John Jesse Panak

John Jesse Panak was born March 14, 1937, in Hayden, Colorado. He died of interstitial lung disease April 21, 2024, in Austin, Texas. He was the son of John Panak, who worked as a cowboy on the XX Ranch near Iles, Colorado, and later for the Texas Oil Company; and of Alta May Beezley, who taught her beloved “little people” in a two-room schoolhouse in Iles and in other small towns on the Western Slope of the Colorado Rockies, where young John attended many schools.

John J. Panak worked hard all his life. He helped his uncle Steve Panak tape and plaster, and while attending high school in Craig, Colorado, he worked in the kitchen of the Cosgriff Hotel, after which he never ate another shrimp cocktail. He earned a Civil Engineering degree at the University of Colorado in Boulder while working as a hasher in his dorm and in the oil fields of Wyoming and West Texas during the summers.

On the eve of the 1956 fall semester at CU, he met Carolyn Konz from Beaumont, Texas, at a dance. Two years later they married, on August 30, 1958, in Beaumont; they immediately left for his employment as a design engineer for the California Division of Highways in Bishop, California, where their children Mary Margaret and Jeffrey John were born.

John joined the Bridge Division of the Texas Highway Department in Austin in 1962. He enrolled in graduate school at the University of Texas as soon as he became eligible for in-state tuition. During the first few years he ran from work to class on his lunch hour. In 1965 the Center for Highway Research at UT hired John as a research associate, to develop computer structural analysis techniques for bridge design. He completed his MS in Structural Engineering in 1968. Children David Leo and Kathryn Ann were born during this period.

John rejoined the Bridge Division in 1972 and continued developing Fortran computer programs for bridge design and analysis that are still in use today. For many years, John did foundation and bridge design consulting while associated with Austin Research Engineers, Brent Rauhut Engineering, and Fugro South. He continued consulting work -- including for the Texas Department of Transportation -- well after his retirement.

He considered his team’s design of the Pennybacker “360” Bridge over Lake Austin one of the high points of his career. After he retired in 1993, John and Carolyn spent several years on the Wednesday crew building houses for Habitat for Humanity. John also had a longtime interest in bridge railing design. He contributed to the design of the Tubular W-Beam bridge rail. While in hospice care he was working on a railing able to withstand the crash of an electric vehicle.

Over the years John indulged Carolyn’s love of travel. When the children were young, that meant visits to grandparents and cousins in Colorado, always by a different route and often camping at state parks. The highlight of one trip was climbing the ladders at the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde. When Carolyn finished her BS in Art History at UT in 1975, John gave her a handmade coupon for “a trip to the Mayan sites of Yucatan with a companion of your choice.”

On their first trip to Europe, John and Carolyn drove from Frankfurt to see the spectacular tulips of Keukenhof Gardens, then south to Siena, with many stops along the way, especially at the churches and museums of Florence. Favorite motor trips were to England, Scotland, and Wales, and another to Rome and Sicily. From Pompeii they took a road that narrowed and eventually ended in someone’s garage.

Their tour of New Zealand in a camper van was so enjoyable that upon returning home they purchased a camper of their own and drove up the east side of the Rockies to Lake Louise and back down the west side. After a wonderful life, John and Carolyn spent the past four years sitting comfortably in the home they purchased when they moved to Austin 62 years ago.

John always took a particular interest in ensuring that his children and grandchildren had collections of real tools. They received tools and tool kits frequently as birthday and Christmas presents, sometimes at very early ages. He disapproved of toy tools, declaring them merely frustrating.

John’s parents and son Jeff “Stretch” Panak predeceased him. He is survived by his wife, Carolyn, and by daughters Mary Panak, Kathy Panak and husband Allan Gill of Austin, and by son David Panak and wife Lisa Arredondo of Erie, Colorado, and by grandchildren Abigail Panak of Philadelphia, Nathan Panak and wife Dominique Loones of College Station, Texas, and Josiah, Jacob, Aaron, Gloria, Eliana, and Matthew Panak of Erie, Colorado. John J. Panak’s memorial service will take place at 4pm Friday May 3 in the chapel at St. Louis Catholic Church, 7601 Burnet Road, Austin.