Dan Orr Clemmer ’61

Dan Orr Clemmer ’61, 71, a career librarian who retired in 2002 as director of the State Department’s main library in Washington, died April 5 at his home in Chevy Chase, Md. The cause of death was multiple systems atrophy. Clemmer worked for the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution before joining the State Department library in 1973. He became chief of the reader services branch and then library director. He helped supervise the automation of operations and modernize the library by bringing many vital services online. He was a recipient of State Department honors for his work. He was involved in several professional associations and was a past president of the D.C. Library Association. Clemmer was born in Etowah, Tenn., and raised in Benton, Tenn. He was a 1961 graduate of Davidson, and received a master’s degree in teaching from Brown University in 1964 and a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University in 1967. Early in his career, he taught English in Tanzania through a U.S. Agency for International Development program. Clemmer had been a member of Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church and Celebration, a home-based Church of the Brethren group. In the late 1980s, he wrote a humor column for the Montgomery County Sentinel. In one column, he observed, “An imaginary number is the time your daughter tells you she will get home from Georgetown. A real number is the time she actually gets home.” Survivors include his wife of 47 years, Elizabeth Campbell Clemmer, 5527 Trent St., Chevy Chase, MD 20815; three children, Nancy Clemmer, Helen Rolston-Clemmer, and Stephen Clemmer; and three grandchildren.