Gerald “Jerry” Puff

Gerald “Jerry” Puff dedicated his personal life to his family, his professional life to Armco, and his postretirement life to World War II veterans.

Puff, a former plant manager of the Armco’s Butler facility and other locations, died June 19 at age 84.

“He was such an upstanding man who cared for people, animals, veterans. He loved his country; he loved his family,” said his wife Diane Puff. “He was the love of my life for 42 years.”

Jerry Puff was raised in Butler and graduated from Butler High School in 1959. He went on to receive a degree in metallurgical engineering in 1964 from the University of Cincinnati. As a student he completed a co-op assignment at Butler Armco, beginning a lifelong relationship with the company.

Jerry Puff began his career at Butler Armco in 1964 as a metallurgical engineer, moved into operations in 1965, became superintendent in 1971 and named plant manager of Armco’s Ambridge facility in 1984.

In 1985, he became plant manager of the Armco’s Butler and Zanesville, Ohio, plants. In that role, he represented Armco internationally in Japan, China, Germany, England, Sweden and Denmark. He helped Armco with its merger with Cyclops Industries In 1992, and in 1995 became general manager of the Mansfield and Dover, Ohio, Works, where he helped lead a $150 million expansion project.

After retiring in 1998, Jerry Puff delved into Civil War and World War II history.

He discovered his great-grandfather was a Union soldier in the Civil War who was captured by Confederate forces during the Battle of Plymouth, which was fought in 1864 in North Carolina, and survived imprisonment in the infamous Andersonville prison in Georgia. The military prison was located near Andersonville, but its official name was Camp Sumter. In operation for only 14 months, the prison held 45,000 Union soldiers and nearly 13,000 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding or exposure.

He then turned his attention to World War II, and toured the Europe and Pacific theaters with his brother, and wrote a book about his experience, but the book was not published, Diane said.

“He had a huge heart for veterans,” Diane Puff later continued.

Diane and Jerry Puff are lifetime associate members of the Bantam Marine Detachment No. 743, and Jerry Puff was an adjutant and bugler. He helped collect toys for the Toys for Tots program in Butler. He lined up the speakers for a 2017 display of the American Veterans Traveling Tribute, a replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Retired Pittsburgh Steelers running back and Vietnam veteran Rocky Bleier was among the speakers, she said.

Two of his demonstrations of respect for veterans were documented in Butler Eagle stories.

In 2013, Jerry Puff and his friend John More spent hundreds of hours locating and identifying the unclaimed cremated remains of Butler County veterans in hopes of burying them in the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies in Washington County. Their effort was done in coordination with the Missing in America Project, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to locating, identifying and interring veteran remains.

They found 19 remains eligible to be interred at the national cemetery. Eight were claimed by family members, and the other 11 received full military funerals, complete with honors.

In November 2018, Jerry Puff obtained about 75 pictures of uniformed Armco employees taken during World War II, and gave the pristine photographs and negatives to the veterans appearing in them or their families.

But he lamented that the remaining pictures, numbering in the hundreds, had likely been discarded.

A few months later, Dave Todd, a retired Armco vice president, called Jerry Puff after hearing about the article about the 75 photos and said he had more photos of employees who served in the war. Jerry Puff gave those photos to the employees or their families.

Diane Puff said Jerry Puff also loved fishing, their three Dachshunds, and traveling. She said they went to northern Manitoba, Canada on fishing trips, visited Hawaii three times and went on a cruise through the Panama Canal.

“We made a lot of memories together,” she said.