After a long and distinguished career as a chemist, Eli “Finn” Blaha wanted nothing more than to satiate his unending wanderlust.
Loved ones said his latest plan was to visit the capitals of all 50 states in one year.
“He thought he’d just purchase a bunch of traveler’s checks, load the camping gear into the car, and hit the road,” his wife of 58 years, Eleanor, recalled with a laugh. “It wasn’t until I said `Absolutely not, that’s way too long for me to be gone,’ that he stopped packing his bags. But left to his own devices, he’d have jumped in the car and traveled around indefinitely.”
Dr. Blaha, 79, of Wheaton, a retired chemist with Amoco Chemicals in Naperville and the holder of 19 patents, died Monday, Jan. 8, in his home from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Two years ago, Dr. Blaha first detected early symptoms of ALS while on his annual hiking trip along the summit trails of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Family members said he also had hiked Mt. Rainier near Seattle and Mt. McKinley in Alaska.
“Hiking at high altitudes was how he cleared his head,” his wife said. “He loved being above the tree line of a mountain.”
Dr. Blaha’s travels with family and friends had taken him to nearly every country in Europe and to places such as the Great Wall of China, the temple at Abu Simbel in Egypt, and Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean.
During a trip to the Yucatan, to ruins in the Maya jungle city of Coba, Dr. Blaha disappeared as his traveling companions admired the scenery from ground level. Family members said he reappeared a few minutes later, smiling and waving his arms atop the tallest pyramid.
In his spare time, Dr. Blaha was also an inveterate fix-it man around his own home, always opting to repair a broken refrigerator or furnace by himself rather than call in a professional. “I’m just a cheap Bohemian,” his wife said he’d joke to friends, when asked about his propensity to accept–and rise to–nearly any mechanical challenge.
“Using scrounged-up parts he managed to keep running a 55-year-old toaster that we got as a wedding present,” recalled his wife, with a chuckle.
Born and raised in Collinsville, Ill., Dr. Blaha acquired the childhood nickname of “Finn” from a neighbor, after a comic strip character of that time. After serving in the Army in 1946 and 1947, he received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1951. Four years later, he received a doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Iowa. His dissertation on chemical reactions was often quoted and republished in technical journals, family members said.
Shortly after his graduation, Dr. Blaha landed a job as a research chemist for Standard Oil Corp. of Indiana, which would later become Amoco. He initially worked in the field of petroleum additives, and later in polymers (plastics), for which he earned many of his patents, family members said.
In the late 1960s, Dr. Blaha helped with the design and configuration of Amoco’s research labs in Naperville, when the company decided to move there from Hammond. He retired in 1987, after 33 years of service with the company.
“Amoco had an excellent research department, and Finn was a big part of that,” said close friend and former colleague Lee Allman, a retired mechanical engineer with Amoco. “He was a highly regarded expert in his field, but more importantly to those of us who knew him there, he was a heck of a nice guy.”
Other survivors include two daughters, Jennifer Blaha and Linda Davis; and five grandchildren.
Visitation will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday, and again from 10 to 11 a.m. Friday in Williams-Kampp Funeral Home, 430 E. Roosevelt Rd., Wheaton. Services will be held at 11 a.m. Friday in the funeral home.
