December 15, 2003

Engineering Across the Generations

 — One Family of NCSU Grads, Many Career Paths

Merlin (Patches) Meares (left) and his son Robert are two NC State graduates whose engineering degrees took them in very different directions. (Photo: courtesy of Robert Meares)

Just as one person’s engineering career can take many turns over the years, so can the engineering careers of one family. Diversity is the name of the game for the Meares family of Raleigh. The family’s connection to NC State engineering began in the 1920s and continued in the fall of 1942 when Merlin A. (“Patches”) Meares (ME ’47) arrived on campus.

“I had only been to Raleigh twice before the day my parents brought me up to campus and returned home to Chadburn in Columbus County,” he said. “Colonel Harrelson told us in an orientation class to shake hands with the man on our right and left and that only one of us would graduate!” Meares did graduate, though, after a two-year hiatus during the war, with a degree in mechanical engineering. He went to work for North Carolina Equipment Company — which became A. E. Finley & Associates — where he moved into sales after two years in engineering. His successful career with A. E. Finley culminated in presidency of the company from 1987 to 1999, when he retired. Meares’ activities with NC State have included serving on the NC State alumni board of directors, the Campaign for Excellence steering committee, the board of directors of the Friends of the Library and the board of directors of the Wolfpack Club. He was awarded the 2002 Menscer Cup in recognition of his lifelong service to the university.

Patches’ son Robert E. Meares (EE ’74) took a very different direction with his engineering degree. He was good in math so electrical engineering seemed a logical choice. Computers were a brand new field then, and Robert wanted to design them. Following a master’s degree in computer science, he went to work for IBM in Raleigh, where he’s been ever since. One of Robert’s most notable contributions is the development of the bar scan customer identification cards that are now commonly used in grocery stores. “All the grocery stores are using the IBM software that I originally wrote to handle the cards,” he said.

Matthew Meares is involved in the construction of a wind farm consisting of 27 GE wind turbines in South Dakota. (Photo: courtesy of Matthew Meares)

The youngest generation of Meares engineers is Matthew A. Meares (ME/LAF ’00). He has been interested in renewable energy, especially solar power, since childhood. “I decided on mechanical engineering because the Solar Center at NC State is part of that department, and I loved the thermo classes,” he said. Since graduation he has worked in renewable energy, and as president of his company, Southeastern Winds LLC, Matthew splits his time among North Carolina, Tennessee and South Dakota, where he is directing the construction of a wind farm consisting of 27 General Electric wind turbines.

Even though the Meares family members took very different career paths, they all knew that NC State was the place to be for their education. “We grew up as State fans, and we were all of an engineering mindset. We liked working with numbers and working out problems so it was pretty obvious for Matthew and me that we were going to be in some kind of scientific or engineering field,” said Robert Meares. “NC State was a logical choice.”

— rudd —

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