Lindsay and I both received our bachelor degrees from MIT in June 1950, but we did not know each other as undergraduates or for most of the '50s. Since Lindsay matriculated in September 1944, with time-out for Army service, while I arrived in February 1947 after Army service, as freshmen we were out of phase. From our sophomore year on he pursued an electrical engineering degree while I elected mechanical engineering, and whereas Lindsay had joined the Theta Delta Chi fraternity I lived in the dorms.
Lindsay and I met in 1958 at a "brown-bag" luncheon at MIT prompted by John Kenneth Dupress. John was injured by a grenade in the Battle of the Bulge, captured by the Germans, and subjected to Nazi medical experimentation, which left him blind and a forearm amputee. By the late 1950s he had a part-time job at the American Foundation for the Blind and was committed to recruiting scientists and engineers to take on R&D to ameliorate blindness.
Lindsay had had such a project in mind since his undergraduate days. While he was dropping off a fraternity mate for a date at the Perkins School for the Blind a blind child veered into Lindsay's parked auto. Lindsay made a mental note to look into a device to help blind travelers avoid obstacles.
Reflecting on his experiences with radar in the Army and at his antenna company, Lindsay invented the Pathsounder, an ultrasonic travel aid for blind pedestrians. John Dupress joined forces with Lindsay in testing the device, especially in the evaluation of the audio and tactile displays which "described" the passage space ahead of the blind traveler. Throughout his life Lindsay continued to produce small numbers of Pathsounders in the lab/office he maintained in Kendall Square over the bank.
Another of his many unheralded benefactions has been his designing and maintaining for a deaf-blind person the electronic environment and equipment by means of which she has been able to have a career as a computer programmer.
Over the intervening decades Lindsay contributed to many other projects in our Center for Sensory Aids Evaluation and Development at MIT. He made major contributions to a conference sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences in 1967 which developed a "blueprint" for a national program of R&D on behalf of blind and deaf-blind persons. In recent years he has served as Trustee of the National Braille Press where he was generous in providing technical advice on, and financial support of, pioneering projects to advance the Braille literacy of blind children.
As Class president for its first 51 years I know how greatly 1950 has benefited from Lindsay's generous commitment of his time and resources to it. He tended the Class of 1950 Student Aid Fund, arranging annual dinners between classmates and students the Fund supported, maintaining liaison with the MIT Student Aid Office staff and working valiantly to extend the Fund's support to MIT undergraduates planning to teach science and math at secondary schools. He was a member of just about every reunion planning committee I can remember. The 1950 web page Lindsay designed and has maintained for our class is acknowledged by all to be the best of those posted. At our recent 50th reunion he arranged at his own expense to have candid photos taken of each classmate couple attending and he scanned all these into a pictorial supplement to our web page. Although Lindsay was a bachelor he wanted to capture the reunion joy he had long seen on the faces of classmate couples. With the transition of class officers at the reunion, Lindsay volunteered for and assumed the role of Class Agent.
Another "Class" project which Lindsay made into a personal effort personifies his unrestricted generosity and thorough attention to detail. At our graduation in 1950 the Class planted a row of willow trees along the path by the Fred and Julie Fassett Garden at the approach to what is now Baker House, then called "the New Dormitory". As seniors, the dormitory-residing members of our class had been its inaugural occupants. As we approached our 50th Reunion only one of the trees was left and had become an impressive specimen, right in front of the entrance to Baker. Attempts over the years to mark the trees as the "Class of 1950 Willows" had not withstood the ingenuity of MIT student collectors. The Reunion Committee decided that a rededication of the willow be a part of our 50th celebration. Lindsay volunteered to take on the task.
Now note that Lindsay was not a dormitory resident, but rather a fraternity brother. Also he had not known Dean Baker, for whom the dorm was named, and who became the focus of the Willow rededication. No matter - ever generous, thoughtful, thorough Lindsay took on the task, authored the very appropriate text, designed and had cast the bronze plaque, and worked with the MIT grounds staff to define a safe-from-collectors and -snowplows location and secure tethering of the plaque in the paving at the base of the Willow. But his illness intervened. From his hospital bed he asked several of us to follow up to make sure the installation was perfect, which it was. Thankfully his return to campus from hospital and rehabilitation, though very brief, was long enough for Lindsay to personally inspect and approve his handiwork!
Here is the text Lindsay authored for the Class of 1950 Willow plaque:
Those of us who knew Lindsay, when we read that plaque and reflect on its text, will recall how it also speaks to the affection we hold for our friend Lindsay .The Class of 1950 Willow Dedicated at Graduation June 1950 Rededicated at Reunion June 2000 With the hope that its shade and quiet beauty may bring pleasure to all who walk here. Nostalgia and sadness link our Class to Baker House. We were its first occupants when it opened in 1949 as the men's new dormitory. Before it reopened the following year, an airplane crash took the life of a warmly popular MIT figure: EVERETT MOORE BAKER, D.D. He was Dean of Students and counselor and personal friend of many students during our school days. Ever after this graceful building would bear his name and, in time, be the MIT home to many hundreds of her young men and women.
For now over four decades Lindsay and I have been MIT associates and personal friends. For one who maintained a healthy life-style with regular exercise, his illness came upon him unexpectedly and suddenly. He was so relieved to be discharged from hospital and return to privacy and his own way of living at 100 Memorial. But for so short a stay!
Lindsay remains in our memories and prayers.
Robert W. Mann, Sc.D.
Whitaker Professor Emeritus
Biomedical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
President. MIT Class of 1950, 1949-2000
