In the words of his wife, Barbara, Samuel Fletcher was “one who very much wanted to make a difference,” and that he surely did. Fletcher invented the Smart Palate—a sensor-loaded retainer that identifies speech problems through tongue placement—and the Nasometer—which measures sound from the nose and mouth to determine how nasal a person’s voice is.
Fletcher was a professor at universities in Utah, New Mexico, and Alabama. He passed away in 2018. He would have been influential in the McKay School’s Communication Disorders Department for his inventions alone. But he and his wife, Barbara, ensured a far deeper legacy through two decades of financial support that now includes a hospital simulation laboratory.
Associate clinical professor Julie Schow said that the lab gives students valuable experience, both with mannequins and with actor “patients.” “The laboratory will really give them a chance to experience that empathy, prepare them, and expose them to some of the technical equipment they will be using,” Schow said.
Barbara Fletcher said her husband was a self-motivated “Idaho farm boy” who learned a “great work ethic.” He worked the farm, wrote a sports column, served in Navy counterintelligence, and sold vacuum cleaners to get through college. At church, he was a stake president, and with Barbara served a mission in Jakarta, Indonesia. They then returned to Utah, where he taught at BYU and continued his writing and research.
“I’d encourage you to not wait to make a difference,” Barbara Fletcher said. “It doesn’t take much. A little bit of money can . . . really lift up a person’s life. And a person who is uplifted like that can become a person in a position to help others too.”