THYS, Thierry 

Engineer and aviator Thierry Thys died August 19, 2009 in a 
glider accident.

He was born May 2, 1931, in San Francisco, grew up in Sacramento, 
and graduated from Fountain Valley School, Colorado Springs, in 
1948. He attended the University of Virginia, Sacramento Junior 
College, U.C. Berkeley, and Stanford, before graduating with a 
B.S. in Metallurgy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
in 1953. A winner of the MIT Distinguished Air Force ROTC Cadets 
Award, he served in the United States Air Force as a Lieutenant 
from 1953 to 1955.

In 1956, he and his brother Edouard took over a struggling, 
seven-person metal casting company in Berkeley, moved it to San 
Leandro, expanded it, and renamed it Precision Founders 
Incorporated (PFI). Thys' energetic, innovative mind found great 
fulfillment in the diversity of his work, from designing 
specialized equipment and championing new casting technologies to 
building an industry-leading cost accounting system and serving 
as president of the Investment Casting Institute. In his 32 years 
as PFI's Vice President of Marketing, he developed the company's 
sales force and acquired many large customers, chiefly in the 
areas of nuclear power, aircraft engines and aerospace. He also 
broadened the reach of U.S. investment casting technology into 
global markets by arranging technology transfers with customers 
in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Egypt, Italy, France, Belgium 
and Germany. Thys' visits to the San Leandro facility after his 
retirement were frequent and welcome. The strong, family-like 
corporate culture he fostered has weathered two shifts in 
ownership (the company was sold in 1988 to Wyman-Gordon, and 
subsequently to its current owner Precision Castparts 
Corporation), and carries on in the large number of long-term 
(30-plus years) employees still working there.

He brought as much enthusiasm to his life outside company walls 
as he did to his business. An avid pilot from the age of 14, he 
held private and commercial certificates with instrument rating 
for single engine, land and sea, multi-engine aircraft, 
sailplanes and helicopters. In 1970, he made the world's third 
longest sailplane flight, a distance of 570 nautical miles. In 
1976 he flew his twin-engine Piper Comanche from California 
across the Atlantic to the edge of the Iron Curtain. As a young 
man he raced sailboats; in 1990 he bought a Gulfstar 50 sloop, 
and in 1993 sailed it from Mystic, Conn., to San Francisco 
through the Panama Canal. In 1996, he purchased a Russian YAK 
18-T and flew it from Smolensk, Russia, to Magadan. After 
graduating from the National Russian Helicopter Academy of Medyn 
in 1999, he flew a Russian MI-2 helicopter from Almaty, 
Kazakhstan across the Bering Straits to Oakland, Calif. In 2002, 
he made the first self-launched sailplane flight from Pt. Barrow, 
Alaska to Cape Horn in his Stemme SV10 motor glider. He was made 
a member of the New York Explorers Club in 2004. His intellectual 
curiosity was boundless and irrepressible. He restored aircraft 
and antique cars, including a Piper Cub (which he assembled in 
his garage), a 1953 Studebaker and a 1973 XK-e Jaguar. An 
accomplished chef, he was also an amateur mycologist and an 
award-winning wine maker with a 60-vine vineyard at his home. He 
kept honeybees and raised citrus and avocados. He studied law, 
geology, and the Russian language at U.C. Berkeley. At the time 
of his death, he was halfway through a university course in 
Egyptian history.

He was killed at age 78 while on a soaring expedition with other 
Stemme pilots when his motor glider crashed into a mountain near 
Arco, Idaho. He is survived by his brother Edouard Thys of Squaw 
Valley and San Leandro, his sister Diane (Mrs. H. Frost) Prioleau 
of Piedmont, four daughters, Victoria Thys Barnes of Sunol, 
Lucienne Thys-Senocak of Istanbul, Danielle Thys of Oakland, and 
Tierney Thys of Carmel, five granddaughters, and two grandsons.

A celebration of his remarkable life will be held at 1:30 p.m. on 
Saturday, September 19, at the Clunie Community Center in 
Sacramento. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the 
Society of California Pioneers, the Oakland Aviation Museum, or 
Best Friends animal sanctuary. 

Published in the The Sacramento Bee on September 9, 2009