Hancor official enjoyed reading, weightlifting

4/13/2005

FINDLAY - Emil Macek, Jr., a former executive with Hancor Inc. who specialized in logistics and supply management, died Sunday at his home in Findlay. He was 56.

Family members said Mr. Macek was stricken suddenly while at home and had not been in ill health. An autopsy was being performed to determine the cause of death.

Mr. Macek joined Hancor, one of the nation's largest suppliers of storm-water management systems, in 1981 and worked at the Findlay-based company until 2002, his daughter, Kate Macek, said. While at Hancor, he rose to the position of vice president of logistics and supply management.

After leaving the company, he worked as a consultant in the same area.

"He really liked to solve problems, and I think he saw logistics and supply chain management as kind of a puzzle or a mathematical problem to solve, and he really enjoyed just figuring it out and making it work smoothly," Miss Macek said.

Mr. Macek was born Oct. 12, 1948, in Cleveland, where he lived until 1956. He spent other parts of his childhood in the northeast Ohio towns of Avon Lake and Macedonia.

Mr. Macek briefly enrolled at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., and attended Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Miss Macek said. He then transferred to Kent State University, where he received a bachelor of science in mathematics degree in 1972.

He married Mary Davanzo on Aug. 18, 1973, in Kent, Ohio, and they lived there and in Stow, Ohio, before moving to Findlay.

In his spare time, he enjoyed bicycling and weightlifting, Miss Macek said. He worked out two to three days a week at Jim's Gym in Findlay and went on rides with the Hancock Handlebars Bicycle Club and his family, his daughter said.

"He believed very strongly in physical fitness and working out and weightlifting," she said. "He worked out pretty much all the time unless he was sick. It was his goal to be the best-in-shape 80-year-old he knew."

Mr. Macek also was a voracious reader.

"He thought it was really important to continue learning throughout your life," Miss Macek said. "He read so much in so many genres. Our house was always full of books."

Surviving are his wife, Mary; daughters, Kate and Liz Macek; brothers, Stephen and James, and sister, Linda Sue Sommer.

Visitation will be from 2 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. today in the Kirkpatrick-Behnke Funeral Home, Findlay. Services will be at 10 a.m. tomorrow in the funeral home.

The family suggests tributes to a charity of the donor's choice.