R. Byron Breese Sr.

R. Byron Breese, Sr

AGE: 83 • North Brunswick

R. Byron Breese, Sr., was born in New Brunswick, NJ, on 15 November 1930; he passed on in the home he built and lived in with his family for over half a century in North Brunswick on 22 June 2014, aged 83 years. His early childhood was lived in New Brunswick until his family moved to Church Lane in North Brunswick near Farrington Lake and Lawrence Brook where Byron fished, trapped and hunted at a time when Middlesex County was mostly wooded and agricultural. He attended Maple Meade Grammar School during the Great Depression and was a Boy Scout in Troop 26. He attended New Brunswick High School and enlisted in the US Navy in 1949. He served aboard the battleship USS Missouri prior to the Korean War and at New London, CT until his separation from active duty in 1953. He attended Rutgers Preparatory School to complete his high school education and thereafter began a long mechanical career with the significant industries that came to define mid-to-late 20th century New Jersey: Permacel, American Standard, City Services, General Foods, Rohne-Poulanc. As a skilled, creative and respected electrical, plumbing and experimental platform mechanic he saw - and survived - the rapid transformation of industrial-research history at the Cranbury, NJ facility where the last three companies he served had sequentially had their research headquarters. Indeed, while all other employees of these companies were "laid off," "down-sized" or the companies themselves moved, Byron and his co-workers - the "maintenance guys" - had job security company to company because of their absolute and necessary knowledge of "how things work." In 1954 he married Margaret Kankula, originally from Windber, PA. In 1958 they began building their home "back in the woods" off Church Lane from a design Byron applied his mechanical drawing skills to basing the open floor plan on ideas he adopted from his interest in Frank Lloyd Wright. To this day, even as large housing development became the norm in central NJ, the simplicity and open-air aesthetic of their home's interior never fails to surprise and delight those who enter it. In 1963 Byron re-established Boy Scout Troop 26 sponsored by the North Brunswick Volunteer Fire Company No. 2. Troop meetings were held in the original fire house on Georges Road until the new fire house was built on Rt. 130 and weekly meetings met there. As a Scout Master he taught scores of teenaged boys in the arts of wood craft - camping, outdoor cooking, knot-tying, first aide, etc. - and inculcated deep reverence for nature along with a conservation ethic. His leadership influenced the ethical and moral development of several generations of young men in central New Jersey. In 1979 he was honored with the Silver Beaver Award, the highest honor a Scouting Council may award. In 1977, with his eldest son, he was a model for Norman Rockwell's final Boy Scout calendar painting, "The Spirit of '76."

Byron Breese, Sr., is survived by his wife, Margaret (Kankula) Breese; his sons, the Rev. R. Byron Breese, Jr., and his children Lev Philip Breese and Ada Victoria Breese (ages 8 and 5) of Strafford, VT, and the Rev. Mark H. Breese, and his children Gemma Hicks-Breese and Austin Hicks-Breese (ages 15 and 13) of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada; his elder brother James "Buddy" Breese.

The family will receive friends at the Bronson & Guthlein Funeral Home of Milltown, NJ, Sunday 1pm-3pm, with funeral services beginning at 3pm. Interment Monday 10:30pm at the Brig. General William C. Doyle Veterans Cemetery in Wrightstown, NJ. www.bronsonandguthleinfh.com