Augustine Fredrich

Augustine Joseph (Jay) Fredrich, the eldest son of Augustine Joseph (Gus) Fredrich and Barbara Mary Strobel Fredrich was born in Little Rock, AR, on September 12, 1939. He attended St. Edward’s Parochial School in Little Rock and was a 1957 graduate of Subiaco Academy in Subiaco, AR. As a youth he delivered the Arkansas Gazette newspaper, was a stock boy at Roach Printers Supply, worked in the Subiaco Abbey Print Shop while a student at the Academy, and was a clerk at the Oak Forest Drug Store for a year while attending Little Rock University.

In 1958 Jay enrolled at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville where he completed the requirements for a baccalaureate degree in Civil Engineering in 1962. During his time as a student he worked as House Manager for Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, as a summer employee on the Interstate 30 construction project for the Arkansas Highway Department, and as an engineering technician for the Little Rock District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In 1962, Jay married Cecelia Ann Waller, formerly of Evansville, IN, at St. Edward’s Church in Little Rock. They became parents of a daughter, Laura Ann Fredrich Woford, a son Augustine Joseph (Joe) Fredrich of Evansville, and a son Gregory (Greg) Louis Fredrich of Evansville. They are the grandparents of Noah Woford and Philip Woford of Athens, GA, and Charlotte Fredrich and Adelaide Fredrich of Evansville, IN.

Mr. Fredrich was a life-long active participant in his Catholic faith. He received the John Henry Cardinal Newman Honor Award for his work as the editor of the Catholic student newspaper at the University of Arkansas Newman Club in 1962. He served as an usher, lector, and Eucharistic Minister in several parishes, made a Cursillo weekend in Evansville, IN in 1980, and worked as a member of eight teams that presented Cursillo weekends subsequently. He was the faculty representative on the Board of Directors of Catholic Campus Ministry in Evansville for more than 20 years. Jay served on the Board of Trustees for Subiaco Academy for a total of six years. In 2009 he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of Subiaco Academy.

After graduation, Mr. Fredrich was employed by the Little Rock District of the Corps of Engineers as a hydraulic engineer. His first assignments involved responsibility for the operation of the Beaver and Greers Ferry reservoirs. In carrying out that work he eventually wrote a computer program used to study coordinated power operations for the five White River reservoirs. When that program came to the attention of the Director of the Corps of Engineers Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC) in Sacramento, CA, he hired Mr. Fredrich to work on the development of a similar program for much larger systems elsewhere in the nation. His work for HEC led to his selection as Engineer-in-Charge of the Corps International Hydrologic Decade project, an effort to develop computer programs to be used by the United Nations in developing nations with sparse hydrologic data. He led pilot projects for government agencies in Peru and Guatemala to test the programs in 1968 and 1969. In 1969 Jay was

“loaned” to UNESCO to teach computer modelling in an international program for Latin American engineers at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He completed requirements for a master’s degree in Civil Engineering at California State University in Sacramento in 1972 and achieved registration as a Professional Engineer in the state of California the same year.

In the fall of 1972 Mr. Fredrich was chosen by the American Political Science Association and the U.S. Civil Service Commission as a Congressional Fellow, the first civil engineer ever chosen for the program in its 20-year history. He chose to work on the Congressional staff of Representative John Paul Hammerschmidt in the spring of 1973 and on the staff of Senator John McClellan in the fall of 1973 and spring of 1974. Upon completion of the fellowship he was assigned by the Corps of Engineers to the Office of the Chief of Engineers in Washington, D.C. as a senior policy specialist where one of his most important assignments was the preparation of the Corps of Engineers response in March, 1977, to President Carter’s “hit list” of water resources projects he wanted to terminate. After completing the requirements for the Federal Executive Institute at the University of Virginia, Jay’s last years with the Corps of Engineers were spent at Fort Belvoir, VA, where he was the first civilian director of the Corps’ Institute for Water Resources. There he was responsible for managing two Congressionally authorized studies: the National Waterways Study and the National Hydroelectric Power Resources Study.

In 1979 Mr. Fredrich left the Corps of Engineers to accept a position as Professor of Engineering Technology in the newly established Engineering Technology program at Indiana State University Evansville in Evansville, IN. In 1981 he became Chairman of the Engineering Technology Division. After the institution became the University of Southern Indiana (USI) in 1985, he became Chairman of the Engineering Department and Associate Dean of the School of Science and Engineering, positions he held until his retirement in 2003. In 1993 he was the recipient of the University’s Distinguished Professor Award and upon retirement in 2003 he received the University’s Core Curriculum Teaching Award for effective teaching in its general education program. After retirement from the University he worked as a consultant with Morley and Associates in Evansville and FTN Associates in Little Rock.

Mr. Fredrich was active in professional organizations at the local, national and international. An active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers for more than 50 years; in the 1970s he served a four-year term on its Technical Council on Computer Practices, in the 1980s he served a four-year term on the Executive Committee of its Water Resources Planning and Management Division, and in the 1990s and 2000s he served two terms on the Society’s Committee on History and Heritage of American Civil Engineering. In 1993 he received the Society’s Julian Hinds Award for career achievements in water resources planning and management. In 2009 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASCE Environmental and Water Resources Institute, and in 2012 he received the Society’s History and Heritage Award. He was a Fellow of ASCE and a Diplomate of the American Academy of Water Resources

Engineers. In 1993 he received the Tri-State Council on Science and Engineering’s Technical Achievement Award for his efforts to develop and manage a summer program on Career Awareness in Science and Engineering for middle school students at USI. Jay was inducted into the Arkansas Academy of Civil Engineering in 1989 and into the Arkansas River Historical Society Hall of Fame in 2013. He was the ASCE Citizen Engineer of the Year in 1991 and the ASCE Indiana Section Engineer of the Year in 1993. Mr. Fredrich is the author or co-author of more than 50 professional papers published in national and international engineering journals. He is also the author of Sons of Martha, an anthology of readings on civil engineering history and ethics for civil engineers and civil engineering students, the co-author of Sons of Subiaco, a retrospective look at the Subiaco Academy Class of 1957 on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the author of Be a Good Soldier and Take Care of My Babies, a collection of his father’s World War II letters, an Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, and the co-editor of the Proceedings of one national and one international conference on Civil Engineering History and Heritage.

Jay was a life-long sports enthusiast, both as a participant and a fan. After his experience in Latin America he became a soccer fan and when his sons reached the age to participate in soccer programs he became a volunteer coach in recreational soccer programs in Springfield and Annandale, VA. When his family moved to Evansville, he became involved in the youth and high school soccer programs there. For 4 years he coached in the Evansville Youth Soccer Program and ultimately became the president of the program, responsible for recreational soccer for more than 1,000 boys and girls for eight years. In 1987 he received the Man and Boy Award from the Evansville Boys Club for his service to the youth of Evansville. From 1981 to 1991 he was the Junior Varsity soccer coach and Assistant Varsity Coach at Reitz Memorial High School, during which the varsity team won six state high school soccer championships. He founded the Evansville Area Soccer Association in 1981 to provide competitive soccer teams for boys in Evansville. He served as Commissioner of that Association from 1981 to 2003, during which time it grew to 24 teams in Evansville and Newburgh, IN, and in Henderson and Owensboro, KY. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Indiana Youth Soccer Association for more than 10 years. In 1993 he was elected to the Indiana Soccer Hall of Fame in recognition of his work as a coach and administrator.

Mr. Fredrich was pre-deceased by his parents, his sisters Carolyn Ann Fredrich and Elizabeth (Betty) Franzetti, and his brother Phillip Eugene Fredrich. He is survived by his wife Cecelia, his daughter Laura Woford and her husband Jeff, his son Joe and his wife Kelly, his son Greg and his wife Joan, and his grandsons Noah and Philip Woford, and his granddaughters Charlotte and Adelaide Fredrich (Greg & Joan), his brother-in-law, Joe Franzetti, and his sister Barbara Susan (Sue) and her husband Amos Enderlin, his former brother-in-law Fred Metrailer, and his sister-in-law Hope Hartz Fredrich.

Services will be Saturday, Oct. 10 at 9:30am, Rosary at 9:00am, at Christ the King Catholic Church in Little Rock.  These services will be livestreamed at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFLCQF2okEX6gKbKLOoGPiA.  No flowers, in lieu of, please send contributions to either Subiacoacademy.us, Reitzmemorial.org, or SpringBoardUSA.org.

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