Daniel DeWitt Mickey

Daniel DeWitt Mickey, Jr., retired electrical engineer, passed away at age 85 on Friday, September 12, 2008 at Hillcrest Healthcare Center. Born in Junction City, KS, the son of the late Daniel DeWitt Mickey, Sr. and Edna Pugh Mickey, he moved with his family to Overland Park, KS where he graduated from high school. He matriculated at Cornell University where he received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a masters degree in physics. His college studies were interrupted by World War II, during which he served in the U.S. Army Air Force as a meteorologist. He moved to Owensboro in 1952 to join General Electric as an engineer. Mr. Mickey remained with the company until the move of its engineering department to Cleveland, where he continued for another five years. His work with GE included the development of the solid state transistors that facilitated the first manned space flight. His career then took him to Mountain View, CA where he joined Spectra Physics, working with the utilization of lasers in barcode scanning. He later moved to Los Angeles where he worked with Hughes Aircraft, from which he retired and returned to Owensboro. An active member of First Presbyterian Church, he had been a deacon and choir member. Mr. Mickey's many interests included barbershop singing, with both choruses and quartets and he was a long-time member of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America. He held a private pilot's license and was a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association, participating in the Oshkosh Fly-In. He was a ham radio operator, an early experimenter with radio controlled aircraft, an accomplished do-it-yourselfer who built his own boats, and enjoyed boating. He was preceded in death by his wife, Anne Conard Feddeman Mickey in 2000.

Survivors include his children Susan Bornefeld and her husband Gary of Newburgh, IN, Martha Ferguson and her husband John of Charleston, SC, De Mickey and his wife Lynn of Columbus, Ohio, David Mickey and his wife Michele of Scottsdale, AZ, and Chuck Mickey and his wife Dale of Sudbury, MA; 13 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren.

Services are at 2:00 p.m. Tuesday at Glenn Funeral Home, where visitation will be from 4:00 until 8:00 p.m. Monday and after 12:00 noon Tuesday. Entombment will be in Owensboro Memorial Gardens Mausoleum. Expressions of sympathy may take the form of contributions to the memorial funds of The Optimists Club or The Daviess County Animal Shelter.