Edward Joseph Relder's Obituary
Edward Joseph Relder departed this life peacefully in his sleep on the night of July 15th, 2021, of natural causes at the age of 93. Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on January 26th, 1928, of an Irish mother and a Lithuanian Jewish Father on the eve of the Great Depression. Having left high school for training as a tool and dye maker during the beginning of WWII, Ed joined the U.S. Marines in early 1945 where he was posted on the escort carrier CSS Mindoro, CVE-120 as an aircraft crew chief. When his enlistment was up, ED obtained employment with Collins Radio in Cedar Rapids making vacuum tubes for radios. It was here where he met, fell in love with, and married a young nursing student Audrey Pieffer, who would remain his wife for the next 56 years.
Later, they would move to Dallas, Texas where Ed began working at General Electrodynamics making vidicon camera tubes for movies and TV studios. It was here that he, along with physicist Bernard Einstein, would invent a special tube for that would allow millions of viewers around the world watch as Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong took his "one giant leap for mankind". Later, on August 29th, he presented one of these to the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum for its 50th anniversary celebration of that event, the original camera remaining on the moon.
Ed and Audrey eventually moved to California to join Einstein at International Telephone and Telegraph where they were making night vision tubes. He would stay for three years until he was lured back to Garland to make them for the Varo Corporation which had just landed a contact with the U.S. Army for night vision goggles. After he had retired from Varo, he was continuously being called upon by various companies in the United States, France, Germany and other countries to make specialized image intensifiers tubes that included the large Hadron collider near Cern, Switzerland, where he showed the scientists there how to employ the device to capture proof of the existence of Higgs Boson.
Ed was not only a talented, highly skilled technician and inventor, but a devoted family man as well. He and Audrey were active in many church and civic events throughout the Garland area.
Ed is survived by his daughter Angela, his son Damon, and Mia, his "dog-ter" and faithful companion. He was preceded in death by his wife Audrey and his sister Peggy.
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