In love for our

December 24, 2005

Frank George Herger

Sept. 8, 1926 — Dec. 24, 2005

(obituary from Patterson Irrigator)
A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated today (Wednesday, December 28, 2005) for Frank George Herger, 79, a Patterson native who died Saturday at his rural home after a long illness.

He was a retired farmer and a mechanic and inventor.

Except for two years spent in the U.S. Army at the end of World War II, Mr. Herger lived all his life in the Patterson area. He was aboard a ship bound for the Philippines when the war ended, and he became a part of the occupational forces in Japan. He graduated with Patterson High School’s class of 1946 and attended Modesto Junior College when he returned from the Army.

Mr. Herger was a member of the Patterson Lions Club and the American Legion and was active in the Modesto Area A’s antique car club. He was a former director of the Patterson Township Historical Society, an avid reader, and a parishioner of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Patterson.

For more than 30 years, he collected old cars, tractors, antique engines and parts. He built an engine that used a wobble plate and had 12 cylinders arranged in a circle, first firing it up in 1970. He also worked on an engine that would run on alcohol, gasoline and propane.

“He could get anything running,” said Pattersonite Leo Halseth, who was in the same class in school as Mr. Herger. “He would take old cars, fix them up, and they ran.

“I remember when we were freshmen, he would come by and pick me up. I would have a bucket of water for the radiator, and we hoped it would last until we got to school.”

Mr. Herger is survived by his wife, Burta Herger of Patterson; children, Kenny Herger of Patterson, Karl Herger of Vernalis, and Kathy Pedrazzi and Karen Crow, both of Crows Landing; stepchildren, Durwood Hicks of Beaverton, Ore., and Rhonda Hicks of Benicia; a sister, Margaret Dory of Fort Collins, Colo.; nine grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and three step-grandchildren.

Today’s Mass will begin at 10 a.m. at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, 529 I St., in Patterson, with burial to follow in Patterson District Cemetery, 10800 Highway 33.

Contributions in Mr. Herger’s name may be sent to the P.R.I.D.E. Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 1543, Patterson 95363.

Frank Herger eulogy
Delivered by his step daughter Rhonda Hicks

Where do you begin to eulogize a man like Frank Herger. He wore so many different hats; he was so much to so many.

He was born to an emigrant Swiss German father and Italian French mother on Pomegranate Avenue in the Patterson colony on September 8, 1926. From that date on the impact of Frank was to be felt by many. Growing up with his older brother Paul and younger brother John had to be an experience not known to many families. His sister Margaret seemed to be the only calm one of the children.

Their mother would find the boys sliding down the roof of the barn catching themselves before falling off to the ground. The boys dammed up the irrigation canal to make a deeper swimming hole after which they released the water all at once flooding the fields below. When the ditch tender caught them, he took them to their father and said that he was going to take the kids to jail if they did it one more time. Pop Herger said in his German accent, “Take dem.” The boys taken back by their father’s nonsupport stopped that prank. They then moved on to more interesting things

Company driving their cars into the Herger yard would be treated to a Herger Boys special while the visit with the parents was going on. The car was jacked up and blocks were placed underneath. The visitors after telling the senior Hergers farewell got into their cars, started their engines, accelerated and went nowhere. Pop Herger rounded up the boys from their vantage points to undo their prank. That prank bored the Herger kids after while so they started getting more technical in their mischievousness. They would take a person’s car that ran perfectly well into the yard and change wires on the spark plugs. The guest after saying his goodbyes would find a car that wouldn’t start or if it did; it lunged and backfired all the way out of the drive way. Pop Herger again would have to round up the boys to undo their mischievous deeds.

Frank grew older and his mechanical abilities started taking shape in a positive way. He would take apart all of the neighbors clocks and fix them. In fact he would take apart anything he could get his hands on to the consternation of his mom and dad. He started overhauling engines when he was too small to get the bolts loose. Pop Herger would assist and then Frank would give the engine an over haul job. At age 12 Frank overhauled a Starr engine to build a power mower for hay cutting. The creation is still in existence. At age 15 Frank made a buzz saw that was constructed from a Starr car that Pop Herger had paid $3.50 for. It can still be used today. At age 17 Frank took a ‘28 Chevy car that cost $15 and remade it into a power unit called a Doodle Bug which is the name of a homemade light tractor.

In 1946 at the age of 20 while working for Lester Gustafson on a harvester, Frank got the idea of his first love and life long dream. He observed the sickle movement which was turned by an eccentric fly wheel and that gave Frank the idea that a piston could be at the end and push the fly wheel. Frank kept thinking and thinking of what he just observed. He started gathering Army surplus parts to build his dream– an engine with a unique design.

Frank worked on his engine every winter using pieces from junk piles and home made parts. About 1970 the engine was started. Frank said that it was thrilling to hear the sound and watch a bunch of iron come to life. This whetted his appetite for something more. He and Charlie Gustafson worked on a engine with variable displacement, constant compression. This dream engine which consumed a lot of time was not to be completed in Frank’s lifetime.

Frank became known as the carburetor man on the Westside. He had the ability to take one apart that had been worked on by several people, sort out the parts, clean it, determine what was missing or put in wrong and then reassemble it into a working unit. There has to many of you sitting in the church here today who have availed themselves to Frank’s expertise on carburetors.

Frank felt that his mechanical gift came from his father who was constantly repairing things. He felt that his mechanical talent was passed on to his boys as evidenced in this quote from Frank, “Karl is a good mechanic and Kenny makes me look like a piker.” You two men can be mighty proud to have a pronouncement like that coming from a man, your father, who most people in this community consider to be a genius in his field. Frank was pleased to know that he has grandsons interested in mechanics but was disappointed that he wasn’t able to teach and work with them as they were growing up.

Frank helped so many people repair engines in their cars and farm equipment. He took great pleasure in helping out others with their problems. He was not stingy with his advice nor his time to help someone with a mechanical problem. One morning he was driving down Las Palmas Avenue and saw that the Schuber’s baler was broken down. They desperately needed a part to finish up their baling that morning. Frank happened to have it in his pickup and loaned it to them on the spot. He was well known for helping others with their mechanical problems.

I think that we could safely say that Frank is now working on the late Pope’s pope mobile making it run faster and smoother by shaving the head and putting in a strother crank shaft.

Another interesting part of Frank’s life was near the end of World War II when he was drafted out of high school into the Army. Frank wanted to go into the Army Air Force, but the Battle of the Bulge had just been fought where 5,000 GI’s were lost in one afternoon. The Army needed ground pounders so it was infantry for Frank. He was shipped out of Patterson at the age of 18 for basic training. He was homesick. He wrote a letter home to his parents saying that he had written to President Roosevelt that he wanted out of the Army. The President had a letter sent to him saying that he was in for the duration.

Frank being the resourceful man that he was made the best of his Army experience. He was on a ship headed to the Philippines to rendevous for the invasion of Japan where thousands on both sides were expected to die. While in mid Pacific the word came that the atomic bomb had been dropped where upon the ship headed for Japan for the troops to become the occupation forces. Frank became part of the military police. He did his job, but didn’t really care for police work. He then became a medic where he assisted in short arm inspections, examined the population for venereal diseases, and gave shots. He pushed himself to the limits as illustrated in this next episode. One late Friday afternoon he realized that he didn’t have his clothes out of the cleaners. In a military ambulance with the sirens blaring and the military police stopping all traffic at intersections to allow the emergency vehicle through the streets of Kyoto, Frank arrived at the laundry just a minute before closing time. He rushed in, got his clothes and quietly drove back to the barracks.

Over the years Frank has reflected on his Army experience which he says was an exciting time in this country. He was proud to be an American and took pride in the part he played in the total picture. As years went on Frank liked to say to young folks. “I fought in the war to make it safe for people like you.” Little did they realize that he never fired a shot at the enemy.

A skill Frank either picked up in the Army or honed one he already had was bartering. In order to do this effectively in a foreign country one must know the language. Frank learned Japanese. After bantering back and forth in Japanese, and Frank saying “ta kii, ta kii” after each offer which meant too high, Frank would know a deal had been reached when the Japanese said “OK, you crazy GI.” Frank bought guns, silks, rugs, and sabers to send home. This bartering skill was to serve him well the rest of his life. Some of you out there may have felt the brunt of his wheeling and dealing tactics.

Frank came home and started to make a living baling hay with Jerry Maisetti. Pete Grischott was their first customer. John Boschi bought out Jerry. Later Julius Boschi, Charley Del Nero, and brother John Herger joined the operation. Frank was the only one to hang in there and continue the baling business. He hired many young men to work on the four man balers. When Kenny and Karl were old enough to drive a tractor, Frank had them pulling a baler through the field. Mario Martinez more than the others consistently baled for Frank. It must have been a job full of fun experiences for these young kids. It has been evidenced when Frank attended social events in later years. Many of these young men have come up to Frank to relate bailing stories. The stories always had someone as the butt of pranks and many times it was Frank. But he could get back at them.

The following is a history of the Herger family and Frank written by his wife Burta Houk Herger in 1999.

The Herger Brothers

The Hergers in Patterson spring from many seeds planted in immigrant history. Grandfather Julius Gobbi of Italy arrived in the United States and eventually settled in Sonoma County on a 364-acre ranch at the mouth of the Russian River. In 1897 he married French born Marie “Mary Louise Ausseresses. They had three children, Paul, George and Marguerite, who grew up on the Willow Creek Ranch on the mouth of the Russian River near Jenner, California.

In 1923 Franz Herger immigrated from Spiringen, Switzerland. Fate brought him to work on a ranch just over the bill and adjacent to the Willow Creek Ranch. In due time Franz and Marguerite met and were married. Their first son, Paul, was born in Sebastopol. California in 1915.

Julius Gobbi, Oresti Rovedatti and Julius Boschi, a nephew of Gobbi who Julius had sent for from Italy, were partners in the purchase of 80 acres of land in 1920 in the Patterson Colony on the south side of Marshall Road at the corner of Tulip. Julius Gobbi sent his son Paul to farm and run the dairy.

Julius decided to purchase 84 acres in May of 1924 on Pomegranate Avenue between Sycamore and Elm Avenues. The land was purchased from Michel, Ben and Johon Cascarat, three Basque sheepherders. Julius Gobbi also leased in May 1924 the ranch purchased by him, Rovedatti and Boschi for $15.67 per acre for his son Paul to farm. In June 1924, Paul drowned in the San Joaquin River while crossing it to check the cattle on the east side. This death caused the end of the Gobbi land expansion. Julius was left with himself and one remaining son to oversee his Sonoma County and Patterson holdings.

After Julius Gobbis death in 1926, Franz, Marguerite and son Paul moved to the Pomegranate Ranch to take care of the business. Second child, Frank, was born in 1926 (henceforth Frank Sr. and Jr.). Frank Jr. entered the world in the newly built farmhouse. This house was constructed from wood that washed ashore from an overturned freighter near Jenner. Julius had the wood loaded on horse drawn wagons to haul and stack before sending it to Patterson by rail. That home, built before 1926, stood until 1992 when the Patterson Fire Department destroyed it in a controlled burn.

Hard times forced the Herger family to move from the Pomegranate Ranch to a farm house on Olive Avenue in the area where Marge Azevedo lives today. It was there that third son, John “Cookie” was born in 1930.

By 1935 the family was back on the Pomegranate Ranch where, in that year, their last child and only daughter Marguerite was born. Living on the ranch way down Pomegranate Avenue was very quiet for the two older Herger boys. They entertained themselves by doing tricks on the guests cars. A favorite trick of Paul & Franks (John was too young) would be to jack up the rear of the car and place blocks underneath so that the rear wheels cleared the ground by an inch. The visitors, upon trying to leave, thought that they had broken an axle and suffered great consternation before Pop Herger made the boys put the car back down on the ground. If the boys were feeling especially boisterous, they would cross the spark plug wires on the guests cars. A car that had arrived perfectly tuned would leave the yard backfiring and hardly running. Paul & Frank would be hiding in the tank house watching and laughing as the car sputtered out of the yard. Frank, to this day, still gets a good laugh from these childhood pranks.

As the boys grew older, their pranks grew more varied. They would put boards in the irrigation ditches to make the water deeper for swimming. After pulling the planks that dammed up the water, a rush of water would flood the whole area. This caper was repeated many times until Adolph Pedroni caught them. He told Pop Herger that if the boys did it one more time that he was going to haul them off to jail. Pop Herger, in his German accent, said “Go ahead, take dem”. That exchange convinced the boys that they had no one on their side and that they had better stop.

The young Herger boys were also dangerous to be around. Using left over black powder (black powder was used to blow up tree stumps for fire wood) the Herger kids made a huge bomb, put it in a paper bag, and took it to Sycamore Avenue between Pomegranate and Prune Avenues. They struck a match to a strip of gasoline to light the bomb. When it went off it set fire to the three to four foot high oat hay that grew on both sides of the road for about a half mile. “We ran like hell as the fire engines responded to the call,” Frank relates.

The boys had good memories growing up playing with the neighborhood kids; Leo Halseth, his brothers, John Dias, the Farinha boys, Lloyd Silva, Wimpy (“a guy who moved”), Tony Trinta, Phil Anthieny, Gene Costa, Tony Silva and Joey and Jesse Mendes.

In those days they remember that Sycamore Avenue was one of the few paved roads in the colony (Elm and Highway 33 were the others). Their dad would haul milk from Pomegranate, which was a dirt road, to Sycamore with a horse and sled. In the winter times, the roads were rough like a washboard. “Everyone was responsible for their own road maintenance,” Frank says. “We would haul gravel to keep the pot holes filled up. The potholes were caused mostly by the milk truck. Several times during the winter we had to hand rake gravel from the sides of the road back into two strips about two and one half feet wide. The gravel was bought by the farmers in the colony, hauled and spread out by hand. There was no county maintenance of east west roads then.

Frank remembers the school bus coming down Sycamore in the early ‘30s with Chester Fippins driving. Frank learned to drive it the age of 7 in a ‘26 Star car converted to a pickup. Later when Paul and Frank were older they would drive their Model T pickup to town and around the country roads.

The family moved once again from the Pomegranate Avenue home to a place on Ash Avenue where Frank Sr. farmed 62 acres and worked for Guy Allard. By this time Frank Jr. took a ‘29 Model A Touring Car to high school. “I had no drivers license and there was no license on the car,” he tells. Frank rigged up a shocking device on the car so that anyone who leaned against it would be shocked. He also made a smoke screen device so smoke would come out as though from a crop duster. “On a cool windless evening those following me would have to turn on their lights or pull off to the side of the road as the smoke would hang like a fog,” Frank tells. And he says, “The high school boys, in those days, worked on their cars to make their own distinctive sound by remodeling the exhaust system. Those were beautiful sounds!”

The boys had their share of Model As and Fs because many farmers wanted to get them off their places and would sell them for $3.00 or $5.00 if they were running. John drove a ‘30 Model A Coupe for several years before getting a ‘30 Chrysler Model 70 Roadster.

“We always worked hard. We had no money but had plenty to eat. Sometimes our food was young jackrabbits. birds, ducks-anything we shot we ate,” said John. “In preparing for winter, we would take one week to kill and prepare the animals. We ground beef and pork, then mixed in spices to, make the sausage. On occasion, Pop would go to the slaughterhouse in Modesto to get a hindquarter of a young horse to make jerky. Pop made big rounds of cheese and stored them in the cellar along with the sausage that he stored in wheat to maintain proper moisture level.” The Hergers made a lot of wine. The grapes were crushed and left to ferment in a 500-gallon vat. After fermentation was completed, the wine was stored in 50 gallon wooden barrels in the cellar. The Herger wine cellar was enjoyed by three generations of Hergers and their friends, only to be stopped by strict liability laws in the middle ‘80s. However, John has kept the sausage and wine making traditions alive. Each fall he makes wine and then in the winter time gathers his brother Frank and Franks sons Kenneth and Karl plus friends for sausage making.

Frank Sr. moved his family for the last time to a five-acre ranch on Poppy Avenue in the 1940s. This is where Margaret remembers helping her mom with the cooking for the family and workers. Frank Sr. was in the dairy business, grew loose hay and grain throughout his Patterson years. His sons, Paul and John, joined him

in the hay baling business, working for Gary Holder as half of the six man crew. They would bale all summer and cut wood in the winter months. Paul baled for George Mehschau after his father retired. Frank and Jerry Maisetti started their own baling business in 1949 and Frank has baled continuously to date. Frank tuned up neighbors cars and worked for Joe Smith in Crows Landing for seventeen winters while farming apricots, doing commercial harvesting and baling. He also worked for PG&E and was a mechanic for Campbell Ranch. Mike Mattos, John and Frank farmed together for a few years before John took a P.G.& E. job. John later worked twenty-six years for the Patterson Water District as a pump man before retiring. Margaret arid Zane have resided many years in Newton, Iowa. They have three children, Jon, Joan Way and Susan and seven grandchildren.

Frank Sr. died in 1970. Paul died in 1975 and Marguerite in 1981. Frank Jr. stayed in the area all his life except for the two years that he spent in the Army at the end of World War II. His unit was on its way in the Pacific Ocean to rendezvous in the Philippines for the invasion of Japan when the atomic bombs were dropped. The ship changed course and headed for Japan so the troops could become part of the occupational forces.

When Frank came home from the service, he attended Modesto Jr. College. He then married Ruby Del Nero, the oldest daughter of long time area residents Olimpio and Caroline Feloi Del Nero. They raised four children; Kathy, who married Steve Pedrazzi and resides in Crows Landing; Karen, who married Norman Crow and resides in Crows Landing; Kenneth, who married Kathy Dodd and lives in Patterson; and Karl who married Catherine Birch and then Mary Kay Morris Foster and lives in Vernalis. Frank has nine grandchildren.

John was in the Army during the Korean War years and served in California and Alaska where he was part of the Topographic Battalion mapping Alaska. He later married Joyce Fetterman Snyder and lives in Newman. John has two stepchildren, Carol Gannon and Dick Snyder and one step grandchild.

John has been an active bowler with his wife in area leagues. Frank was a member of the VFW and American Legion and the Patterson Lions Club. He and his present wife, Burta Houk, are members of the Modesto Area Model A Club where they drive a ‘31 Model A Town Car. For thirty years or more, Frank actively collected old cars, tractors, old engines and parts. During this same period of time, Frank worked on his hobby of inventing engines. He constructed an engine containing a wobble plate and twelve cylinders placed in a circle. Even though this engine was first fired up in 1970 and was made of old Home Lite electric cylinders, Army surplus bearings and scrap metal, it still starts today. His second engine, designed with Charles Gustafson, is still in the works. It is a variable displacement, constant compression engine and will run on alcohol, gasoline and propane. Frank is semi-retired.

The Herger family, like so many families in the Patterson area who can trace their roots back to immediate immigrant ancestors, also find that only a few of the younger generation has remained in Patterson.

Feb. 23, 1924 — Nov. 20, 2004

Services are pending for former Patterson resident Allen Gee, 80, who died Nov. 20 in Santa Ana following a brief illness.

Mr. Gee was born in Patterson to Duck Lee and Fong See Gee. He graduated from Patterson Union High School in 1941 and began attending University of California, Berkeley, that year to study civil engineering. He joined the U.S. Army in 1943 and was stationed in Alaska. When he was discharged in 1946, Mr. Gee returned to Berkeley and graduated in 1947 with a degree in chemistry. He attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned his doctorate in physical chemistry in 1951.

After graduation, Mr. Gee worked for National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., followed by careers at Dupont and Texas Instruments. In 1961, he started work at Hughes Aircraft in Newport Beach and retired from there on disability for arthritis and asthma in 1974. His father, Duck Lee, sought a better life in the United States, but was unable to enter in 1904, so he left China for Mexico City. In 1906, after the San Francisco earthquake, Mr. Lee went to the Bay Area by boat. He opened a laundry in Patterson in 1920.

Mr. Gee was born in the back room of his parents’ hand laundry on Feb. 23, 1924. Mr. Gee, who was an only child, was given the name Allen after Dr. E.G. Allen, who was Patterson’s doctor for many years. The family operated the laundry until the business closed in 1948, when Duck Lee and Fong See Gee moved to San Francisco.

Mr. Gee could only speak Chinese when he started school as a first-grader in Patterson, but he soon learned English and excelled in class.

Mr. Gee’s classmate, Virginia Delphia Usadel of Patterson, remembers Mr. Gee from school. “He was very intelligent,” Usadel said this week. “He was one of the top students in the class. He was very shy about getting up in front of the class. Over the years of growing older, though, he completely changed. I think he came to almost every class reunion we had, although he was a long distance away.”

Another classmate, Patterson resident Sverre Osnes, remembers Gee as a role model. “Like in his youth, Allen was quiet about his accomplishments,” Osnes said. “He was a proud family man, a subject he was more than willing to share. He continually kept in touch with his classmates and others here in Patterson.”

Two years ago Mr. Gee presented his fourth-grade teacher, Edna Keechler Stewart, with a diode he helped develop for Doppler radar and that is used in telephones. That device will be donated to the Patterson Township Historical Society. “He was the smartest child I ever had at school,” Stewart said this week.

Mr. Gee is survived by his wife of 49 years, Mary Gee; son and daughter-in-law, Everett and Donna Gee of Laguna Beach; daughter and son-in-law, Beverly and Manu Daftary of Wayland, Mass.; and seven grandchildren.

Burial will be at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside. Cremation Care, 582 E. Lambert Road, in Brea, is handling the arrangements.

Memorial donations in Mr. Gee’s name may be made to Patterson Recognizing Individuals Determined to Excel, better known as PRIDE, the local scholarship program for Patterson High School students. Donations may be made to PRIDE, P.O. Box 1543, Patterson, CA 95363. Link to PRIDE

(The above obituary is courtesy of the Patterson Irrigator — Patterson Irrigator)

Additional information in the December 4 issue of the Daily Pilot in Newport Beach, CA:
Burial services are scheduled for Monday, December 13, at the Riverside National Cemetery. 22495 Van Buren Blvd., Riverside, CA at 2:30 pm at Staging Area 3. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Allen's memory to PRIDE, Patterson High School Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 1543, Patterson, CA 95363.

Allen Gee, His Story
By Ron Swift for the Patterson Irrigator in November 2001.

Longtime Patterson teacher Edna Keechler Stewart, who taught here 35 years, calls him one of the brightest, if not the smartest fourth grader she ever had in class.

That would be Allen Gee of Newport Beach, who recently attended a local reunion of his graduating class, the Patterson High School class of 1941. Gee, accompanied by his wife Mary, stopped by to see Stewart who has maintained contact with many of her former students including Gee, who left Patterson when he graduated 60 years ago.

His history is an interesting one. Born in his parents' hand laundry one mid-winter Saturday in 1924 just after the noon whistle at the creamery had sounded, Gee went from humble beginnings to high positions in the scientific community.

His father married in China but left to find a better life in the United States. Unable to enter this country in 1904, he went to Mexico City and operated a laundry.

Soon after the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, Gee's father came to the Bay Area by boat. After 18 years of saving money, he brought his wife to this country in 1922. Two years earlier he had opened a laundry in Patterson.

Gee, and only child, was given the name Allen after Dr. E.G. Allen who served the medical needs of this community for several decades. Dr. Allen was beginning his medical practice here and had a young family of his own. The family laundry was in a three-room building with a metal roof that was perhaps once a general store. Electricity had been added, and the only plumbing was a pipe coming out of a cement floor in one of the rooms. It was outfitted with a garden faucet and floor drain. Out back was a small building with a flush toilet, he remembers.

The building was located along the west side of Highway 33, across the 10-foot-wide paved roadway from the grain elevator, the tallest structure in town that was torn down a number of years ago. A stable for horses, a food store, farm implement business and a weed-filled field that included a few olive trees had to be passed on a trip to the downtown area of Patterson.

Gee's father in about 1928 built a new all-brick structure at 209 S. El Circulo, a building that presently houses Luna Business Services and Shear Designs. (torn down fall of 2004)

His parents operated the Duck Lee Laundry until they closed the business and moved to San Francisco in 1948.

"Allen was a quiet boy," teacher Stewart remembers. In today's parlance, he would be called shy, she said.

Longtime Patterson resident John V. Azevedo, who graduated in the PHS class of 1939, remembers Gee as "an excellent student but very quiet." "He may have been my only student to ever graduate from MIT," Stewart recalled.

Gee himself recalls that Jane Sillerman and Billy Stewart were his close childhood friends who together sold lemonade on the street corner. Although he knew no English when starting the first grade, he learned quickly. He later attended Sunday School at the Covenant Church.

Gee left Patterson in 1941 before the Pearl Harbor attack. He earned a degree in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and later a doctorate from MIT in his specialty. He then took a position with the federal Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. It was in that city that he met his future wife Mary, who was employed in civil service.

After eight years as a chemist with the bureau, specializing in sugar refining, he worked for Dupont developing new fiber plants, and for Texas Instruments in the field of semi-conductors.

Gee finally ended up at the Hughes Aircraft Co. in Southern California. The huge firm had contracts with NASA to develop components for lunar surveyor missions, and in 1965 he began work on a diode for Doppler radar that was used in the soft-landing system. Gee also worked on the development of the Early Bird stationary satellite. The diode he helped develop is now used in telephones. He retired in 1970 because of health reasons.

Gee presented Stewart with the tiny device he helped develop, and she in turn plans to have is displayed in Patterson's museum.

The Gees have a daughter, Beverly Daftary, and six grandchildren. The Daftarys live in Massachusetts, and Beverly's husband Mana was scheduled for a meeting in the World Trade Center the afternoon of Sept. 11. In no hurry, he took the train but got off in Stamford, Conn., when he learned of the terrorist attack.

Click to see Edna Stewart tribute page.