8 Bells Gottfried Mausberger
Marsha Dyslin
July 1934 - Feb 2021
Gottfried on "fine-a-Lee at Angel Island in the 80's
In early February, we received an email from Gottfried Mauersberger’s daughter, Erika, letting us know that he had died. He was 87 years old and had been battling Parkinson’s for a number of years. I was able to email with Erika, to learn more about the early years of Gottfried. He was born in Germany, and escaped from East Germany when he was 20 years old. He ended up in Moose Jaw, Canada, laying railroad ties during the winter. Gottfried met Brigitta in Vancouver and after a 4-week courtship; they became engaged and were married Dec 9 at the San Francisco court house!
Gottfried worked at United Airlines at night while going to San Francisco State and then Berkeley for his Electrical Engineering and MS in Electrical Engineering degrees respectively. Also, during this time, the couple won several jitterbug competitions!
Erika shared the following with me: “The happiest times for our family were always surrounding either my mother dragging us camping or our family doing the Lake Don Pedro rafting thing with the club. Their favorite memory of one of those trips was when one night the adults went skinny dipping and I snuck behind them in my dinghy stealing their clothes. The most thrilling time my parents had was battling the elements sailing back from Monterey to Santa Cruz during quite the storm. So many of my birthdays were experienced on my dad’s different boats. And I will forever be thankful for the little El Toro (the floating tub) that my father and I built in our garage out of wood that led us to the San Jose sailing club”
The sailing life began a few years later when Gottfried joined the San Jose Sailing Club in 1981, almost 40 years ago. He originally had a McGregor 25, “Fine-a-lee” and then a Cal 2-27, ”Maluhia”. He was Commodore of the club in 1985. He became the Backwind editor in 1988, a position he held for over 30 years, before producing his last Backwind for the club in December, 2018. During his time as editor, San Jose Sailing Club won the PICYA Wilder Award for the Best Newsletter 14 times out of the last 20 years. And if we didn’t win, we were in the top 3 of all club newsletters. Gottfried would tell anyone who asked that the Backwind is so good because of the articles that members submit each month. The personal stories of adventures or mishaps (learning experiences), the safety articles, the review of SJSC cruises and upcoming trips on the calendar made the Backwind the award-winning newsletter it was.
But Gottfried was more to the club than just our amazing Backwind editor for so many years. For many years at the Holiday gift exchange, his wife, Brigitta, would make amazing framed needlepoint creations that were highly sought after during the “steal” time of the gift exchange! Many packages were shaked, measured or picked up on the chance you could be the lucky one to receive Brigitta’s amazing creation. If you have one of these amazing creations, please share it at one of our next club meetings! After talking with Erika, I learned that Gottfried and Erika found cross stitch creations that Brigitta made, that never made it to their intended SJSC Holiday Party! Erika is planning on coming to the SJSC Holiday Party, 2021 with a present for the gift exchange!
Erika’s final thoughts: “Thank you for giving him his place where he fit in and gave him so much joy not to mention so many incredible memories I would never have had with my parents if it were not for the sailing club.”
RIP |
