Pier Abetti

An Extraordinary Life: Pier Antonio Abetti

At almost 105 and a half years old, Pier Antonio Abetti left his large family to join his beloved wife Betty Burr whose death preceded his in October of 2014. He is survived by his two sons Frank and George and their wives Dana and Susanne, as well as seven grandchildren….Rebekah, Caleb, Sarah, Annah, Joshua, Pauline and Jonathan…as well as their spouses and eighteen great grandchildren, and one great, great grandchild.

Pier was born in Florence, Italy where his father ran the observatory started by Galileo in the 1500’s and was well known as a leading authority on the sun. Einstein and other Nobel prize winners were frequent guests in their home , and after WWII he left and immigrated to the US where he quickly got his PhD in electrical engineering and began his meteoric career with General Electric, winning their highest award and significantly contributing to their success in power transmission and high tech over a 32 year span.

True to form CEO Jack Welch pushed him out of the company close to retirement age, but since he was just hitting his professional prime he simply started driving the opposite direction from his home in Schenectady to RPI where he taught full time for 34 more years, as well as in dozens of countries, focusing on entrepreneurship, management of technological innovation and corporate ethics and social responsibility. He also started a worldwide trend merging business and academia with university “incubator parks” to start multiple successful businesses shepherding brilliant ideas into making money. He retired at 95 years old a couple years after the loss of his beloved wife Betty Burr with whom he was deeply blessed for sixty-seven years of marriage.

As impressive as all this is from a worldly standpoint—he was an amazing patriarch to his far flung family, putting his sons and seven grandchildren through a college education and bringing many of them to visit and vacation in the far flung places where he worked (which included 12 trans/Atlantic/continental major moves), permeating their lives with art, history, hiking, railroads, culture, food and many of the twenty languages he learned.

His last years, after some health concerns developed at 101 years old, were spent with his grandson’s family—Joshua and Jill Abetti and their four children in Concord VT--who invited him to spend his remaining years with them under their care, with frequent visits from his sons and grandchildren. Last February the entire extended family gathered at Burke Mountain Ski Resort to celebrate his 105th birthday for a long weekend—an event indelibly stamped on our lives that we will always cherish .

His driving motto—and title of his privately published autobiography—was “Chi si ferma è perduto” which translated from his mother tongue Italian means “Whoever stops is lost”. True to form for 105 years, now that his body is finally stopping, we are losing him from our lives as he passes on to the next. Our hearts ache as we celebrate his beautiful life that has impacted us forever.

A funeral is scheduled for Friday, July 3, 11:00am, at Concord Community Church in Concord, VT. A lunch reception will follow the service.

Memories and condolences may be shared with the family at www.saylesfh.com