René Marie Archibald FIECHTER

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Inventor, socialite Rene-Marie Archibald Fiechter dies

Published: July 17, 2009 3:23 PM
By ZACHARY R. DOWDY zachary.dowdy@newsday.com

At times life with Rene-Marie Archibald Fiechter of Douglaston, an inventor, was a dress rehearsal for the future, his children can attest, as the engineer often allowed his family to help try out items he was working on, some of them gadgets that would later be widely used in industry. Fiechter, a Lausanne, Switzerland, native who came by ocean liner to America in 1947 and racked up patents in railroading, watches and applied epoxy resins, died of natural causes on June 19 at home. He was 89. "The whole house was full of crazy inventions," said Rene-Pierre Fiechter, a Nassau assistant district attorney and the eldest son. "The alarm system in the house was his own design. We were the test pilots of many of them." Fiechter was an intellectual whose inventions launched his career, a socialite who threw grand costume balls in the Douglaston home he had lived in for almost 60 years, and a dedicated father with a patrician upbringing. His bloodlines stretch into Russian nobility as his mother was a countess and university mathematician, his father a renowned Swiss poet. Fiechter was educated in Egypt, attending high school-level classes in Alexandria at the British "Old Victorian" College. The institution has among its alumni the late King Hussein of Jordan, who once hosted Fiechter and his wife, the former Jeanine Mirielle Bouscharain, at a class reunion. Fiechter earned undergraduate and master's degrees in engineering from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. He left Europe for the United States on a boat, where he met and never separated from Bouscharain, daughter of a member of France's delegation to the United Nations. The couple married four months after docking in New York in 1947. They lived in Queens, among the UN community and, in 1952, bought the Douglaston home where they lived the rest of their lives. Jeanine Fiechter died in 2001. Among Fiechter's inventions was the curveliner, a device that helped engineers calculate the proper curvature for train tracks to prevent derailments. He also created super glue to hold tracks together. Though a serious thinker and hard worker, Fiechter was known for hosting large social gatherings, too, and he loved sailing the world with his wife, eventually becoming national captain of the U.S. Brotherhood of the Coast, a sailing organization. The couple had been members of the Community Church of Douglaston since 1957. Fiechter also is survived by two other sons, Jean-Nicolas Fiechter of Vevey, Switzerland, and Michel-Claude Fiechter of Douglaston; a daughter, Marie-Francoise Thomas of Douglaston; a brother, Jean-Jacques Fiechter of Lausanne; and a sister, Nicole Ferran of Paris. A memorial service will be held Tuesday at the Community Church of Douglaston at 2 p.m. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the church.

FIECHTER , René, GHM, BDO
A Swiss engineer who resides in the USA, he is a highly respected Brother of the New York Table (#51). N.Y. Table's Captain, National Captain USA, member of the former Counsel of 5, then International Look-Out in 1997. René organized the First World Zafarrancho in 1986 and the first "All America" Zafarrancho in 1996.

René married Jeanine Mireille BOUSCHARAIN, daughter of Pierre Hippolyte BOUSCHARAIN and Juliette Sophie Georgine VILNAT, in 1947 in Huguenot Church, Park Avenue, New-York, USA. (Jeanine Mireille BOUSCHARAIN was born on 2 Dec 1924 in Geneva, Switzerland and died on 10 Apr 2001 in Long Island, NY.)