Obituary of Edward William Laconto

On the morning of March 6, 2021, the world lost beloved Edward Laconto of Tucson, AZ who passed away at the age of 76.  He is preceded in death by his father, Paul, his mother, Jane and brother, Paul.

He is survived by his wife, Jean; children, Eddie, Michele and Valerie; grandchildren, Rachel, Stephanie and Mike; great grandchildren, Adam and Amelia.  He is also survived by his two sisters, Mary Jane and Kathy and brothers Ron, Donald and Jimmy along with several in-laws, cousins, nieces, and nephews. His four cats will sorely miss him.

Edward, also known as “Eddie” or “Ed” was born to Paul and Jane Laconto in 1944. He attended Worcester Industrial Technical Institute and Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY where he received anassociate degree in Electrical Engineering.  He spent the next 27 years working at IBM as a Design Engineer.  After early retirement, he went back to school at Pima Community College in Tucson earning another associate degree in Computer Programming and then started work at Raytheon.  As Design Engineer at both Raytheon and IBM, he worked on very important projects such as the Team Tomahawk at Raytheon and designed a dual beam modulator tester at IBM.

In August 1964, he married his beloved wife, Jean and together raised three children, Edward II “Eddie”, Michele and Valerie.  Whenever people ask how they met, Jean tells the funny story that Ed fell in love with her because he found her rebuilding a carburetor at her parent’s kitchen table!  Obviously, there’s more to their love story of 60 years together, but this paints just a small picture of how their relationship went forward from that moment. It has been a life together of laughter, friendship, family, faithfulness, integrity, dedication and respect.  They are each other’s soulmate.

One of Ed’s favorite hobbies was the amateur radio. His uncle Eddie gave him a crystal radio when he was younger and used it in a science fair project. His love for the radio grew over the years as he communicated to other “hams” all around the world.  With engineering minds, he worked with his uncle fixing any electronics such as appliances, radios or cars. For a few years he would buy old cars, fix them up and sell them right out of his garage. 

 He is officially registered with the American Radio Relay League as an Amateur Extra - the highest class of amateur license. His call sign of WR7A will be missed on the radio band waves to those he connected with regularly. Most people will probably remember him as an expert builder and experimenter.  Before he retired, he built prototype circuit boards using components no bigger than a grain of rice.  He could solder them into place using two irons and a microscope and did beautiful work. He was always willing to help anyone having electronic problems. There wasn’t much he couldn’t fix!  Due to his love of astronomy and radio, his latest project was to build a radio telescope to try and measure the speed at which the Milky Way galaxy was expanding. He believes he succeeded.  Ed was well known and highly respected by the ham radio community and he will be sorely missed.

The IBM radio club hams spent many weekends setting up big antenna systems in the desert for radio contests and Ed was always in the “thick of it”.  He loved hiking and exploring and especially loved camping on Mount Lemon in Tucson.

 He kept regular radio schedules and Zoom calls with his brothers, Paul, Donald, Jimmy and Ron weekly. It meant the world to him to catch up with them every week.  

 He was a very dedicated Catholic, attending church with his wife Jean, along with his dedication to the Knights of Columbus at St Francis de Sales Parish in Tucson.  He was Grand Knight of the council at St Francis de Sales.

 Ed was an Honorary Life member of both his council, St. Martin de Porres Council 6848 and the Monsignor James T. Weber Assembly 2152.  He was a Knight for 36 years and a Sir Knight for 34 years. He was a charter member of the Weber Assembly and served as the Charter Faithful Captain from 1988-89, and then served as Faithful Navigator from 1989-1990. He was also a member of the Color Corps.  He was a very important asset to these organizations. 

 Ed will always be remembered for his good sense of humor, engineering mind, dedication to the church and God, a wonderful father, friend, husband and grandfather. He is a loving light in all of our lives and will continue to do so from where he is now.  The love that he left to all of those in his life will be cherished forever.

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