Joon Ho Song

Tenacious, individualistic and lion-hearted, Joon Ho Song (Paul) was born in Seoul, South Korea, on January 25, 1947, a son of Song Jae Duk and Ahn Jong In. He was the fourth of six children to survive into adulthood after the Japanese Occupation of Korea.

Joon studied chemical engineering at Han Yang University and served in the South Korean army. He met his wife of thirty-nine years, Lim Jai Soog, in Seoul and married in 1977. After the birth of their first child, Hyeseung, the family immigrated to the United States in 1980, where they settled in the Houston area and raised two more children, Alfred and Sarah.

Joon pursued his dream of independence--from humble beginnings as a vendor of watches in a flea market to designing and building an aluminum smelting company and ultimately founding his own upstream oil and gas process engineering firm. Along the way, he worked for Halliburton’s Kellogg Brown & Root for twenty years where he pioneered elegant solutions to complex, large-scale oil and gas plants in locations as disparate as Angola, Qatar, Colombia and Indonesia.

Joon was a life-long learner and earned two master’s degrees while working full-time and raising his children in whom he instilled the primacy of education.

Raised in a Buddhist family, Joon was baptized at St. Andrew Kim Korean Catholic Church in the late 80s and became a devout Catholic, hosting Bible studies in his home and even teaching Sunday School. Joon prayed the rosary everyday for his children and his wife. They remember him singing the church hymns on the drive back home from church. Joon believed all good things came from God.

After Jai passed away in 2016 after a long battle with cancer, Joon left Texas, his home of nearly forty years, and settled in downtown Brooklyn near New York City College of Technology, where he earned yet another certificate. After years as “a country boy” in Texas, Joon said he loved “being a Yankee.” One for adventure and sight-seeing, he enjoyed exploring new areas in Brooklyn as well as hiking trips to Bear Mountain with his church friends and spending time with his family in upstate New York. Joon loved being a grandpa to Olivia and Chloe on the West Coast, and always arrived with piles of books and toys.

Our beloved father enjoyed long road trips (he criss-crossed the United States multiple times), hiking, golfing, and cooking for his daughter Sarah.

Joon Ho Song is survived by Hyeseung and Christopher Del Medico, Doctors Alfred and Nelly Song, Sarah Song, as well as his five siblings in Korea. Joon will be laid to rest beside his wife at Memorial Oaks Cemetery in Houston, TX.

A funeral mass for Joon will be held Monday, August 19, 2024 from 9:30 AM to 10:30 AM at St. Francis of Assisi Church, 135 W 31st St, New York, NY 10001.