Thayer School's First Director

As Sylvanus Thayer has been called "Father of the U. S. Military Academy," so, with equal cause, might Robert Fletcher be known as the Father of the Thayer School.

Appointed Thayer Professor of Civil Engineering at the tender age of 23, he directed the affairs of the School for 47 years until he reached Dartmouth's mandatory retirement age. Spurning actual retirement, he continued to present special lectures to Thayer School classes, to meet with alumni groups, and to serve as member and clerk of the Board of Overseers for 18 years more until his death in 1936.

"We are delighted with him," wrote Dartmouth's President Asa Smith in 1871, only two months after Fletcher's arrival. "We have been directed to theman for the place. ... Our Professors are much pleased with him. His moral tone is excellent. He is affable, genial, gentlemanly. He gives himself to his work methodically, earnestly and faithfully."

How earnestly he worked, and for how many untold hours, to reinforce his Military Academy education in order to meet the demands of his position and, more difficult, of his own perfectionism, can only be imagined. During his first two years at Thayer School, he taught every course in the civil engineering curriculum as well as several preparatory courses. Throughout his years as Director, he continued to teach a full schedule.

On the side, he served in a wide variety of consulting activities including boundary surveys, bridge design, and water supply and sewerage work. For many years, he was president of the Hanover Water Works Company and of the New Hampshire Board of Health. He was a prolific writer for both technical and popular publications. At the age of 84, he co-authored the most complete and authoritative treatment of the history and development of wooden bridges ever published. He presented papers to many technical meetings including those of the national Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education which he served as president.

But most of all, his devotion was to his School and his students. One of the 140 who sent congratulatory messages to him on his 83rd birthday expressed well the sentiment of them all when he wrote, "It is my firm belief that no other teacher of men ever had a more loyal and devoted group of former pupils than yourself."

Robert Fletcher