1974

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George I. Skoda MBA ’74, M.S. ’80 was born on May 12, 1927, in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic). He escaped Czechoslovakia after the communist putsch in 1948 and immigrated to the United States in 1951. He served two years in the Army here and in Germany during the Korean War. After discharge, George worked in New Jersey as a draftsman and eventually moved to Massachusetts to work for National Company and Avco Research in Malden. In 1955, he married Ludmila (Lida) Loutchanova, also from Czechoslovakia. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in engineering and management from Northeastern University in Boston in 1960. In 1962, George and his family moved to California and went to work on the Stanford Linear Accelerator. In 1968, he started working for General Electric Nuclear Energy Division in San Jose as a senior design engineer until his retirement in 1992. During that time, he obtained an MBA and an M.S. degree from Santa Clara University. After retirement, he worked as a consultant for GE until 2011. George passed away on April 30, 2018, in Santa Clara. He is survived by his son, Peter, a retired engineer who worked at Lockheed Martin, his daughter, Sandra Whipple, who recently retired from Kaiser Permanente, and son-in-law Dennis Whipple. After his wife’s passing in 1995, he and his son traveled extensively, eventually visiting all 50 states, most of the Canadian provinces, and all seven continents. George loved nature and animals throughout his life. He and his family cumulatively had three dogs and 14 cats.

08 Nov 2018