Walter K. Rhodes
Walter Kremer Rhodes was born on a farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1874. He attended the rural schools of Adams County, and from 1894 to 1899 he taught in the rural schools of that county. He graduated from the Gettysburg Academy in 1896 and the Cumberland Valley State Normal School in 1898. He served as Assistant Principal in the Littlestown Normal School for one year and entered Bucknell University in 1899. During his senior year in college he taught in the Academy. He received a Bachelor of Philosophy degree from Bucknell in 1903 and a Master of Arts degree in 1906.
After his graduation from Bucknell in 1903, he was employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in the Engineering Construction Department until March 1, 1905. In late 1904, President John Howard Harris invited Rhodes to teach electrotechnics in the college, and on January 12 1905 the Board of Trustees approved his appointment to the faculty with his service to begin in September 1907. In September 1905, Rhodes entered the University of Michigan to pursue further study, and, in 1907, he received the Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering degree from Michigan. That same year, he began his career at Bucknell as “…Assistant Professor of Mathematics in Electro Technics at a salary of $1200 per annum,” and in 1908 he was promoted to Professor of Electrotechnics. After the resignation of Registrar Walter S. Wilcox in 1918, Professor Rhodes served as Acting Registrar “…for three months in addition to [his] regular work as a professor” until Professor B.F. Thomas was appointed as the full-time Registrar, and from September of 1918 to April of 1919 he was the liaison officer for the University and the Student Army Training Corps, which was a very strenuous and stressful assignment. In 1920, his title was changed to Professor of Electrical Engineering. He was granted a leave of absence in 1939 and he retired from his teaching duties. He was made professor emeritus in 1942. Walter Kremer Rhodes died on December 12, 1945 at the age of seventy-one. He is buried in the Lewisburg Cemetery.
Walter Kremer Rhodes was active in community affairs. In 1931, he was elected vice president of the Citizen’s Electric Company of Lewisburg. In 1929, he was elected as a member of the board of directors of the Union National Bank and he was elected vice president of the bank in 1943. He was a member of the Reformed Church and the Masons.
The photograph is from the 1920 L’Agenda.