Jan David TerLouw

ESSEX | Jan David TerLouw was born on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 23, 1941. He was the beloved husband of Jane McClung TerLouw, loving father to Peter Dierk TerLouw and Adrianne Elizabeth Klecha, and cherished grandfather to Madeline, Annalise, and Harrison Klecha. He departed from this world on July 16, 2024, at the Elizabethtown Community Hospital. Jan was the youngest of three boys, raised on a farm in Brockport, N.Y., and graduating from Brockport High School in 1959. His father being a Kodak executive, Jan was raised in a world of cameras and photography. He pursued a degree in physics at SUNY Brockport, where he met and married Jane. Although he began his career in Rochester, N.Y., he went on to work for Schneider Optics, a German firm, and finally, Chugai Boyeki Corporation (CBC), a Japanese company. When he retired, he was the VP of the Optics division of CBC America, a firm having offices all over the world. Jan traveled often to both Germany and Japan. On the side, he and a designer friend founded their own company, Optical Works Limited, or OWL, procuring two patents on their lens designs. Some of Jan's projects involved lenses for school photography, working with the military on infrared cameras, lenses for the Hubbell telescope and those X-ray machines in shoe stores. Jan had a love of sailing, beginning on Lake Ontario as a child and continuing on the Long Island Sound. Finally looking to retire near water for his boats, he settled on Lake Champlain. Buying a camp in 1996, he expanded it into a family home and then moved permanently to Essex In 2010. Although he still did consulting for the Japanese, he could now enjoy sailing and working on wooden boats that were his first loves. Jan is survived by his beloved family and remembered fondly by all who were privileged to know him, including his wife of 60 years, Jane, and his children and grandchildren. His brother Dierk still lives in Ithaca, but Jan was preceded in death by his parents, Adrian and Seddie, and his oldest brother, Peter. Jan's memory will live on through the lenses he crafted and the lives he touched. Services were entrusted to Heidrick Funeral Home, Elizabethtown, N.Y.

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