Eugene "Gene" R. Reinhart

Eugene “Gene” R. Reinhart, age 75, of Austin, passed away peacefully on June 5, 2014. He was born on February 26, 1939 in Lavaca County, TX to the late Herbert J. and Elsie Appelt Reinhart. Gene grew up in San Antonio and attended Brackenridge High School.

Gene is survived by his wife, Pamela Trude Reinhart of Austin; his daughters, Dr. Brenna Reinhart Byrd and her husband Dr. Andrew M. Byrd of Lexington, KY and Dr. Alyssa L. Reinhart of Austin; his grandson, Alexander Finn Byrd of Lexington, KY; and his nephews, David J. Reinhart, Mark A. Reinhart, T. Ryan Trude, Tyler R. Trude, and Kenneth D. Trude, III. He was preceded in death by his brother and sister-in-law, Benjamin A. and Emily Stanush Reinhart.

Having received a BSME from UT Austin in 1962, he moved to California to work for North American Aviation, Rocketdyne Division as senior development engineer on the Lance, Phoenix, Gemini and Apollo rocket propulsion systems, while completing a MSME from USC through night courses. He loved to tell stories from this exciting time in history, meeting several astronauts and various top scientists in the space industry, including Wernher von Braun. He left Rocketdyne to work for Southwest Research Institute in 1968, where he managed, among other projects, the modification and activation of the EBOR facility at the National Reactor Test Site in Idaho as well as the pre-service testing of Fukushima Nuclear Powerplant in Japan. In the 1970s, he worked for the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA, where he received an invention award for an ultrasonic imaging system for pipe inspection. In 1978, with a baby on the way, he decided to start his own company, Reinhart & Associates, Inc. in California. He moved the company and his family back to Texas in 1980. Over the past 48 years, Gene has been on the forefront of technology evaluation, development and application in the fields of nondestructive testing and automated mechanical systems design and was involved in many significant “firsts” in those fields. He was named a Fellow of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT) and received their Mehl Outstanding Lecture Award and Tutorial Citation. He has been an active member of the professional engineering organizations TSPE, ASNT, ASME and NSPE, holding chairman positions both locally and nationally. He authored over 50 technical articles on the subjects of engineering, NDT and forensic engineering and taught courses in these subjects in the U. S. and at foreign locations. Gene sold the company about two years ago when he started having health problems, and spent his last years kayak fishing around Texas.

Gene will be remembered with love for being both a gentleman and a gentle man, as well as for his kindness, intelligence, his warmth of spirit and his curiosity in all things. He will also be remembered for his corny jokes and goofy sense of humor. He loved us just as fiercely as we loved him.

A memorial mass will be celebrated at 1:00 pm, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 at St. Theresa Catholic Church, 4311 Small Drive, Austin, TX 78731. Private graveside services for the family are planned.

Please visit Gene’s memorial at www.cookwaldencapitalparks.com