OBITUARIES

OBITUARIES Robert Dean

NORWICH, VT — Robert Charles Dean, Jr. died at his home on January 7, 2023, with his family at his side. Bob was born on April 13, 1928 to Robert C. Dean and Ruth (Andrew) Dean in Atlanta, Georgia where his father was teaching architecture. Bob’s childhood was spent in Newton and Wellesley, Massachusetts. He graduated from Phillips Academy Andover in 1945 (years later, he served on the PA Board of Trustees). He earned degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ScD (1954), SM (1949) and BS (1948).

At the age of 14, while working on a Massachusetts farm during WWII, Bob lost his leg in a tractor accident. In his characteristic way, throughout his long life, he showed no self-pity. “Can do optimism” defined Bob Dean.

At MIT, while she was at Wellesley College, Bob met the love of his life, Nancy Hayes. They married in 1951, which led to five children and more than 71 happy and exciting years together. Early in their marriage, Bob was an Assistant Professor in Engineering at MIT and a faculty advisor to his fraternity, Sigma Chi. Although he loved teaching and thrived on the dynamic post-war atmosphere at MIT, Bob decided to solve technological problems in industry.

In 1956, Bob and Nancy moved with their first three children to Easton, Pennsylvania where Bob would work to create an advanced engineering department for Ingersoll-Rand in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. In Easton, they restored a small stone house (ca. 1780) that was once part of John Penn’s holdings and their fourth child was born. When an opportunity came to teach at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering, Bob and Nancy happily moved their family to the beautiful Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire, where they welcomed their fifth child.

Once back in New England, they first lived in Plain-field, New Hampshire but soon moved to Norwich, Vermont. Purchasing the historic 1820 house across from the Norwich Inn, they spent the next seventeen years fixing it up and enjoying all that the thriving small town’s residential center had to offer.

There, the five children could walk to school, allowing Nancy to juggle her volunteer work and community service with raising five lively children, while Bob taught at Thayer School and founded companies.

At Dartmouth, Bob combined his teaching and love for the creative atmosphere of working with engineering colleagues and students with founding a series of technology companies. His first company, Creare, was founded in 1961 with Jim Bailey and Jim Browning. In 1968, Bob worked with his former student and employee, Dick Couch, to found Hypertherm. Based on their joint patent, Couch’s business acumen, and talented and committed employees from throughout the greater community, Hypertherm grew into a leading international manufacturing enterprise and significant part of the engine driving the economy of the Upper Valley. In the years that followed, Bob and his former students and colleagues started numerous other companies (including Simbex with Rick Greenwald) establishing innovative technology businesses in the Upper Valley, altogether creating thousands of jobs.

Bob became a legendary figure in the Upper Valley, riding, with one leg, his bicycle from Norwich to Etna to work each day, where the sound of jet engines behind Creare’s renovated farmhouse annoyed the neighbors and told the story of the work inside. He loved collaborating with colleagues worldwide, and his ideas and innovative efforts were respected globally. Though this was never his focus, his career was studded with patents, awards, gold medals and election to prestigious academies including the National Academy of Engineering (a more detailed record of his achievements can be found on Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering website).

At home and in the community, Bob was known as an outdoorsman who thrived on adventuring into the wilderness. Family hiking, biking and canoeing trips included the White Mountains, Acadia National Park, the Pennine Way, Scotland and the longest trip of all—a thousand miles in Ireland. Bob always laughed as he recalled fondly his years as one of the scoutmasters in the Norwich Boy Scouts, mentoring the boys in winter survival camping, building bridges, etc., and leading them on sometimes-precarious river trips on the Allagash and St. John. He was proud of what his scouts went on to accomplish as adults in their professions as they contributed to the Upper Valley.

Bob was a voracious reader with broad interests, and also a skilled craftsman in wood and metal. But, most importantly, Bob was a loving, cheerful, fun and devoted husband and father. He was interested in all who crossed his path, and he made a point of taking the time to get to know them and encourage and inspire almost everyone whom he encountered. Bob’s 94 years provide a shining example of how to create a happy and fulfilling life despite major setbacks and adversity.

Bob is survived by his devoted wife Nancy, his children Meg Hurley (husband Jack), James, Lili Hermann (husband Heinrich), Martha Dean, Char-lie (wife Marina, “Didi”), his sister Nancy MacNeil (husband George), brother Andrew (wife Ruth), grandchildren Andrew Dean (wife Bilio), Edie Berteaux (husband Matt), Lili Daiss, Sam Daiss, Charles Dean, Nicholas Dean and Elliot Dean, as well as numerous nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his parents and his sister Cameron Paris.

Condolences can be sent to Rand-Wilson Funeral Home in Hanover, New Hampshire. A memorial observance will be held on Saturday, May 13, 2023, in Norwich’s Congregational Church at 2 p.m. with a gathering of friends in the church hall afterward. Interment will be private, in Hillside Cemetery, Norwich.

Bob’s family is truly grateful for the generous and loving assistance provided to him in his final months by Janet and Bill Tuttle, Tom Griggs, Norwich’s emergency responders, members of the Visiting Nurse Association and Kate Hodgdon-Perron and numerous other Hospice caregivers. They all took kind and loving care of him, allowing him to remain with Nancy and their beloved dog, Lad, at their home in Norwich, until the end.