historic interest only." Succeeding deans have had reason to second Dean Garran's forthright statement of the importance of this organization, more recently under the name of the Dartmouth Society of Engineers, to the success, and indeed to the actual survival, of the School.