Honoring the Memory
of Those
We Love

April 2, 1923 - May 17, 2014

Yorkgitis, Edward A. passed away on 17 May 2014 at St. Mary's Health Center in Jefferson City, Mo., the city in which he had lived since 2007. Ed was born 2 April 1923 in Courtney, Pa. near Monongahela City in southwestern Pennsylvania and graduated from Langley High School in Pittsburgh where he excelled in academics as well as track and football. He served his country in World War II as a 1st Lieutenant Navigator with the 12th Air Force of the U. S. Army Air Corps, flying most of his fifty missions on C-47s over southern France, in Italy, and over the Balkans during the war and later bringing home U. S. troops. After the war he completed bachelor's and master's degrees in Chemical Engineering at, respectively, The Pennsylvania State University in 1948 and Carnegie Institute of Technology (later the College of Engineering for Carnegie Mellon University) in 1950. While at Penn State, Ed was a member of the freshman football team, varsity track team, the Newman Club, intramural basketball and bowling teams, Nittany co-op, Theta Kappa Phi (a Catholic social fraternity now merged into Phi Kappa Theta), Phi Lambda Upsilon National Honorary Chemical Society, and Sigma Tau (now merged into Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society). He was an active member of the University Catholic Club and a lifetime member of the Penn State and Carnegie Mellon Alumni Associations. Ed worked at Calgon Corporation as a consulting engineer until 1964 and at the Corporate Research Laboratory of U. S. Steel Corporation as a research engineer until he retired in 1982; his area of expertise was water treatment and corrosion. Ed was a very smooth dancer, and in 1951 he met Helen T. Barsauskas at West View Park's Danceland; they were married at St. Casimir Church on the South Side of Pittsburgh on 28 June 1952. After living for a year in the McKees Rocks area of Pittsburgh, Ed and Helen moved to Whitehall Borough in the South Hills of Pittsburgh where they lived for over fifty years and raised their six children. They were active members of St. Elizabeth Church in Pleasant Hills, Pa. where Ed served as a Eucharistic Minister and as a member of the Parish Council. In later years he joined the St. Elizabeth Men's Club, worked at the White Elephant Sale of the annual Spring-a-Rama, and with Helen was active in St. Elizabeth's Senior Citizens. After high school and university, Ed's further athletic endeavors included bowling in the Calgon leagues; playing fast-pitch softball, golf, horseshoes, miniature golf, pick-up slow-pitch softball and wiffleball, often with his children and grandchildren; delighting his children by walking on his hands; and, at the age of 72, learning how to boogie board in the Atlantic Ocean. He also enjoyed learning about history; laughed out loud while reading the comics; attended many student theatre productions at CMU as well as his children's and grandchildren's theatre productions and music and dance performances; cheered on his children and grandchildren at baseball, basketball, soccer, and swimming events; picked strawberries; loved to watch funny movies; and coached four of his children to second- or third-place finishes in the Western Pennsylvania Spelling Bee. Ed was particularly fond of growing tomatoes and shared his great harvests with family and friends. Ed treasured the company of his wife, Helen, their children, and their twelve grandchildren, realizing his life's dreams in their existence. He was a prolific traveler, beginning during the war years when he visited many states as well as countries in Europe, Latin America, and Africa and later when he traveled on business to various parts of the U. S., Canada, and South America. He and Helen always enjoyed taking and going with their children to historic and cultural sites such as Gettysburg and other Civil War battlefields, Williamsburg, Plymouth Rock, Pennsylvania Dutch Country, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Oh., Mount Rushmore, the Missouri and Minnesota State Capitols and State Fairs, Washington's Headquarters at Morristown National Historic Park (NJ), the United States Golf Association Museum in Far Hills, NJ, and many Laura Ingalls Wilder sites in the Midwest as well as the various universities that their children attended and the cities in which they lived. In 2007, after living near Annapolis, Maryland for nine months, Ed and Helen moved to Jefferson City, Mo. and joined the community of Heisinger Bluffs LSS Center. In September 2009, Ed was privileged to visit the National World War II Memorial as an Honor Flight participant out of St. Louis and two days later spoke to a rapt honors US History class at his grandsons' Archbishop Spalding High School about his WWII experiences. In November 2012, he was a special guest at granddaughter Elizabeth's Lawson Elementary School Veteran's Day program, where assisted by his daughter Lisa he spoke to several hundred students and other veterans about boarding with a local family in Italy during WWII and guiding pilots to drop zones in the dead of night using a map and a single flashlight dimmed with red tissue paper. In October 2011, Ed traveled to Lithuania, Poland, and the Netherlands with his daughter Lisa and son Chip where he met his cousin Dionizy Jodko for the first time, stood in the church in the Lithuanian town of Eisiskes in which his mother had been baptized in 1890, and met several of his wife's first and second cousins in and around Kaunas. In the last year of his life, he lived at Oak Tree Villas in Jefferson City. Ed was preceded in death by Helen T. Yorkgitis, his beloved wife of 58 years; two daughters, Susan and Marianne (Mimi) Carl; sisters Mary Dubinak and Josephine Mroz; and brothers Tony and Ignatz Yorkgitis. He is survived by his son David, his wife Mary Kay, and their children, David Paul, Teresa, Regina Helen, Joseph, Catherine, and Margaret Mary, of Basking Ridge, NJ; son-in-law Scott Carl of Middleburg, Pa. and his daughter Erin; daughter Elaine and her husband Ken Nimmer of Saint Paul, Mn.; son Chip, his wife Carol, and their children, Matthew, Stephen, and Patrick, of Millersville, Md.; daughter Lisa, her husband Jim Nahach, and their children, Suzette, Timothy, and Elizabeth Rose, of Jefferson City; brother John of Pittsburgh, Pa.; and many well-loved nieces and nephews. Viewings will be held at the John F. Slater Funeral Home in Brentwood, Pa. on Thursday from 7-9 pm and Friday from 2-4 pm and 7-9 pm. Mass of Christian Burial will be held at St. Elizabeth Church in Pleasant Hills, Pa. at 10 am Saturday 24 May 2014 followed by interment at St. Casimir Cemetery in Bethel Park, Pa. The family suggests that memorial donations may be made to the Parkinson's Disease Foundation (support.pdf.org or Parkinson's Disease Foundation, 1359 Broadway, Suite 1509, New York, NY 10018); the St. Louis chapter of the American Parkinson's Disease Association (stlapda.org/donate or Greater St. Louis APDA Chapter Resource Center, 1415 Elbridge Payne Road, Suite 150, Chesterfield, MO 63017); or Central Missouri Honor Flight (centralmissourihonorflight.com or 1400 Forum Blvd., Suite 1-C, Box 334, Columbia, MO 65203).