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HONORING LEON J. ARP
______
HON. H. MORGAN GRIFFITH
of virginia
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
Mr. GRIFFITH. Madam Speaker, I rise in honor of Leon J. Arp of Blacksburg, Virginia, who passed away on July 23, 2021, at the age of 91. Mr. Arp was a veteran and businessman who greatly contributed to the Blacksburg community.
Mr. Arp was born in Norway, Iowa on June 30, 1930, to Hugo and Leova Arp. After graduating from Walford High School in 1948, he spent four years in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War, serving in air reconnaissance. He married his wife, Kathleen Schulte, in 1955.
He went on to earn his Ph.D. from Iowa State University. Mr. Arp later moved to Virginia to serve as a professor emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech Blacksburg where he taught for 25 years. In his time there he earned various distinctions and honors for his teaching and research.
Mr. Arp is best known for developing the Arp Respirator in the late 1960s. This design was created to aid infants facing respiratory distress syndrome--at the time the leading cause of infant death in the first week of life. This device is responsible for saving hundreds of infants' lives.
A 1970 Life Magazine profiled this life-saving tool. The article notes that Mr. Arp designed a respirator that could handle the delicacy of premature infants after nearly losing one of his own children to respiratory syndrome. This machine attended an infant's gasp for breath more sensitively than any device in existence at the time. Mr. Arp had continual innovation throughout his career and retained more than 25 patents.
Mr. Arp was preceded in death by his son, William. He is survived by his wife of 66 years, Kathleen; his children, Nicholas, John, and Joseph; and eight grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. I would like to extend to them my condolences.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 150
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