Richard “Dick” Matthews was awarded the REA Distinguished Engineer Award in 1984. While he wasn’t an RU Engineering graduate in the 4 year program, he studied at Rutgers at other points in his very successful career. He graduated from Whitehall High School in 1944. He was a 1949 graduate of East Stroudsburg College and Pennsylvania State University. During WWII he served in the Army Air Corps as a radio operator. He was a teacher of chemistry and physics at Washington High School, Washington, NJ, for eight years before moving to West Morris Regional High School in Chester, NJ.
In 1970 he was appointed the first principal of the newly built Mendham High School in Mendham, New Jersey. During his High School assignment he was an instructor in the evening division in Fairleigh Dickinson University at Madison, NJ.
He studied at the Oak Ridge Institute in Nuclear Studies, The University of New Mexico, Rutgers University, the University of Vermont and the Montana College at Bozeman. These summer programs were granted by the National Science Foundation summer fellowship programs.
In the summer of 1960, he was employed by Bell Telephone Laboratories as a technical writer to work on the Mercury Project space program. In 1961 he was selected one of two New Jersey science teachers to attend the National Teacher-Student Conference on Peaceful Uses of the Atom in Chicago, Ill. He accompanied seven outstanding New Jersey senior science students to the program.
Retiring in 1981, he moved to a home in North Whitehall Township where he served on the Planning Commission and Zoning Hearing Board. In his retirement years he continued studies in Civil War history, resulting in two published books, magazine articles and many requests for speaking engagements. He reenacted Civil War history with the 96th Pennsylvania Regiment.
Richard was an instructor in Civil War history at the University of Delaware’s Elderhostel summer program and a speaker for The Institute for Learning in Retirement program. He was an invited speaker in three eastern states, local cities, service clubs, schools, church groups and historical societies. He was president of the Eastern Pennsylvania Civil War Roundtable, president of the Whitehall Historical Preservation Society and past Commander of the Post 8344, VFW. Richard passed away in 2009 at the age of 83.
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