Anthony J. Zuercher

Anthony Z. Zuercher, 95, of Lansdale, died Sunday, December 17, 2023.  He was the husband of the late Anna May Zuercher, who died October 15, 2023.

My dad could fix anything.  A child of the depression, Anthony went to work in an auto repair shop at the age of 12 when his mother fell ill and his father had both legs crushed in a work-place accident at Bethlehem Steel.  At first, he had the lowest jobs, sweeping the floors and cleaning the toilets, but he was a bright lad and the mechanics treated him fondly and taught him their trade.  By 14 he could rebuild an engine from scrap and bought a broke-down hulk of a 1937 Plymouth Coupe for the lofty sum of 10 dollars.  He had it up and running and was driving well before he had a license.  Rules be damned.

My Dad was also something of a musical prodigy.  He had the innate talent to hear a song once and bang it out on the piano.  He was big hit as a child at drunken, boisterous family gatherings.  His father had aspirations for him to be a concert violinist, and paid a princely price of 1 dollar a week for a famous teacher to train him.  His father demanded that he play at least an hour a day.  But my father hated practicing, and never wanted to be a profession musician.  All he ever wanted to do was fly.  To wit, he lied to the Navy recruiter about his age and enlisted in the War before he finished high school.  The Navy had him up and flying in six months, and he was eventually stationed at Alameda Air Station in California.  He always wanted to be a fighter pilot, despite knowing that their life expectancy in combat was 13 seconds.   But the navy, being much too wise and ignoring his young age, put him in charge of the division for repairing planes that had been shot to hell in the Pacific conflict. It was nirvana for him, rebuilding the aircraft from the ground up and then test flying the engines at treacherously low speeds to break them in slowly.  On Sundays the base held drag races on the runways, and my dad's prototype of the first electric car would easily out-torque any internal combustion engine.  The Navy would send him to study the burgeoning subject of jet engine design at nearby UC Berkeley, where ironically I would earn a graduate degree in Physics 35 years later.

After the War my Dad high-tailed it across the country back to Pennsylvania in a hot-rod racer, which naturally he had built from spare parts on the Naval base, sometimes even out racing the cops chasing him across the southwest desert.  He was in a hurry to elope with his 17-year-old childhood sweet-heart Anna May.  Neither side of the family thought it would last, but they couldn't have been more wrong.   Four years later I was born and in the meantime my Dad took full advantage of the GI Bill, collecting copious degrees from many local colleges, earning professional engineering certification in the electrical, civil, and mechanical fields, along with a business degree.  While working during the day, he attended school at night.  Again, he started at the bottom as a lowly draftsman and gradually worked his way up the ranks and ended up as CEO of a local business, Precision Tube.  After retiring at the age of fifty, he would continue his Mr. Fix-it ways as neighbors would bring him their kaput stuff, cars, lawn mowers, toasters, and sump pumps and he would drop whatever project he was working on and leap into make them better than new, pro bono.

He owned his own plane and sailboat.  And he spent the rest of his free time in either one or the other.  He was as comfortable miles from the shore in heavy seas, as flying blind in a cloud bank. The words I most remember from my mom in childhood were "Anthony, stop you're gonna kill yourself."  For many years he taught the Celestial Navigation course for the Coast Guard in Cape May.  His navigation skills were legendary, and he would volunteer to sail solo up and down the Atlantic coast from Maine to the Bahamas to deliver yachts to perspective owners, much to the exasperation of his wife.  Despite this, Anthony and Anna May remained married for 72 years.  When she died this October, he shortly followed in December.

The world is worse, and a more broken place with his passing.

He is survived by his son, Anthony J. Zuecher IV (Christine) of Berkeley, CA.

Funeral arrangements are private and under the direction of the Huff & Lakjer Funeral Home, Lansdale.