Joseph Manning Drees

1916 - 2017

Joseph Manning Drees obituary, 1916-2017, Saratoga, CA

Joseph Drees Obituary

Joseph Manning Drees
March 31, 1916 - February 9, 2017
Saratoga, CA
Joseph Manning Drees passed away quietly in his Saratoga mountain home on February 9th, 2017 surrounded by his family. He is survived by his children, Anne, Peter and Frank; 4 grandchildren, 6 great grandchildren, and his loyal dog Bella. His wife of 54 years, Edmee, predeceased him in 1997.
He lived a remarkable life. A child of the depression, he carried the lessons learned from that experience for the rest of his life.
Paramount was his concern for the wellbeing of his family. To that end, he worked tirelessly to make sure neither he or his family suffered the insecurity he endured as an Iowa boy during the depression.
The care of his family being foremost, he supported his parents in their old age. He provided funds for family members to go to college, get graduate degrees, buy homes and seek medical care.
He was always inventing devices and equipment that he could build and sell to shield his family from want.
During the depression, to help support the family, he built air conditioners incorporating an electric fan and 2 refurbished automobile radiators. He would sand off the rust, give them a splendid paint job and sell them for $30. The family lamented each sale as the air conditioner was taken out of use in one of the families' windows.
When money was low, he salvaged a bleak Christmas by selling gold accumulated from his father's dentist practice. Joe's father, Bert, used an electric sander to polish gold dental inlays and crowns before he installed them. In the polishing process, particles of gold dust would settle on the polisher's abrasive. Joe collected the dust, and sold it for $25.
He published an almanac made up of county property maps. He drew the maps and accumulated advertisements and sold them to the area farmers. He helped pay for his schooling at the University of Iowa with the proceeds and eventually earned a bachelor's degree in economics.
During the Second World War he was stationed in San Francisco, California, embarking as a naval engineer on naval convoys carrying troops and supplies to Australia and the South Pacific warfront. He was responsible for the engine on the USS Republic troop carrier. During one of those convoys, he incurred the captain's wrath by shutting down the boilers when they overheated, threatening the integrity and security of the ship and convoy, making them sitting ducks for enemy submarines. The boiler was repaired and the Republic resumed its place in the convoy.
While on leave in San Francisco, he fell in love with his future wife, Edmee. They hiked and skied the mountains surrounding Echo Lake in the Sierras. While living on the Solana Ranch in Saratoga, where the West Valley College campus presently sits,
he attended Santa Clara University on the GI Bill earning a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
He began his long career in what eventually was called Silicon Valley. He worked for, among others, Westinghouse, Sylvania, Fairchild and Signetics. He has at least 15 US patents in his name. He worked on radar evading technology for the B-58 Hustler in the 1950s.
For years, to provide more income for the family, he spent his weekends designing and building portable dishwashers hoping to sell the concept to a manufacturer.
Joe's creativity and inventiveness was in evidence when his beloved home, built in the mountains above Saratoga, developed cracks in the cement floor as a result of a geologic fault line under the foundation. He decided to live with and accommodate nature rather than go to the expense of rebuilding it or buying another house. He modified the walls and roof so that the windows, floor, utilities and doors remained functional and intact as the house slowly separated. To keep salt shakers from sliding from one end of the dining room table to the other, the slope of the floor was addressed by a platform shimmed on the downhill sided to keep the table level.
From the birdfeeders fashioned out of conduit pipe and automobile hub caps to the drafting tables, a rusting washing machine test tank and dishwasher prototypes, ceiling heaters, lathes, and drill presses, Joe's house bears witness to his creativity and industry.
His last creation was a wire "button hooker" (pictured above with Bella- who never left his side) fashioned on a jig and made out of wire. Losing dexterity in his fingers, he found it harder and harder to button his shirts. Independent to a fault, rebellious to the idea of anyone assisting him, it enabled him to dress himself with dignity. He sought a patent for it and envisioned selling them on Amazon.
He always loved to walk and engaged in it vigorously after giving up smoking at age 50. As a result of his work schedule, it was only when he retired that he was able to enjoy the companionship of his hiking group, the "Weak Day Hikers." He gave up group hiking in his early 90's but continued to hike near his home.
His walks took him from Paria Canyon, Utah to traversing the Sierras in his 70s with his children and friends. Hiking behind his home, he was chased out of Lake Ranch, then a guarded San Jose Water Works dam.
Territorial about his mountain home, he fought the establishment of a commercial horse stable adjacent to his home in the Santa Clara County Planning Commission. Failing there, he drowned out a horse show public address system by operating a chain saw at the property line.
From his mountain vantage, he saw the transition of Santa Clara County from a sleepy, quiet valley full of apricot, prune and cherry blossoms to neon lights, tract homes and incessant traffic that comes with urbanization, prosperity and a vibrant economy.
Although he might deny it, he was a romantic; enjoying Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, and musicals from "South Pacific", "Man of La Mancha", "Candide", to "Annie Get Your Gun".
Many songs and poems coursed through Joe's mind. His hiking group, or those around him were treated to, or endured, unsolicited songs and poems. One of his favorite poems was Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in A County Churchyard". It's poignant lines apply to him. It is a long poem but parts are particularly applicable to him:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
the lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinkling's lull the distant folds;
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
Molesting her ancient solitary reign.
…………………………
EPITAPH
Here rests his head upon the lap of earth
A youth to fortune and to fame unknown.
Fair science frowned not on his humble birth,
And melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heav'n did a recompense largely send:
He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(there they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his Father and his God.
It is easy to visualize Joe sitting on a stump on his friend Mike Antonacci's property at dusk overlooking what had been the Prune Capital of the World and had become Silicon Valley. He would hear the quiet of his mountain and contemplate all that he saw, experienced and lost.
Joe lived an unpretentious life. Except for the travels in the Second World War he traveled little, leaving the United States twice since then, once to Canada and once to Mexico for work. Except for his home, his largest purchase was a 1997 Mercury station wagon, purchased to drive members of his hiking group to trailheads.
Joe loved his wife, his family, creating things and hiking his mountains. He asked for nothing more and life gave him nothing less.
.


View the online memorial for Joseph Manning Drees

Published by San Jose Mercury News/San Mateo County Times on Mar. 26, 2017.
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