On 14 September 1906 William Trickett, dean of the Dickinson School of Law, wrote a letter offering a faculty position to a young lawyer then living in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trickett proposed that the young man—Walter Harrison Hitchler—teach courses in criminal law and equity. "I think you will like the work," wrote Trickett. "It will be useful to you, and may be the initiation into a career as professor of law, that may be lifelong and honorable."1
Those words were prophetic; Hitchler would remain at the Dickinson School of Law for more than fifty years. During that period he would serve the institution as professor of law, dean and, in his last years, dean emeritus. At a 1955 dinner marking the establishment of the Walter Harrison Hitchler Scholarship Fund, law school trustee Eugene D. Siegrist would describe Dean Hitchler as "one of the law school's immortals."2 In an interview more than forty years later, Dauphin County District Attorney John F. Cherry would echo those words: "The dean was Dickinson."3
Walter Harrison Hitchler was born 20 February 1883 in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, the son of Adolph Frederick and Alice Carey Hitchler.4 He received his early education at home and attended preparatory school at the Harry Hillman Academy, located in nearby Wilkes-Barre. The principal of the academy, Dr. H. C. Davis, later wrote that Hitchler "was a conscientious and faithful student with moral character above reproach."5 He graduated from the academy in June 1901.6
In the fall of 1903 Hitchler moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he began his legal studies at the Law Department of the University of Virginia.7 He was again an excellent student, "prompt and regular in his attendance and always ready when called upon to recite."8 Hitchler received his bachelor of law degree from the University in June 1905, graduating at the head of his class.9 During the year following his graduation Hitchler remained in Charlottesville, where he worked as an editor for the Michie Publishing Company.10
Hitchler arrived in Carlisle to assume his teaching duties shortly before the start of the fall 1906 term.11 The Dickinson School of Law was then a very different place from today's law school. Classes were held in Emory Hall, a former church owned by Dickinson College that housed the law school from 1890 until Trickett Hall was opened in 1918.12 Eighty-eight students, including three women, were then registered at the school.13
Hitchler joined a distinguished faculty at the law school. It included A.J. White Hutton, who taught courses in decedents' estates, partnership, insurance, quasi-contracts, bankruptcy and patents, and Joseph P McKeehan, who taught torts, contracts, domestic relations, agency, pleading, sales of personal property, damages and Blackstone.14 Both of these men would remain at the law school until the 1950s. In addition to his duties as dean, Trickett taught the first-year course in real property, second-year courses in evidence and general jurisprudence, and third-year courses in corporations, constitutional law, bills and notes, international law and liens.15 In addition, Francis B. Sellers taught courses in practice, and Dr. James E. Pilcher, taught a course in medical jurisprudence.16 The Rev. Dr. George E. Reed was then president of both the law school and neighboring Dickinson College.17
The need for a dormitory to house Dickinson School of Law students was recognized as early as 1898, twenty years before the Law School moved from its original home in Emory Hall, located at the corner of South West and West Pomfret Streets, into its current home in Trickett Hall on South College Street in Carlisle.