Canton’s Dr. Batchelder reflects on a lifetime of achievements

Dr. Nelson D. Batchelder of Canton has always loved history. As a corporal in the U.S. Army during World War II, he created his own history by witnessing the initial Nuremberg Trials. In September of this year, he was honored at a Veterans Coffee Hour at the Canton Town Club for his service to the Greatest Generation.

Dr. Nelson Batchelder (Andrea Galvin photo)

Batchelder enlisted in the Army shortly after his 18^th birthday in 1945. His father and older brother had served in the Navy, but Batchelder wanted something different.

“I’d rather walk ten miles than swim ten miles,” he said with a laugh. He did basic training at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama, and eventually served in Bamberg, Germany.

Batchelder’s job was to help find housing for American Army personnel and their families as they arrived in Germany. He spent a year and a half in the Bavarian city of Bamberg in southern Germany. It was during that time that he received a special services pass, allowing him a great deal of freedom in traveling about the country.

The initial trials began in November of 1945 and lasted until October of 1946. In June of 1946, Batchelder made use of his pass and hitchhiked via Army trucks and jeeps to the city of Nuremberg.

“I was the only one from my group who did it,” he recalled. “I was the only enlisted man there. I was young. I felt this was going to be something nobody had ever heard of.”

Batchelder has a recent newspaper photo of the defendants, sitting in two rows. He and the other spectators sat in a balcony above them. They picked up earphones and chose from one of four languages — English, French, German and Russian — to hear the details of the horrible war crimes.

He has marked two of the defendants in the photo, Hermann Goring and Rudolf Hess, with red pen, and said that Goring was arrogant. The trial was unlike anything he had ever imagined. “There was no precedent for anything like that,” he said.

Canton’s Dr. Dean Luce delivered Batchelder at Norwood Hospital in 1927. He was in Miss Alsop’s first grade class at the Revere School on Chapman Street. His family moved and he completed his elementary school years at the Crane School, where Walgreens now stands. He went on to Canton High School, located at the present-day Hemenway building.

His life changed dramatically when his father, also named Nelson, enlisted in 1941 in the SeeBees and was sent to California for training. Batchelder’s brother also enlisted in the Navy, and the young Nelson and his mother, Marjorie, remained in their home in Canton. One day in 1943, his father called and suggested that they move out to California. Once Batchelder’s mother collected enough gas ration cards to get them across the country, they locked the door to their home, climbed into their 1941 Chevy, and set off on their journey.

Batchelder’s father had a brother who owned an orange ranch in California, and the Canton relatives moved in. Batchelder recalls his uncle tossing pebbles at his bedroom window to wake him up and get him out to the fields to start working. He spent his junior year of high school in West Covina.

For his senior year, he returned to CHS, where Bill Donovan was the principal, a history teacher, the athletic director, and class advisor. “We called him ‘Wild Bill Donovan,’” Batchelder said. “He was a great guy.”

Donovan encouraged the young Batchelder to apply for admission to Harvard University. The college had an accelerated program, which allowed students to begin their studies during the summer so that they could complete their first year by the end of December. Batchelder did that, moving to Cambridge at the age of 17 and then on to Alabama months later, with one year of college under his belt.

When he returned from Germany, he went back to Harvard. In 1948, one of his roommates set him up on an unusual blind date — the girl lived in Pennsylvania. Batchelder got together the money to fly to Philadelphia to meet Lois Parker. Two years later, they eloped and were happily married until Lois passed away in 2004. Batchelder has three children, six grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

He graduated from Harvard and then moved to New Jersey for three years to work for a company that made surgical dressings and other medical products. He and his wife and their two children lived in a converted garage while he saved money for Tufts Medical School.

Batchelder started his own practice, buying a home and setting up an office and waiting room where the garage would have been. In 1963, he became the school doctor for the town of Canton, a position once held by Dr. Luce and later by Dr. Newell Hagen. He continues in that role today, working with the Canton Public School nurses, whom he describes as extraordinary, as well as at Blue Hills Regional and St. John’s. He handles public health concerns for the schools and is affiliated with Norwood Hospital.

At 85, Batchelder looks back and is grateful for the wonderful experiences he has had. “I’ve had a blessed life,” he said.

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Posted by Mary Ann Price on Oct 31 2012. Filed under Features. Both comments and pings are currently closed.