“I take pieces that are relatively more difficult and arrange them for the students,” said Scheffler, who studied piano under Marjorie Lohman as a child in Richmond, Ind. “I do it because I like to do it, and the music is then geared for my students.”
Scheffler played French horn in the Richmond High School band. After graduating in 1953, he attended Purdue University where he earned a degree in chemical engineering in 1957.
“My dad was a chemist, so I guess I was following in his footsteps,” said Scheffler, who received a master’s in engineering at the University of Michigan.
After Michigan, Scheffler was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army and sent to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala. where he worked in research on sealants and adhesives and polymers in an attempt to determine which would hold up the best. Following his discharge from the Army, Scheffler accepted a position with Dow Chemical in Midland, Mich.
“I did pilot plant engineering, which is done before going to full production,” said Scheffler, who worked with polyphenyl ether, a high-pressure lubricant. “You test to make sure your processes are ready for full production.”
Scheffler then made an abrupt change in his career, which resulted in a move to Dayton. After accepting a job at the University of Dayton Research Institute, he left his chemical engineering career behind and embarked on a career in the nascent field of information sciences doing information retrieval.
“We were using an IBM 360 and hole punch cards,” said Scheffler, who worked 17 years for UDRI. “You had to manually extract words for key words.”
It also was during this time, he met Dixie at a Grace United Methodist Church young adult group in Dayton. Dixie was born in Front Royal, Va., lived in New Jersey, before moving to Dayton after her father accepted a position at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. She graduated from Fairview High School in 1959 and attended Sinclair Community College, where she trained to work in an administrative office position.
She worked in administration at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dayton before marrying Scheffler in 1963. They moved to Washington Twp., and she became a stay-at-home mother for the couple’s three children: Steve who graduated from Centerville High School and is a welding engineer in Seattle with his wife and four children; Julie Scheffler Ruegsegger, who home schools her six children near Burlington, Vt., and is married to fellow Dayton Christian High School graduate and IBM employee Steve Ruegsegger, the son of Don and Judy Ruegsegger, of Washington Twp.; and Mark Scheffler, a Dayton Christian High School graduate, who lives in Akron with his wife and two children and works as the executive director of Leadership Akron.
Frederic Scheffler left UDRI and worked for another 17 years as a technical editor for computer programs at SofTech in Fairborn, followed by another technical writing and editing position at SDO Technologies in Dayton.
After retiring in 2000, Scheffler began teaching piano lessons, volunteering in the schools and with the Dayton Philharmonic Volunteers Association. He finds also time to sing in the choir at Washington Height’s Baptist Church.
Contact this columnist at (937) 432-9054 or jjbaer@aol.com.
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