Obituaries for Dec. 28, 2011

Juergen "Jim" Paul Meissner, 70, died Tuesday, December 20, 2011 of colon cancer at his residence in Afton. He was preceded in death by his parents and 3 grandchildren. He is survived by his loving partner, Carol Monroe; and by two children from his first marriage, a son, Thomas Meissner; a daughter, Suzanne Jacobs, and four grandchildren.

Born in Berlin, Germany, Sept. 22, 1941, he was the son of the late Hellmuth Meissner and Edith Maria Strauch Meissner. At age 11, he migrated with his parents to Guelph, Ontario, then in 1956 to the United States. Prior to moving to Nelson Country in 1997, he lived in New Jersey and Arizona. He was a graduate of the Pennington School for Boys (Pennington, NJ), and attended Phoenix College, (Phoenix, AZ), and Arizona State University.

Jim accumulated all the tools and electrical gear he could. He put together a workshop in the basement of the family home when he was in his early teens, and added to it all his life. At age 16, he won first place in the New Jersey State Science Fair for designing and building a complete hi-fi system.

Jim always loved music. He acted and sang in professional theater, sang in the Bach Madrigal Society and the Phoenix Symphonic Choir, sang in the church choir and was in several musical plays. He was a member of the touring choirs of Phoenix College and Arizona State University. In 1960, he won the seldom-awarded Trudel Award for excellence in music.

While attending college, he earned money by repairing radios, televisions, and phonographs and building hi-fi systems and enclosures. He opened a recording studio, designing and building all the necessary electronic equipment. He later designed, patented and built stereo speakers that worked on a new principle that resulted in uniform sound regardless of placement.

After college, he was for many years employed as a consultant for companies in the aerospace, electronics and health-care industries. In addition to his consulting business, he purchased and for ten years managed a company that made transistors and capacitors. Among the companies he consulted for were Goodyear Aerospace Corp., North American Aviation, Arizona Electronics Standards Lab, Julie Research Laboratories, RFL Industries, and many more.

Jim’s unique understanding of how things worked, his incessant curiosity, and his skill in researching and experimenting led him to produce inventions in the fields of energy, health, and food production.

Always interested in enhancing human performance, he developed ways to retrain the brain using electronics. One such device, which he called the Brain State Synchronizer, could be used to improve performance in sports and other activities. He was the holder of numerous patents.

Jim’s greatest joy in life was helping people. Perhaps the most important project of his later years was sharing the knowledge he had acquired through research into the causes and treatment of cancer, Lyme disease, and other ailments through personal contact and a health forum he ran on the internet. Since his own illness became known, he received hundreds of encouraging and grateful messages from people from all over the country, saying how much he had helped them by the information, concern and encouragement he offered.

Condolences can be sent to http://meissnerresearch.com/contact/.

A celebration of his life will be held in mid-January.

The family requests that memorial donations be made to the Hospice of the Piedmont, 675 Peter Jefferson Parkway, Suite 300, Charlottesville, VA 22911, in appreciation of their support through the last months of his illness.