Held, Jr., Arthur Leonard, age 100, died peacefully on March 14, 2019, at the Chelsea Retirement Community in Chelsea, MI. Art was a longtime resident of Birmingham, MI. He is survived by his wife of 68 years, Carol; daughters Dorothy, Martha, and Betsy; sons Peter (wife Anne), Tom, and Chris (wife Pat); granddaughters Alice, Molli, and Katie; and grandsons Andrew, Alex, and Charlie. Art was born on March 21, 1918 in Maywood, IL to Arthur Leonard Held, Sr. and Harriet Elsie (Rotzoll) Held. He grew up in South Bend, IN, and attended Riley High School there during the depression. He was an Eagle Scout, and a proud graduate of the University of Michigan. Art was a Navy veteran of WWII. He served as an engineer in the Seabees (119th Naval Construction Battalion), and was deployed to the South Pacific from 1944 until the end of the war. In 1945 he returned home to Detroit, and worked as a civil engineer at the Albert Kahn Associates design and engineering firm. He moved from there to the nearby firm of Giffels and Vallet. He spent the rest of his career working at Giffels as a structural engineer. He relished the challenge of designing buildings for unusual problems and sites. Some notable projects that he worked on were Detroit’s Cobo Hall; Cape Canaveral’s Launch Pad 39A; the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory; and buildings for the Atomic Energy Commission in Dayton, OH, in Hanford, WA, and in Oak Ridge, TN. Art remained active in the profession after retiring from Giffels, and helped write and revise standards for the American Society of Civil Engineers Minimum Design Loads for Buildings. He also served on the Michigan State Elevator Safety Board. He met Carol while working in Oak Ridge. They were married in 1950, and they were together and devoted to each other until he died. Art was a longtime member of the First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham, MI. He loved to travel, to see new places and to meet people, and he loved good food. But more than anything he loved his family, his wife, his children, his grandchildren and their mothers, and they loved him back. Art and Carol moved from Birmingham to the Chelsea Retirement Community in 2017. He was fond of the Chelsea staff who cared for him and Carol, and they were fond of him. They share with the family in our loss. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the UNMC Foundation, 805 W Middle St, Chelsea, MI 48118.
04/12/2019 JFC
