One of the good guys

Posted by Marc Hodak on December 15, 2007 under History | 2 Comments to Read

You will hardly find anything about F. Joseph Giessler in or out of the blogosphere, so I’ll provide this landing point on Google.

Joe grew up in northeastern Ohio, I believe it was on a farm near Akron, during the Depression and war. He went to Case University (now Case Western Reserve) to study engineering, where he graduated at the very top of his class. There he met his wife, JoAnne. After a stint in the military, they settled in Dayton, near her family and the Wright-Patterson air base that would directly or indirectly employ his considerable engineering talents for most of his working life.

The first time I met Joe was in 1986, at a lunch in Philadelphia that his daughter had somewhat anxiously arranged for me to meet her parents. We got along well from the start. Joe and JoAnne became wonderful in-laws and grandparents to our children. Although their daughter and I split when the kids were still infants, I continued to get cards or presents from her parents every birthday and Christmas to this day. On one of my birthdays when I happened to be in Cincinnati on business, they drove down from Dayton to take me out to dinner. We always appreciated our time together. Even after being forced to retire due to rapidly deteriorating vision, Joe never lost his optimism and willingness to explore new things. He even took up ballroom dancing.

The fact that my older son is now studying to become a ‘third-generation’ engineer derives from a lineage through me from Joe, and likely reflects a greater respect for the latter. I always had a unique regard for Joe in a similar way that I do for engineers in general. Most other disciplines–literature, philosophy, economics–invariably devolve into myriad conceptions of what mankind could be, resulting in a normative push on society toward some distant ideal. Engineers solve problems. They pull society up one measured step at a time. That’s what Joe was like–in his work, with his family, and with everyone else privileged to gain his friendship. The world is several steps improved by him.

Joe passed away at age 75 last week. Even in his brief, but vicious illness, he retained that uniquely Midwestern mixture of sobriety and humor, while clearly and courageously communicating his sense that his love for his family, at least, was undying.