|
FLETCHER JAMES BUCKLEY was born at Ft. Benjamin Harrison, IN, the fourth of six children of Michael Buckley ’23 and Eleanor Fletcher Buckley. An “Army brat,” he attended schools across the United States and in Japan. In his junior year in high school, he received a Presidential appointment to West Point.
At the Academy, Fletcher was active in the Glee Club, the Catholic Chapel Choir, and the Ordnance and Pistol Clubs. His idealism, loyalty, and humor won lifelong friends. A classmate later wrote, “Fletcher was a good and true friend. He was there when you needed him.” Another added appreciatively, “He proved to be an excellent source for meeting young ladies.”
After graduation in 1954 and completion of Ranger training, Airborne school, and the jungle and tropical warfare courses, a new second lieutenant joined the 11th Airborne Division. After it was deactivated in Germany, he transferred to the Signal Corps.
In Germany, Fletcher met Betty Edelbach of St. Cloud, MN, a school teacher at the American base. They married on 8 June 1957 in Heilbron. In October 1958 came the birth of their first son, Michael Joseph, followed over the years, by his three brothers: Thomas James, John Patrick, and Edward Fletcher.
During his early career, Fletcher completed numerous advanced electronic courses on his own and, in 1959, pursued graduate studies at Stanford University, earning a master of science in electrical engineering in 1961. Despite passing the Ph.D. qualifying exams and receiving a National Science Foundation Fellowship, his request to complete the doctorate was denied. Instead, tours at Ft. Huachuca, Thailand, and Ft. Belvoir followed.
In 1965, he graduated with honors from C&GS via correspondence. The next year a new major went to the 1st Signal Brigade in Vietnam.
Throughout these years, performance evaluations recognized that Fletcher had become one of the Army’s most valuable officers in the emerging field of computer science. In Vietnam, so competent was his establishment and supervision of the Integrated Wideband Communications System that he was awarded the Legion of Merit. To Fletcher also came letters of thanks from a Vietnamese orphanage, “I do not know how to thank you for all you have done for us! You have given us so many things: clothes for babies, rewarding books, some shoes.”
He next went to the Army’s Computer Systems Command at Ft. Belvoir. Promotion to lieutenant colonel came in 1968 and multiple awards followed over the next few years. Meanwhile, he took advanced courses and contributed to professional journals. A typical reviewer during this period commended Fletcher as “the most intelligent and analytically thinking officer with whom I have ever served,” and concluded that “he has the capability of rising to the highest levels in the Army.”
In 1971, Fletcher joined the Mathematics Department at West Point as an Associate Professor, heading the department’s elective group. Three years later, at the end of the his assignment, he received a third Meritorious Service Medal. That same year witnessed his retirement from the Army on 30 June 1974.
During the next 23 years, Fletcher achieved a career characterized as “distinguished” by his peers as a software engineer and expert on quality control assurance. For most of that time, he was employed by Martin Marietta’s Government Electronics System, helping to develop tactical air defense systems, radar control networks, and command and control systems. A founding member of the Software Engineering Standards Subcommittee, he served the IEEE in multiple capacities: as a member of the IEEE Standards Board for 11 years, the society’s secretary in the middle 1980s, and twice on its board of governors. Fletcher authored two books: A Guide to Standards Development (IEEE Press, 1989) and Implementing Configuration Management (IEEE Press, 1992 and 1996). He wrote numerous articles, served on the editorial board for Computer, and edited that magazine’s Standards Department from 1989–91. Multiple honors and awards, including the prestigious Steinmertz Award, recognized his numerous accomplishments.
The center of his life, however, was his family, especially his wife and sons. His weekly letters to his parents, filled with whimsy and divided into as many paragraphs as he had sons, recounted their activities, with Betty taking pride of first place, and droll notes about cats and dogs interspersed throughout the text.
He and Betty traveled together to places where Fletcher could research their families’ histories, while at home he developed a remarkable dedication to karate (black belt). His whole family loved Fletcher — his wit, his ironies, his generosity — but more his deep loyalties, his privateness, and his consistent integrity. Fletcher was someone who loved the truth and held the world of manipulation and dishonesty in contempt.
For more than 20 years, Fletcher and Betty made their home in Cherry Hill, NJ. His sickness came in the form of chronic ulcerative colitis and then primary sclerosing cholangitis. He died while awaiting a liver transplant. His two brothers, Jesuit priests, concelebrated his funeral mass at his parish church. Fletcher is survived by his wife, sons, parents, and sister. He has done the years that we all have very well. We pray that he is now with God.
“His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, ‘This was a man.’” |
