Thierry Thys

Thierry Thys 1931 - 2009 Resident of Oakland, CA Engineer and aviator Thierry Thys of Oakland died August 19, 2009 in a glider accident. He was born May 2, 1931 in San Francisco, grew up in Sacramento, and graduated from Fountain Valley School, Colorado Springs, in 1948. He attended the University of Virginia, Sacramento Junior College, U.C. Berkeley, and Stanford, before graduating with a BS in Metallurgy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953. A winner of the MIT Distinguished Air Force ROTC Cadets Award, he served in the United States Air Force as a Lieutenant from 1953 to 1955. In 1956, he and his brother Edouard took over a struggling, seven-person metal casting company in Berkeley, moved it to San Leandro, expanded it, and renamed it Precision Founders Incorporated (PFI). Thys' energetic, innovative mind found great fulfillment in the diversity of his work, from designing specialized equipment and championing new casting technologies to building an industry-leading cost accounting system and serving as president of the Investment Casting Institute. In his 32 years as PFI's Vice President of Marketing, he developed the company's sales force and acquired many large customers, chiefly in the areas of nuclear power, aircraft engines and aerospace. He also broadened the reach of U.S. investment casting technology into global markets by arranging technology transfers with customers in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Egypt, Italy, France, Belgium and Germany. Thys' visits to the San Leandro facility after his retirement were frequent and welcome. The strong, family-like corporate culture he fostered has weathered two shifts in ownership (the company was sold in 1988 to Wyman-Gordon, and subsequently to its current owner Precision Castparts Corporation), and carries on in the large number of long-term (30+ years) employees still working there. He brought as much enthusiasm to his life outside company walls as he did to his business. An avid pilot from the age of 14, he held private and commercial certificates with instrument rating for single engine, land and sea, multi-engine aircraft, sailplanes and helicopters. In 1970, he made the world's third longest sailplane flight, a distance of 570 nautical miles. In 1976 he flew his twin-engine Piper Comanche from California across the Atlantic to the edge of the Iron Curtain. As a young man he raced sailboats; in 1990 he bought a Gulfstar 50 sloop, and in 1993 sailed it from Mystic, CT, to San Francisco through the Panama Canal. In 1996, he purchased a Russian YAK 18-T and flew it from Smolensk, Russia, to Magadan. After graduating from the National Russian Helicopter Academy of Medyn in 1999, he flew a Russian MI-2 helicopter from Almaty, Kazakhstan across the Bering Straits to Oakland, CA. In 2002, he made the first self-launched sailplane flight from Pt. Barrow, Alaska to Cape Horn in his Stemme SV10 motor glider. He was made a member of the New York Explorers Club in 2004. His intellectual curiosity was boundless and irrepressible. He restored aircraft and antique cars, including a Piper Cub (which he assembled in his garage), a 1953 Studebaker and a 1973 XK-e Jaguar. An accomplished chef, he was also an amateur mycologist and an award-winning wine maker with a 60-vine vineyard at his home. He kept honeybees and raised citrus and avocados. He studied law, geology, and the Russian language at U.C. Berkeley. At the time of his death, he was halfway through a university course in Egyptian history. He was killed at age 78 while on a soaring expedition with other Stemme pilots when his motor glider crashed into a mountain near Arco, Idaho. He is survived by his brother Edouard Thys of Squaw Valley and San Leandro, his sister Diane (Mrs. H. Frost) Prioleau of Piedmont, four daughters (Victoria Thys Barnes of Sunol, Lucienne Thys-Senocak of Istanbul, Danielle Thys of Oakland, and Tierney Thys of Carmel), five granddaughters and two grandsons. A celebration of his remarkable life will be held at 1:30pm on Saturday September 19 at the Clunie Community Center in Sacramento. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Society of California Pioneers, the Oakland Aviation Museum, or Best Friends animal sanctuary.