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John William (Bill) Drenning, 93, of Frederick, Maryland, died Aug. 26, 2022, at Homewood at Frederick. He was predeceased only 18 days earlier by his wife of 72 years, Sarah Catharine (Sari) Thomas Drenning, and previously by his sisters, Patricia Dudrow, of Woodsboro, Maryland, and Ellen Hersch, of Dover, Pennsylvania. He is survived by his son, James Craig (Jim) Drenning and wife Gale, of Chestertown, Maryland; his daughter, Jenifer (Jeni) Drenning Dean and husband Donald (Don), of Frederick, Maryland; his brother, C. Dahl Drenning and wife Peggy, of Woodsboro, Maryland; five grandchildren, Bryan Drenning and wife Denise, Craig Drenning and wife Jaime, Rebecca Dean Smith and husband Walter, Erin Drenning Johnson and husband Chris, and Emily Dean and partner Nate Clendenen; and eight great-grandchildren, Jackson Drenning, Nolan Drenning, Harper Drenning, Ruby Smith, Wesley Drenning, Zoey Johnson, Declan Smith and Theodore Johnson.
Born Sept. 16, 1928, in Bruceville, Maryland, he was a son of John Wesley (Cap) Drenning and Mary Kathryn (Kitty) Eyler Drenning. Bill attended Woodsboro Elementary School; Walkersville High School, where he was president of the senior Class of 1945; and Johns Hopkins University (JHU), graduating in 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. While attending JHU, he was house manager for the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, and a member of the Johns Hopkins Glee Club.
On Oct. 1, 1949, he married his high school sweetheart, Sarah Catharine Thomas. While they were living in Frederick, he worked for the Potomac Edison Co. as a junior engineer in the Rural Line Department. In 1950, Bill was transferred to the R. Paul Smith power station in Williamsport, Maryland, where he worked as a test engineer. In 1951, the family relocated to Baltimore, where Bill began a 25-year career with Koppers Co. Inc. Metal Products Division, initially as a field test and service engineer, traveling throughout the U.S. and Canada, starting up and qualifying electrostatic precipitators in paper mills, steel mills, cement plants and electric generating stations. Following a two-year stint in the field service department at Koppers, he was transferred to the research and development department, where as a senior engineer, he designed, developed and field-tested electrical controls for electrostatic precipitators and corrugated paper box machinery. During that time, he was granted 26 U.S. Patents; coauthored and presented several technical papers; was a member of the electrostatic processes subcommittee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE); and was a member and officer of the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry. In 1969, he was appointed director of engineering in the Container Machinery Department of Koppers in Glenarm, Maryland. He was a registered professional engineer in the State of Maryland.
In 1975, he resigned from Koppers and moved to Frederick County, where he, Sari and family members managed and operated Monocacy Knoll Farms (MKF), a corporation of family farms. MKF produced custom beef and lamb for the consumer market; milk for the commercial market through the Maryland & Virginia Milk Producers Association; and crops for the cash markets. In 1985, the city of Frederick acquired the dairy farm by eminent domain for expansion of the Frederick airport, which ultimately precipitated the end of MKF farming operations.
In 1986, Bill began working as a senior engineer at Rotorex near Walkersville, Maryland. While there, he traveled the world, evaluating and qualifying manufacturers of hermetic electric motors for use in window air conditioners. During this time, he designed and built equipment and wrote computer software to test and qualify the motors. He retired from Rotorex in 1999, continuing as a consultant until 2004.
Bill was always on the forefront of computer technology. He wrote computer programs as part of his job and wrote others for his own use to accomplish such tasks as monitoring and tracking the performance of an active solar array that he and Sari had installed on their hilltop property in Woodsboro. He was fond of tinkering with computer hardware, preferring to design and build his own desktop computers, always upgrading as technology advanced. Bill was a meticulously detailed record-keeper, even digitizing and cataloging hundreds of family photographs for posterity and assembling a collection of family music recordings. Both he and Sari were avid genealogists, researching and documenting their respective family histories, a legacy that will be carried on by their grandson, Bryan Drenning.
Bill has donated his remains to the Maryland Department of Health State Anatomy Board for medical education and research, after which he will be cremated, and his ashes will be inurned with those of his wife in the Monocacy Building mausoleum at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland. The lives of Bill and Sari will be celebrated at 1 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 2, 2022, at Homewood at Frederick. Family and friends are invited to join this celebration.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in Bill and Sari’s memory to the Alzheimer’s Association.
Online condolences can be made at keeneybasford.com.
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