Joseph Jaffe

1917 - 2012
Joe Jaffe, a long-time resident of San Diego and recently resident at Carlton Plaza in San Jose, CA, has died. Joe and his late wife, Leah (Leibowitz,) were born and raised in the New York and Washington, D.C., areas. They raised three children, Sonia, Mark and Carla, in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, then settled in Florida (North Bay Village). Joe and Leah were both active stage performers, appearing in many productions of The Main-Line Players and Wayne Footlighters in Pennsylvania, all while both were pursuing careers in the medical field at Smith Kline & French Labs in Philadelphia. Moving to San Diego, Calif., where he lived for the past 30 years, Joe eventually started and led the Medical Instrumentation Division at SKF, where he developed the first Fetoscope, a hand-held doppler-ultrasound imaging device. Taking an early retirement, Joe later lent funding to a startup that became International Medcom, where he was Chairman of the Board and helped design hand-held radiation detectors that have become essential to monitoring radiation emitted by the Three-Mile Island and Fukushima sites. A tribute to Joe's work maybe seen at http://geigercounter.com/acknowledging-hero-nuclear-age/

Joe was preceded in death by his younger brother, Albert (Abraham), and older sister, Helen (Tuckman), as well as his youngest daughter, Carla Beth (Munce/Ivison.) He is survived by daughter Sonia Jaffe Robbins and Jack Robbins of New York City, and son Mark and his wife, Sue, Jaffe of San Jose, as well as seven grandchildren, and nine great-grandchilden.

There will be no public ceremony or viewing.