Lewis V. Eckhart

Lewis Vrooman Eckhart, 93, passed away after a short illness in Tallahassee, Florida, on August 15, 2016. Born May 27, 1923, in Mohawk, NY, Lewis was the son of the late Edward Pitt Eckhart and Mabel Emogene Vrooman Eckhart and the younger brother of the late Thelma Eckhart Miles. Lewis attended school in Oneonta, NY, then graduated from high school in Cooperstown, NY, in 1941. As a youth, Lewis had a soft heart for the pets of the neighborhood. One shepherd dog in particular, Laddie, followed him around so often that their picture together appeared in the local paper. When Lewis was a young man, his parents moved to Florida due to his father’s health issues. Lewis remained behind working as an apprentice tool and die maker for Remington Rand in Elmira, NY. When Lewis decided to move to Florida, he enrolled in the University of Florida (UF) and was transferred to the Tallahassee Branch of UF’s campus at the Florida State College for Women. Florida State University was born soon afterwards. After graduating in 1950 with a degree in math and science education in one of the early graduating classes of FSU, Lewis began working for the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Institute (GFDI) in the Physics Department at FSU.

In 1963, Lewis collaborated with Dr. Guenter Schwartz in the creation of The SEARCH Corporation. SEARCH built proprietary products for undergraduate physics labs all over the U.S.A. SEARCH also had contracts for displays and demonstration apparatus with the Naval Training Device Center, the National Science Foundation and The Smithsonian. Lewis returned to GFDI in 1970 as an engineer. In 1977, Lewis worked for four years for the Wayne H. Coloney Company as a Manufacturing Engineer. From 1981 to 1983, Lewis worked for TRW in Thomasville, GA, as a Tool and Gage Engineer. Lastly, in November 1983, Lewis returned to work for FSU at the new FSU/FAMU College of Engineering. Lewis set-up their first machines shop for the manufacture of the instrumentation required by the research work performed by the school. Over the years, Dr. Anjaneyulu Krothapalli kept Lewis very busy with the design and fabrication of his research equipment. Many an evening, he would share with his family the latest challenge he was working out in those designs. In 1993, Lewis retired from full-time work at the age of 75, but continued to work for them occasionally until June 2000.

At FSU, Lewis met his late wife, Mary Ellen Master Kerr, when she came to study Musicology and Social Work. They were married in Sarasota, FL, in 1954, on Mary’s mother’s birthday. Both Lewis and Mary loved the Tallahassee area and decided to settle down there to work and start their family. Eventually, they purchased land and Lewis designed the home they build. He even wired it himself. On Robin Hood Road, they raised their three children and both Lewis and Mary spent the rest of their days. In the years following his retirement, Lewis and his wife, Mary, enjoyed many trips together, including riding the train across Canada, and visiting Yosemite, Nova Scotia, Alaska, North Carolina (where they owned a vacation home), New York (to visit their sisters) and Vermont. For the New Year holiday in 2000, Lewis and Mary traveled with Wild Things Unlimited to Yellowstone to see the first geyser blow of Old Faithful in the new millennia.

Lewis was passionate about golf, tennis and music. He had a special group of golfing buddies with whom he played nearly every weekend for many years in his retirement. He was an avid reader, and watched both tennis and golf enthusiastically on the television, especially once he could no longer participate himself. Always a HiFi buff, Lewis designed and fabricated his own Stereo equipment starting in his college days. His greatest invention was an air-bearing based straight-line tracking tone arm for phonographs. His design was patented and incorporated magnetic counterbalance for extremely low mass and perfect straight-line tracking to ensure that the phonograph needle tracked the album groves exactly the same way that the original master was cut and pressed. This design went into production and was well received in the upper strata of high fidelity buffs. In his final years Lewis turned his attention to designing a new golf putter with exactly the features he always wanted in a putter. This design he got patented in the last years of his life and was on the cusp of going into production yet again. The Eckhart family and some friends will be continuing Lewis’ putter project to ensure that his dream, of getting the Consensus Putter produced and into the hands of golfers to assist them in improving their games, is realized.

Lewis was preceded in death by his wife of nearly 60 years, Mary. He is survived by his three children, Leslie Eckhart of Tallahassee, Florida, Jason Eckhart of Baltimore, Maryland, and Melinda Howell (Todd Howell) of Ocoee, Florida; his five grandchildren, Delaney Watson of Tallahassee, Florida, Eric and Rowan Eckhart of Charlottesville, Virginia, and Jackson and Braden Howell of Ocoee, Florida; and many others who loved him. A memorial service will be held on Thursday, December 29, 2016, at 2:00 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tallahassee (2810 N. Meridian Road, Tallahassee, FL 32312). In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations in his name to one of Lewis’ favorite organizations: Leon County Humane Society (413 Timberlane Rd, Tallahassee, FL 32312) or Wild Things Unlimited (www.wildthingsultd.org , P.O. Box 1522, Bozeman, MT 59771).