Jeep supervisor of engineers was musician, actor
1/8/2013Edward Bub, who retired as plant engineering supervisor at the former Jeep Corp. and served in World War II, died Saturday in his home in Lambertville.
He was 83 and had been diagnosed with leukemia in late July, his wife, Ruth, said.
Mr. Bub was employed at Jeep for 23 years and supervised about a dozen industrial engineers when he retired at the end of 1982. They were charged with keeping the building and equipment functional in the pre-World War I factory.
He was hired in 1959 when the plant was operated by Willys Motors, Inc. He was there during the transition to Kaiser Jeep Corp. and retired when it was called Jeep Corp.
He was born in Sheboygan, Wis., the son of a department store hardware salesman. He was the youngest of three children.
He graduated from Sheboygan High School in 1934 when he was 17 and found jobs as a youngster distributing advertising bills, carrying tile, and as a butcher's assistant. At the height of the Great Depression, the factory job he got in a toy company was a coup.
He received one of the first draft numbers in 1941 and was in the Army for more than four years, two of them in Europe. He managed the service vehicles for the Army Air Force at a base in England and became a first lieutenant.
On a weekend leave in 1941, he married the former Ruth Glaeser. They had met when they were in grade school and were taking piano lessons in Sheboygan.
He later played the trumpet or coronet in a community drum and bugle corps and often had the lead role in theatrical productions at his church, which put on three plays a year.
When he was released from the military, he wanted to continue working with vehicles and wrote to the large auto manufacturers inquiring about training programs. He liked Chrysler's cooperative with the University of Detroit and moved to Detroit to study mechanical engineering when he was 29.
He was selected for the honorary engineering fraternities Tau Beta Pi and Pi Tau Sigma.
After graduating, he took a job with Ferguson tractor and went to night classes at Wayne State University, where he received his master's degree in industrial engineering.
In addition, he taught a teenage boys Sunday school class and coached youth baseball at the former Christ Memorial Lutheran Church in Detroit and had a growing family of his own that eventually included five children.
Mr. Bub was employed at General Motors Corp. and Young Spring & Wire Corp. before taking the Jeep job in 1959.
He joined Augsburg Lutheran Church when he arrived in Toledo and was a church council member, usher, and Boy Scout leader there.
After retirement, he traveled through much of the United States, Canada, and Mexico with his wife who was a tour escort with the former Ilonas Professional Tour. He golfed in the Toledo Senior Golf League and enjoyed bridge and bowling with his wife and friends until macular degeneration took his sight in the early 1990s.
He listened to many books on tape, relishing Shakespeare and biographies. He was a die-hard Republican and told friends from his bed a few days before the election, “Be sure you vote Republican,” his golfing partner Bob Olender said.
Surviving are his wife, Ruth; sons, Jack, Tom, Richard, and Jim; daughter, Ann, and seven grandchildren.
A memorial service will be at 11 a.m. Friday in Augsburg Lutheran Church with visitation afterwards in the church lounge. Boyer-Van Wormer-Scott Funeral Home is handling arrangements. The family suggests tributes to the church, Lutheran Home Society, or Hospice of Northwest Ohio in Perrysburg Township.