Michael is one of the 3 Zdepski siblings who traces his birth to Brooklyn NY. Born in 1921, he was more than 3 years younger than his 2 older brothers (John and Stephen). Consequently, the youngest he was given some of the less glamorous tasks when for example, catching live skunks at night. He should have seen the trend when at the age of 4, he and his brothers found a very large Copperhead on Federal Twist and decided to take it home. It took 3 boys to carry the snake as it was so large. John and Stephen traded places of several times holding the snake it behind the head while the other carried the middle of the snake. Michael was “Tail End Charlie” caring the snakes hinter regions. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but his hands were so small he couldn’t hold on tight enough to be sure the snake wouldn’t lay its venous fangs into one of these 3 musketeers.
The aspiring engineer.
Michael was an electronics nerd in the best sense of the word. He was studying towards a BSEE at Newark College of Engineering (now NJIT) when he entered the service during WW-2 where he ultimately had a crew of 3 working for him installing phone lines, phones, and secure communications equipment in Omar Bradley, traveling with US 12th Army HQ as the crossed from Normandy to Elbe River. Anywhere General Bradley went, Michael was probably there 3 or 4 days earlier. He said, “I climbed a lot of poles and spiced a lot of phone wires.”
“I Thought I climbed poles!”
After mustering out of the Army in October 1945, Michael resumed his education but with a family on the way, left University and began a career was Western Electric working on phone equipment. Michael liked to build Heath-kits, staying hands on building things like stereo’s and televisions. He was a keen fan of classical music (something his namesake from Ukraine shared when he confused Uncle Moose by insisting classical music was Brahms and Beethoven and not Johnny Cash).
Michael participated in some firsts for the Bell System, including project managing the first completely prefabricated local exchange – which had to be slide into a building the size of a small house as a single unit, It had 1000’s of contacts in connectors that mated with the a backplane of the pairs of wires going out to the subscribers. It was the mother of all motherboards in its day. It was a father-son affair, because Michael Stephen was the architect who designed the building – the telephone company truly made the world smaller!
Only a golfer can appreciate that Uncle Mike took up golf in retirement and would regularly shoot in the low 70’s, with a partner in Aunt Vera who one can imagine was laughing and giggling the whole time about her own more down to earth golf game where 70 was likely reached on front nine. Being analytical, Micheal was quiet, steady and confident in everything he undertook. …
Leave a Reply