October was homecoming month for all our alumni but one particularly special visitor arrived for a homecoming of a distinctly different kind. In the form of an expertly painted, life-size wood cutout, Fred Terman visited campus after a cross-country drive that started at MIT. It was part of an unusual project conceived by a Silicon Valley artist. Here is the slideshow of the day Fred came home.
The day that Fred was coming home, people were very excited. They eagerly looked on the Web to see when Fred would arrive.
Fred made it right on time. Ron Newdoll, the artist's father, helped him through the doorway.
Artist Julie Newdoll introduced Fred to Dean Jim Plummer...
...and the assembled crowd of eager well-wishers.
Dean Plummer thanked Gary Lanahan and his daughter Courteney for driving Fred down from Marin County. Gary's dad, Harry, drove Fred most of the way across the country.
Fred met the dean and James Harris, both electrical engineering professors. "Can you believe it?" Fred said. "These guys are trying to convince me that you can make a transistor only 65 nanometers wide. C'mon."
That day there was a "Dean's Circle Luncheon." Fred figured that as a former dean he'd better go. There he heard Professor Martin Fischer talk about sustainable construction.
After lunch, Fred decided to explore the campus. He found an unfamiliar face in a very familiar place: Peter Jordan, a brand new documentary film graduate student.
Fred also spent some time bonding with the other art objects. Here he his imitating one of the Burghers of Calais.
While in the Quad, Fred, a former provost, decided to check in on the new management. The two engineers totally hit it off.
President Hennessy told Fred that electrical engineers now worked at a place called the David Packard buidling. Fred found a bicycle and rode over to check it out.
Soon after he got there, Fred met a tour group of new students. He wondered why none of them wore slide rules on their belts. "Surely, they don't plan to do logarithms in their heads," he thought.
Inside, Fred found a familiar object — the very first product made by his buddies Hewlett and Packard.
He decided to see whether there was any record of him around campus. He got excited to learn there was a "Terman" building. On the way there, he ran into Bruce Wooley, chair of electrical engineering.
Sure enough, he found the Terman building. "Well, check this out," he was heard to say.
Inside he found a picture of himself. "Not a bad likeness," he thought.
Stanford Engineering would like to thank Julie Newdoll for conceiving the project. We'd also like to thank sculptor/painter Jim Pallas for his fine work.
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