Industry Loses Curtainwall Expert Fred Jeschke
February 15, 2012

by Sahely Mukerji, smukerji@glass.com

Fred Jeschke of Baytown, Texas, passed away unexpectedly yesterday morning. He was 70.

Jeschke worked with Kawneer until about 1980 when he was hired at Howmet as engineering manager, according to longtime business associate Mike Rubner, chief operating officer at Accura Systems Inc. in Sunnyvale, Texas. He remained at Howmet through the transition to Vistawall Group (now part of Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope of Santa Monica, Calif.). In 1987, he left to work for American Glass and Metals (AGM) in Detroit as executive vice president. He worked at AGM until 2010 when he semi-retired and moved to Baytown. He then opened a consulting business called Jeschke Consulting LLC, where he worked until his passing.

"Fred Jeschke was my mentor when I came into the business in 1982 with Howmet," says Rubner. "Fred took me to my first mockup at Sak's in Miami in about 1983 and remained close until Sak's passing last year … Fred was possibly the best design guy I have ever known the curtainwall industry and was friends with everyone -- consultants, architects, general contractors, glazing subcontractors, engineering guys and metal suppliers … He will be greatly missed."

"Fred and I started at AGM within a few months of each other," says Tom Powers, project management/engineering department at Midwest Glass Fabricators in Highland, Mich. "… We hit it off real quick and became very good friends. When I got divorced, he and I spent every weekend and all our holidays out at his cottage on Fish Lake … having a great time.

"Fred didn't so much show me or teach me about big-time commercial contract glazing -- he taught me how to think about it, how to approach problems, how to understand how things worked and when they didn't work why that was," Powers says. "He never wanted to acknowledge it but I credit him tremendously for whatever success I have had in the industry."