Donald E. Shamp, a glass industry veteran respected as an engineer and innovator, died July 26 in Hospice of Northwest Ohio, Perrysburg Township. He was 85.
The lifelong Lake Township resident had cancer, his daughter, Sherri Johns, said.
Mr. Shamp had been president and chief executive of Fuse Tech and Hot Tech, which service and repair glass and other industrial furnaces, with offices in Sylvania. His daughter said he had recently sold his interest in Fuse Tech, of which he had become president in 2001.
Until recently, he was in the field, responding to furnaces in need.
“He’d get calls in the middle of the night from all over the United States. He’d be in his truck five minutes later and be on the road,” said Nancy Wagy, Fuse Tech’s treasurer and corporate secretary who worked with him for about 20 years. “He liked being in the glass plants. It’s a huge loss for the glass industry. He could work circles around these young guys in the plants.”
At Fuse Tech’s Sylvania office, “he’d walk in the front door and go chicka-boom, chicka-boom, chicka-boom down the hall and say, ‘Does anyone want a cup of coffee?’ and he’d make coffee,” Ms. Wagy said. “He let us do our job. He never came in and told us what to do.“
Mr. Shamp had 13 patents in glass manufacturing. Those leaving condolences on social media called him “mentor” and “industry leader” and a “revolutionary leader in the glass industry whose innovation and leadership [led] to many improvements in furnace design and repair.”
His daughter said: “He had a love for the science and to discover new things and how they worked.”
Through his career, he worked at the the Libbey-Owens-Ford Co., Guardian Industries, and the Johns-Manville Corp. In the late 1990s, he had a leading role in bringing an improved form of furnace technology to the Rossford plant run by L-O-F’s successor, Pilkington PLC, though by then he worked at Johns-Manville.
“Don was trying to make things better for the industry in general and had the guts to try it at Johns-Manville and the smarts to be able to do it,” said Mark Roth, project manager of the conversion at Pilkington. Mr. Shamp had hired Mr. Roth to L-O-F in 1983 and remained a mentor.
“He was all about work hard and play hard. There wasn’t much sleep involved,” Mr. Roth said. “He was full of life, full of fun. Work was serious, so he didn’t make it serious. He made it fun.”
Born July 21, 1937, to Verla and John Shamp, he grew up in the Lake Township community of Latcha, where he still lived. At Lake High School, of which he was a 1955 graduate, he was on baseball, basketball, and track teams, was in the band and choir, and took part in theater. He received a chemistry degree in 1959 from what is now Manchester University in Indiana. A degree in chemical engineering from the University of Toledo followed in 1963.
At L-O-F, he gained promotion to superintendent of glassmaking, assistant manager of the Rossford glass manufacturing and fabricating plant, and chief of furnace design and development in the glass operations group. At Johns-Manville, he was a furnace engineering troubleshooter nationally.
He served on the Lake Board of Education for 12 years in the 1970s and early 1980s. In March, 2019, he was named a Lake distinguished alumnus.
His son, Jeffery Shamp, died Feb. 9, 2010.
Surviving are his wife, the former Barbara Harpel, whom he married Aug. 29, 1959; daughter, Sherri Johns; brother, Jim Shamp; sister, Wanda Hartman, and six grandchildren.
Family and friends will be received from 3-7 p.m. Thursday at Marsh & Marsteller Funeral Home, Luckey, Ohio. Memorial services will begin at 11 a.m. Friday at Lakewood Church of the Brethren, 27009 Lemoyne Rd. in Lake Township, with visitation after 10 a.m.
The family suggests tributes to Lakewood Church of the Brethren or Hospice of Northwest Ohio.
First Published August 7, 2022, 4:00 a.m.
