Herbert Fletcher
Herbert Fletcher '51 '81 Diving
He flew through the air with the greatest of ease, this darling young man from Cleveland.
He was the greatest diver of his era, indeed the greatest ever to represent Fenn College. Although it is difficult to compare athletes of different vintages, it is quite likely that he was the finest diver ever to compete at Cleveland State University. Period.
Herb Fletcher was a standout even before he came to Fenn. He was the city diving champion at Cleveland East Tech in 1944, and the target of more than a few college recruiters.
But there was a war on and Uncle Sam won the recruiting derby. Fletcher went into the Army, serving 18 months in Europe where he saw combat action with the famed 100th (Century) Division. He also found time to compete in the U.S Army Championships in Nuremberg, Germany with the 7th Army team.
Most college coaches had lost track of him when he received his service discharge in the Spring of 1946, but not Fenn's Ray Ray who, according to Fletcher, "was at my door the next day."
In the Fall of 1946 Fletcher enrolled at Fenn College, along with an All-American swimmer-to-be named Bob Busbey and several other swimmers of only slightly lesser renown.
It was the start of the Foxes' "Golden Age of Swimming."
In the ensuing four years, during which it took on some of the biggest names in collegiate swimming, the Fenn swim team built a 45-12 dual meet record, a .791 winning percentage.
Fletcher did even better. He lost a dual meet encounter to a diver from Carnegie Tech as a freshman, then didn't lose a dual encounter again until his senior year in a meet against Bowling Green. Altogether he accounted for 256 dual meet points during his career.
And he climaxed that career in the 1949 NCAA National Swimming and Diving Championships with an 11th place finish, the highest ever by a Fenn or Cleveland State diver.
There were other championships in abundance for Fletcher during those college years, including a pair of Northeastern Ohio AAU 1-meter titles in 1949 and 1950 and an NEOAAU 3-meter title in 1950.
But the titles ended along with his competitive diving when he graduated in 1951 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
By then he had married the former Marianne Schurdak whom he had met, just as the story books would have it, in the Fenn swimming pool, and was ready to embark on a successful career which would take him to seven cities in six states before returning to Cleveland.
The first twenty-five years of that career were spent with General Electric. He later joined Anchor Coupling as Manager of Quality Control and then joined North American Systems in Cleveland in 1972, also as Manager of Quality Control.
Fletcher still dives, for pleasure, skis, golfs and served a brief, but successful career as a Little League baseball coach.
The Fletcher children are grown now and the oldest, Kevin, 27, is a Supply Officer in the U.S. Navy, presently stationed in the Persian Gulf. Daughter Michele, 26, is married and will graduate from medical school at the University of Iowa this month, after which she will begin her internship at Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital; while Brian, 21, is completing his junior year at Ohio State University
Herb and Marianne currently make their home in Solon
