Egon Guba

Egon Gotthold Guba, 84, of College Station, passed away Wednesday, March 26, 2008, at Sheridan on Rock Prairie in College Station.
Mr. Guba was born in Chicago to Oswald and Roszina Schell Guba.  He attended private Lutheran elementary, junior high and high schools in Chicago, and upon graduation from Luther High School North, enrolled in Valparaiso University in physics and engineering.
After two years of college, he and a number of his fraternity brothers stopped out temporarily to join the U.S. Army during World War II.  After training at Ft. Riley, Kan., he was deployed to the 381st Combat Engineers Battalion, which he laughingly referred to as the “mine and booby trap crew.”
He served building and rebuilding bridges for U.S. troops, blowing up enemy gun emplacements and bunkers, disarming booby traps left behind after D-Day and was part of the team which blew up the Bremerhaven wolf pens (hardened submarine repair docks).  Because he was also a native German speaker, he additionally served part-time as a simultaneous translator for occupation groups and officers.
Upon returning to the U.S. in 1946, he went back to school and completed his baccalaureate, then pursued a master’s degree in education at the University of Kansas. Between degrees, he married Elaine Vivien Thompson, with whom he had three children, and from whom he was later divorced.
Meanwhile, he earned a doctorate in statistics and measurement from the University of Chicago, where he also taught for four years.  Subsequently, he taught at the University of Kansas City (later the University of Missouri-Kansas City), then Ohio State University and finished the last 25 years of his career at Indiana University- Bloomington, from which he retired.
At the Ohio State University, he served as the director of the Research Bureau for ten years, and later served as the executive associate dean of the School of Education at Indiana.  He was a gifted teacher, adviser and mentor, and many of his students now hold endowed chairs at top rank institutions.  He thoroughly enjoyed his work with doctoral students, his various research projects and writing.
Survivors include his wife, Yvonna Sessions Lincoln; daughters and son-in-law, Christianne Joan Guba and Michael Cochran and Susan Carol Guba; son and daughter-in-law, Philip Paul and Caryn Blaugrund Guba; and three much-loved grandchildren, Kelsey Shawn Guba, Taylor Paige Guba and Sean Michael Cochran.