When Gerald passed away last Friday at the age of 96, his long, great journey came to a peaceful end. Gerald's story began in Chicago at the dawn of a new century. He was born July 15, 1911, the first of two sons of Francis and Marie (Happel) Kinzelman.

This lovely photo (left) might be the only one in existance showing Gerald's whole family. Left is Gerald, playing in the sand, his mother, holding the baby, Joseph, and his father, Francis Joseph Kinzelman. August 1915 at the shores of Lake Michigan.

The Windy City of his youth was bustling with crowded streets, hordes of new immigrants, horse-drawn carriages, street cars, and the recently invented automobile. While the country changed dramatically over the course of Gerald's life, the resolve, earnestness, and passion for reason that Gerald developed as a boy remained fixed throughout the near-century of his life.

Even in his youth, Gerald demonstrated tremendous calmness and responsibility. One afternoon when he was 10, his father, Francis, took his two sons to Lincoln Park in downtown Chicago. All three hurriedly attempted to board a crowded street car, Gerald and his father were able
to climb on, but, when Gerald realized that his younger brother, Joe, had not made it on, he immediately leapt off. The car rapidly left the station moving too fast for his father to jump off. Gerald did not panic or cry. Rather, he calmly took his little brother by the hand and logically followed the tracks in the direction the car had traveled to the next station. After several minutes of walking, Gerald and Joe spotted their father in the distance walking back along the same set of tracks, and the three were reunited.

Just before Gerald's 11th birthday his father was killed in a tragic accident, thrusting the family into a period of great hardship and uncertainty. Gerald was forced to grow up in a hurry, and from this struggle, emerged a young man of tremendous steadiness, industriousness, and faith.

He was a natural engineer, with an insatiable intellectual curiosity and need to know how everything worked, how it could be improved, and how to fix it, if broken. If we could travel back to Chicago in the late 1920s, we would find Gerald as a teenager fixing automobiles at the local garage, helping to put food on his family's table.

Gerald was quiet, shy, and immensely intelligent. His tremendous capacity for hard work enabled him to skip two grades in school. His diligence paid off when he was accepted into the Engineering Program at Marquette University where he earned two Bachelors Degrees: one in Electrical Engineering in 1933, graduating 4th in his class, another in Mechanical Engineering a decade later.

Career

At the onset of World War II the Department of the Navy
was looking to recruit new engineers to design and improve
battleships and weapons to better face the growing Japanese threat in the
Pacific.

Like many in his generation who answered our country's call to duty, Gerald took a job in 1936 as a Civilian Engineer in the Navy Bureau of Ordnance where he worked until the war ended. After the war the worked at the Diamond Ordnance Fuse Lab.

He received the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service award
in 1946. He holds five patents, and seven publications of his work. He retired from the Navy in 1973 after 37 years of extraordinary service.

Adele
As fate would have it, World War II not only defined his
career, it also introduced him to the love of his life, Adele Miller, a young wave from Alabama, stationed in
Washington. Gerald and Adele married in 1951 and moved to, 1415 Otis St NW., a house Gerald designed and the only house they would ever occupy in Washington.
While their life together would span a half century, their
love for each other was timeless. (more)