Genung Leland Clapper

Genung Leland Clapper, age 91, went home to be with his Lord and Maker on Tuesday, December 23, 2003, in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. He will be greatly missed by family and friends. He was born in East Leroy, Michigan, on August 24, 1912. His parents were Floyd Sylvester and Florence Louise (Mann) Clapper. He married Mary Elizabeth Hazlehurst in Catonsville, Maryland, on January 4, 1941. He worked for IBM from 1934 to 1973. He was named one of the first IBM Fellows and was a prolific inventor with many patents before he retired. He designed and built the card-controlled measuring engine for the Watson Laboratory in 1947 and later was responsible for the design and reliability of the first large transistorized computer built for the U.S. government. He was named an advisory engineer in transistor circuit development in 1957, and, from 1960 to retirement in 1973, he was a senior engineer in advanced technology doing pioneer work on speech analysis, synthesis, and automatic word recognition. At home, his main hobby was building telescopes for star-gazing, even designing and grinding his own mirrors. He was very active in his church life, serving at different times as a choir member, deacon, Sunday school teacher and superintendent. He is survived by his three children, Margaret (Peter) Collinson of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, Virginia (Robert) Brown of Leesport, Pennsylvania, and Robert (Teresa) Clapper of Raleigh, North Carolina; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents; his wife, Mary Elizabeth in 1995; two brothers (one his fraternal twin); and a sister. A memorial service will take place at Brevard-Davidson Presbyterian Church in Brevard, North Carolina, at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, December 30, 2003. Burial will be in the Pisgah Gardens Cemetery in Brevard. For further information please contact Moody-Connolly Funeral Home in Brevard at 828-883-8161.