Lyle R. Fletcher collection

Lyle Rexford Fletcher was born February 28, 1901 on a farm in Pulaski, Iowa. He was only a few days shy of his 100th birthday when he died in Bowling Green, Ohio on February 16, 2001. During his later years he was known by his many friends and colleagues as the leading authority on Bowling Green and Wood County history, geography, and weather. He was passionate about local history and actively served in the community.

Dr. Fletcher attended the University of Kansas, Lawrence in 1922 majoring in earth science with a minor in journalism and geography. He did not graduate but began a journalism career. He worked as a reporter for Parsons, Kansas Sun, as editor of the Daily Kansan, 1924-1925, and at Whiteside Sentinel, Morrison, Illinois before moving to Mount Vernon, Ohio to become city editor of the Mount Vernon News. In 1933 he married Helen Bebout while living there. He graduated from Ohio University in 1931 with a bachelor’s degree in geography and by 1934 received a master’s degree from Ohio State University. That same year he passed the civil service examination and began work in the geography division of the Bureau of the Census in Washington D.C. In 1936 he transferred to the U.S. Weather Bureau to pursue a career as a meteorologist. His daughter, Beverly Niehaus commented, “He did long-range forecasts for Eisenhower’s Normandy Invasion and the A-bomb drops on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.” He was assigned to work for the Iowa Weather Service as chief in Des Moines and served as an adjunct professor of agro—climatology in the department of physics at Iowa State University in Ames.

In 1946 he and his family moved to Bowling Green where he worked as assistant professor of geography at Bowling Green State University. He was chairman of the Great Lakes Division of the Association of American Geographers and served on the national board of that organization and the National Council for Geographic Education. He wrote a monthly column, for years, on Wood County weather for the Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune and in 1996 published a book on the history of Wood County weather. He was awarded emeritus status by the university in 1971, designated an honorary alumnus in 1986, and presented with an honorary doctorate of public service in 1995.

In the early Seventies he became director of the Wood County Parks Commission and was credited with preventing the demolition of the Wood County Infirmary (one of the last intact county homes in Ohio). The site became the home of the Wood County Historical Museum and Center. In 1956 Dr. Fletcher had helped co-found the Wood County Historical Society. He would serve as its first secretary, curator, newsletter editor, and third president. He also planted all of the trees and shrubs on the surrounding land, later designated the Fletcher Arboretum. Paul Jones, former editor of the Sentinel-Tribune, called him “the real sparkplug of the organization from the beginning.”