Ann Gangl passes away

 

 

 As per a request, here is the Gangl home address if you want to sent Ott a condolence card:

3186 S Jackson Blvd, Uniontown, OH 44685 

Ann Gangl, with Ott Gangl the most adventuresome and zest for life perpetual motion BJ couple I’ve ever met, passed away at midnight Saturday/Sunday, August 29/30.

 

Retired BJ photographer Ott posted:

 

“Now I don't want to live forever anymore. Not without Ann, who died at midnight at 87 after we been on a 65-year adventure.

“Her heart stopped beating but she lives in me. At the moment this is so hard.

“She will be cremated and there are no calling hours. When this virus threat is over we will have a celebration of life. Meanwhile, I am OK with lots of food and stuff . . . and when it sinks in the tears will come.”

Ott once told me how he wound up with Ann:

“John, I came over on the same converted liberty boat from Germany as her cousin on April 20, 1952.

 

“So while visiting I was introduced to the family with three young and beautiful daughters. I dated the older one for a while and then went to the middle one, Ann, to whom I got enamored while sitting in their living room waiting for Mary to fiddle with her makeup.

 

“After Mary dumped me I didn't miss a beat to date Ann. We got engaged in 1954 and a year later we got married” at St. Bernard Church in Akron by Father Wolf, who did the entire ceremony in Germany.

 

“We could speak English,” Ott recalled, but Father Wolf “wanted to work on his German.”  

“It’s a blast being married to that girl.”

 

1955 was the same year that I married my Mona Lisa, Monia Elizabeth Turkette Olesky, my wife for 48 years when she passed in 2004.

 

Then former BJ State Desk reporter Paula Stone Tucker came along and rescued me for 16 years, so far.

 

Ott Gangl embraced his job as a Beacon Journal photographer with the same verve he brought to life.

 

When you’ve fled ethnic cleansing under Yugoslavia’s Marshal Tito as a child and spent six weeks living in a cattle car with your refugee family, you tend to look at photographing life in Akron and getting paid to do it as pure joy.

 

Gangl was 20 when he and his family came to America from their temporary home in Bavaria. An amateur photographer who spoke little English, he had to settle for a job in the Beacon Journal’s machine shop.

 

He almost quit, but his boss wanted to keep him. The supervisor arranged for him to transfer to the position of wire photo operator, a job that also gave Gangl the chance to go out on some photo assignments. Then, when a staff photographer left for the priesthood, Gangl got his job.

 

His lack of familiarity with the culture was a hurdle at first. With his characteristic guffaw, he recalled being sent early on to photograph the Cleveland Browns, who picked up on his lack of knowledge about American football and had fun at his expense by posing in the wrong positions -- kicker Lou Groza passing the ball, the quarterback tackling a player.

 

Over the years, he covered the big news and the everyday goings-on in Akron and beyond. He remembers going three days without sleep when he photographed the aftermath of the Xenia tornado in 1974, making trips to Dayton to process the pictures and get them onto the Associated Press wire.

 

He remembers enjoying a 3½-hour lunch at the Eiffel Tower while the reporter he had accompanied to Michelin’s headquarters was writing his story. He remembers stripping naked to photograph a nudist camp.

 

Gregarious and boyishly mischievous, he approached all those experiences as adventures.

 

“If I had to scrub floors or clean dead bodies, I’d find a way to be happy,” he once said. “You have to take care of your own soul.”

 

Rick Zaidan remembers “Ott was one of the first photographers I ever met. In the mid-70's I used to hang out in the ABJ newsroom waiting for my dad to get off work.

“Ott was boisterous and passionate about photography and living back then when newsrooms were much different than they are now. Great guy.”

Paula and I crosses paths with Ann and Ott several times at the German Society Oktoberfests in Brimfield Township. It wasn’t hard to find them: Just listen for the table where people were laughing most boisterously and enthusiastically.

 

Ott and Ann lived in Green and enthusiastically embraced skiing out West and traveling with their recreational vehicle.

Ann’s obituary:

 

Ann Gangl passed away peacefully at midnight August 29, 2020 with her husband at her side.

Born in Djakovo, Croatia on July 19, 1933, she grew up in Klagenfurt, Austria. She moved with her family to Akron, Ohio in 1950.

 

A multi-talented artist, she had a business of restoring photographs, hand coloring and other photographic services. As a certified ski instructor, she taught skiing for 25 years at Boston Mills Ski Resort.

 

She and her husband Ott took yearly ski vacations in the Rocky Mountains, Austria, Switzerland and Germany.

 

Ann was preceded in death by her mother, Teresa Hack Raumberger; father Josef Raumberger; brother, Steven Raumberger; sister and brother-in-law, Barbara and Jeffrey Leisinger, and sister, Rose Fritz Kungl.

 

She is survived by her husband of 65 years, Ott Gangl; son, Alex (Tina) Gangl; her grandchildren, Max and Sydney; sister-in-law, Pat Raumberger; brother, John (April) Raumberger; nieces and nephews, Eric (Tanja) Kungl, Lisa (Kevin) Spencer, Paul (Mary Eileen) Kungl, Carla (Todd Crawley) Kungl, Crista (Ken) Pryor, Nicole (Joe) Spoonster, Kat Wills, Philip (Maureen) Raumberger, Erin (Matt) Thorne, Jessica Leisinger, many great-nieces and nephews.

 

Cremation has taken place, and a private inurnment will take place at Holy Cross Cemetery, Akron. There will be no calling hours, and a celebration of life will be announced next year.