Leroy S. "Skip" Fletcher '58 and his father Robert H. "Bob" Fletcher enjoyed a long legacy of teaching in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Skip honored his father with a fellowship turned professorship after recent contributions.
Since he was a boy, Leroy S. “Skip” Fletcher ’58 remembers looking up to his father, Robert H. “Bob” Fletcher. A hard-working family man, Bob shared his passion for mechanical engineering with his son and thousands of Aggie students over the years.
Skip couldn’t know it as a youngster, but Fletcher would became a household name in the mechanical engineering department at Texas A&M University as both he and his father served a combined 70 years teaching.
In 1988, Skip and other former students endowed a fellowship to honor his father and the academic foundation he set for the mechanical engineering department. Twenty-eight years later, the Fletcher legacy is evolving again through a recent gift by Skip and his wife Nancy to grow the fellowship into the Robert H. Fletcher Professorship in Mechanical Engineering.
The professorship will be awarded for the first time this fall, and funds will support the teaching and research activities of its faculty holder. The gift will help the department attract high-quality faculty, improve retention, and enhance creativity and productivity.
following footsteps
After graduating from Pennsylvania State University in 1928 with a degree in mechanical engineering, Bob Fletcher held several jobs that led him to the A&M College of Texas, where he was hired as an instructor in the mechanical engineering department in 1946.
“My father was a very devoted teacher,” said Skip, who now owns an avocado farm in Southern California. “He established personal relationships with almost all of his students—he truly went above and beyond.”
His devotion led to his promotion in 1949 to assistant professor and in 1958 to associate professor, and ultimately professor emeritus. His background as an engine foreman and mechanic made him the perfect candidate to teach the automotive engineering class and serve as the faculty adviser to the Society of Automotive Engineers.
“I would walk out to our garage on weekends, and my dad would be fixing up an old car with students,” Skip said. “It was more than just teaching for him; it was his life.”
Education was a high priority for the Fletcher family, who resided in the Bryan-College Station area. Bob and his wife Jennie relocated Skip and his sister Martha to another high school simply because it provided a wider array of classes for students. “One of my father’s main motivations for taking the job at Texas A&M was because he wanted to ensure that my sister and I could pursue a college education,” Skip said.
Skip followed his father’s path and was admitted to the then Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas in 1954. Though he and Bob were on campus at the same time, Skip never had his dad as a teacher. “One semester I really wanted to take his automotive engineering class for an easy ‘A’,” he said. “So I asked my dad if it was ok, but of course he said no.”
Bob continued teaching at Texas A&M in either a full-time or part-time capacity until 1980, when he retired after 34 years of service to the mechanical engineering department.
