Wendell Herman Nedderman

Wendell Herman Nedderman, born October 31, 1921, in southern Iowa, died on May 8, 2019 in Frisco, Texas, due to reasons incident to old age. He was raised on a farm by loving parents, Walter Herman Nedderman and Fern Gray Nedderman. His first eight grades of school were in a rural one-room school house where there was emphasis on fundamentals, including reading, writing, arithmetic, and spelling. There was also great emphasis on the importance of order, discipline, and responsibility.

He graduated from Lovilia High School in 1939 as class valedictorian. His formative years in the decade of the 1930s were marked by drought, dust bowl, and the Great Depression, all of which provided incentives to leave the farm.

After a freshman year at Albia Junior College, he entered Iowa State University in 1940. He graduated in 1943 with honors and a degree in civil engineering.

After graduation from Iowa State, Wendell enlisted in the Navy and was sent to Reserve Midshipman’s School at Annapolis where, after four months, he was commissioned an officer with the rank of ensign and assigned to a destroyer, the USS Patterson. Most of his three years in the Navy were in the Pacific where he was in significant combat, including campaigns in the Marianas, Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. He earned eight battle stars.

He joined the civil engineering department at Texas A&M in 1947 as instructor and rose to full professor within 10 years. During his 12 years with A&M, he earned a masters degree at A&M and a Ph.D. at Iowa State.

Wendell and family moved to Arlington in 1959 where he was the founding dean of the College of Engineering at Arlington State College, a position he held for 10 years. After four years as vice president of academic affairs, he was appointed UT Arlington president in 1972, a position he held until 1992. His tenure as president was marked by dramatic expansion of the university’s size, scope, and ambitions. After retirement, he taught part-time in the College of Engineering until 2004. By student vote, he received the College of Engineering’s “Teacher Excellence Award” in 1997.

Wendell was a registered professional engineer in Iowa, Louisiana, and Texas. He was a consultant to Gulf Oil Corporation for over 30 years, and was a pioneer in offshore platform design in the 1950s and 1960s.

He was active in many professional and community organizations, including the First Christian Church of Arlington where he held virtually every layman position over a 40 year period.

Wendell received numerous awards including: the Texas A&M faculty “Distinguished Achievement Award,” the Anson Marston gold medal from Iowa State for “achievement in the field of engineering,” and the Mirabeau B. Lamar Medal from the Association of Texas Colleges and Universities for “leadership in learning.” An endowed professorship in the UT Arlington College of Engineering bears his name.

In December, 1947, in College Station, Texas, he married Betty Ann Vezey, the daughter of a highly-regarded A&M physics professor.

Wendell was preceded in death by his beloved wife of 67 happy years, Betty Ann Nedderman in 2015. He is survived by their four sons and three daughters-in-law: Howard and Terri, John, Jeff and Faye, and Eric and Kimberly. There are many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. One sister, Jean Henderson, lives in Ottumwa, Iowa.

The funeral will take place at First Christian Church of Arlington, 910 S. Collins St. Arlington, TX 76010 on Saturday, May 18, 2019 at 12:00 p.m. Burial will immediately follow the service in a family plot at Moore Memorial Gardens, Arlington, Texas.