Clarence LeRoy Mehlow, a retired electrical engineer who worked at Motorola, was a part of the first-generation of Austin’s technology workforce. He is remembered for his positive attitude towards life and his love of people.
Mehlow died peacefully on the evening of October 10, 2019, in his room in The Campbell Center at Buckner Villas. He was 75.
Mehlow was born in Zearing, Iowa to Clarence Henry and Margurite Mehlow. He helped run the family farm where they raised pigs and grew corn and soybeans. He often said he was lucky to grow up in a small town because the pranks he and his friends played as kids would have got them in serious trouble in a city.
During the summer before his senior year at Zearing High School, LeRoy went on a blind date with Carolyn Rowe. They were married on September 27, 1964, in Marshalltown, Iowa. LeRoy married the daughter of a carpenter and enjoyed woodworking, too. He built his first piece of furniture, a nightstand, in his high school shop class - a piece still with the family today. In later years, he had an entire woodshop in his garage where he built many things. Some of his projects were a deck on the back of the house and shelves to hold his vast library of books and technical journals.
Mehlow first experienced Texas in 1963 while completing basic training for the U.S. Air Force at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. He was stationed on the island of Crete for 18 months and completed his service at Kelly Air Force Base in 1968.
Heeding the career advice of his father, to use his head and not his back, Mehlow enrolled at Iowa State University to study electrical engineering. He was the first in his family to attend college. He and Carolyn lived in married student housing and on October 30, 1969, welcomed their son, Matthew Allen. Their daughter, Jennifer June, would be born six years later on November 4, 1975.
Following his graduation in December 1970, he moved his young family from Iowa to Phoenix, Arizona to work at Motorola headquarters. He would complete his career with Motorola In Austin, where he worked at the company’s manufacturing plant on Ed Bluestein Boulevard. During his career, Mehlow worked to increase the speed and efficiency of fast static RAMs and the microprocessors used in early Apple computers. He traveled internationally for work to other manufacturing plants in Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan.
Mehlow embraced all types of technology from slides to digital photography, personal computers, wireless phones, televisions, audio systems and for a brief time, a robotic dog.
Mehlow is survived by his wife, Carolyn; his son, Matthew Mehlow and his wife Annemarie of Cedar Park, his daughter, Jenny Mehlow and her husband, Randy Morris of San Diego, and three grandchildren, Megan Mehlow, James Morris and Shelby Morris, his three nieces Joyce Stewart and her husband Gary, of Rogers, Arkansas, Traci DeSheles and her husband Lucien of Goodlettsville, Tennessee and Laura Rowe of Portland, Oregon and many beloved aunts, cousins, in-laws and life-long friends. He was preceded in death by his sister Janet Lindgren of Story City, Iowa.
He will be entombed in The Mausoleum of Cook-Walden/Capital Parks in Pflugerville, Texas.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association or Round Rock Christian Church in the name of Clarence LeRoy Mehlow.
