Clyde Henry Dorsett

Clyde Henry Dorsett of Queenstown, MD died at his home on Friday, August 3, 2007. He was 82. Born January 24, 1925 in Burlington, NC, he was the son of the late Clyde Henry and Annie Moore Hooper Dorsett. He graduated from Burlington High School, Burlington, NC. For over forty years Clyde Dorsett was a leader in the field of planning, programming and design of facilities for the treatment of the mentally handicapped. In 1965 he established the Architectural Consultation Office at the National Institute of Mental Health in response to President John Kennedy’s call for a “bold new approach” to the treatment of mentally ill which relied on community based facilities rather than massive state mental hospitals. From that office, he and his few architectural specialist staff consulted on more than two hundred and fifty community mental health center projects in the nation. He initiated, conceptualized, wrote and implemented national policy for mental health facilities through the development of standards and guidelines by which facilities would be accredited, certified and funded for construction and operation. At the same time, he provided support for university research on the relationship between human behavior and the physical environment and promoted participatory methods for facility design. In 1982 he continued his work in the field by establishing Mental Health Consultants, Inc., a group of mental health and architectural specialists for mental health and forensic psychiatric services. Mr. Dorsett was educated as an architect at North Carolina State University (BA in Architecture, 1953) and in 1963 he received a Master’s Degree from Columbia University in Public Health and Hospital Architecture specializing in mental health facilities. He has provided architectural consultation, programming and design for hundreds of facilities located in North America, Central America and abroad. He also served as an expert advisor to organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Department of State. He has won numerous awards, honors and fellowships and has authored and directed a multitude of publications including “Planning, Programming and Design of Mental Health Centers,” “Architecture for the Community Mental Health Center,” and “Accessing Therapeutic Environments for Active Psychiatric Treatment Settings.” He was a member of the American Institute of Architects, North Carolina Chapter of A.I.A., and Rotary International. He received the Magnus T. Hopper Memorial Fellowship in Hospital Architecture; Columbia University Fellowships in Hospital and Public Health Design. Mr. Dorsett served in the U.S. infantry during the Normandy invasion and in further combat in France during the WWII. Mr. Dorsett is survived by his wife, Roni McCarty and her daughter, Mary Jane McCarty and son, Jimmy McCarty, former wife, Emma Jeanne Dorsett; daughters, Elizabeth Ann Thiel and Patricia Lee Nyberg; son, Clyde Franck Dorsett and grandchildren, Matthew McCarty, Jake Thiel and Peter Nyberg. A memorial service is planned at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Centerville, Maryland on Saturday, September 22, 2007 at 10:00 AM. Later this autumn a memorial service will be held in Burlington, North Carolina, Mr. Dorsett’s birthplace. Memorial donations may be made to the Hospice of Queen Anne’s Inc., 423 Thompson Creek Road, Stevensville, MD 21666 or the Town of Queenstown, P.O. Box 4, Queenstown, MD 21658.