Late praise for versatile visionary

Concord is known for its share of famous residents - Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Mention William Wheeler in the same breath, and you'll probably draw a blank stare.

But a group of residents wants to change that.

The residents are working to introduce townspeople and anyone else to this lesser-known Concordian - an educator, engineer, farmer, and entrepreneur whose achievements in the 1800s and 1900s had a far-reaching impact in the United States and Japan. The education blitz starts with a four-Thursday forum in his hometown, beginning tonight.

The forum will celebrate Wheeler's life and shed light on his work, particularly in Japan, where he is better known and appreciated. As a teacher there, he helped establish an agricultural college and an astronomical observatory, and designed canals, roads, and bridges in the then-underdeveloped island of Hokkaido.

Wilson Flight, a former science teacher, first heard about Wheeler in 1998 on a class trip to Japan with band students from Concord-Carlisle Regional High School. On a visit to the clock tower in Sapporo, the capital city of Hokkaido, the group saw a plaque describing Wheeler's contributions to Japan.

"I had no idea who he was," said Flight, a member of the forum's organizing committee. "When we went inside and saw all the mentions of Concord, it was a real eye-opener."

Wheeler was born in 1851 and died in 1932. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.

His impact on Japan is the topic of a book by Tetsuro Takasaki. An English translation is due next year.

After hearing about the book, Barbara Wheeler came up with the idea for the forum. She thought if Japan was honoring his accomplishments, then Concord residents should learn more about one of their own. William Wheeler and Barbara's husband's grandfather were brothers.

"My thought was to put this man on the map and give him his due," she said.

Barbara Wheeler helped Takasaki with research for the book and provided copies of 40 letters Wheeler wrote to his parents while in Japan. He went there in 1876, at the invitation of the Japanese government, and spent four years.

Wheeler, who had attended the Massachusetts Agricultural College, now the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, accompanied college president William S. Clark to Hokkaido to establish the Imperial Agricultural College of Sapporo. When Clark returned to Massachusetts, Wheeler stayed on and became its second president.

Japan's call for help came at a time when it was just beginning to open up to the world after a period of great turmoil, said Kazue Campbell, a retired Boston University professor who is translating Takasaki's book into English. She said the country had been closed off for nearly 200 years and its leaders realized they were falling behind the rest of the world.

Hokkaido, an isolated island in the northern part of the country, was in dire need of attention, Campbell said, and the government asked Massachusetts educators for help because Hokkaido and Massachusetts run along the same latitude and have similar growing seasons.

A respected and brilliant educator, Wheeler had a huge impact on Hokkaido's development; in addition to his work at the university, he introduced state-of-the-art construction techniques.

"To me, he represents the very advanced thinking of Concord," said Campbell. "It was what Japan needed at that time - practical, systematic thinking. It was quite impressive."

But Wheeler's life didn't just touch Japan. He was responsible for designing Concord's first sewer treatment plant and for establishing a reliable water supply for the town.

He founded the Wheeler Reflector Co. to produce lighting to cities and towns and helped create a business organization in southeastern Washington and northern Idaho. Through the company, Wheeler found a way to divert water from a mountain stream to provide an irrigation system for thousands of acres of farmland.

He was also an inventor, with nearly 100 patents in his name.

Flight said Wheeler developed a lighting system that was a precursor to today's fiber-optic system. He also developed a filtration system for town sewage that Flight described as "revolutionary." A version of the filter is still used worldwide, Flight said.

Wheeler was also involved in public service - he was elected a delegate to the state's constitutional convention from 1915 to 1917 and was referred to as Concord's foremost citizen, Flight said.

But what struck organizers of the forum most was Wheeler's willingness to venture to a new country Americans knew little about.

When Richard Wheeler, also a member of the organizing committee, first traveled to Japan in 1965, he saw Wheeler's legacy everywhere.

"The major thing for me is the keeping of his memory in Japan," said Richard Wheeler, who said he is perhaps a distant relative. "We kept running into people who knew of him. Ninety years later, his memory was still fresh and alive in Japan."

The Concord Council on Aging is hosting the forum at the Harvey Wheeler Community Center on four consecutive Thursdays starting at 7:30 tonight.

Jennifer Fenn Lefferts can be reached at jflefferts@yahoo.com.