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.
