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Joseph Lawrence Waldvogel, 99, resident of Madison passed away in his sleep on June 21, from congestive heart failure.

Joe was born Dec. 23, 1921, in Chicago, Illinois, to Joseph M. Waldvogel and Elizabeth O’Donnell. After attending Loyola Academy, he joined the Navy Reserve in 1939, where he served in the North Atlantic and Caribbean. In 1944, he was ordered to a ship in the Pacific Ocean and served with rank of lieutenant commander until the end of World War II, after which he earned his bachelor of science in civil engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology.

He married Grace McSweeney Oct. 28, 1944, and lived with his wife and four children in Levittown, New York, for 50 years. After working for 40 years as a structural engineer and project manager worldwide for firms specializing in port and harbor development for Bechtel, and paper making for Soros Associates, Joe retired in 1985 and pursued his love of birds by volunteering at the Theodore Roosevelt Bird Sanctuary in Oyster Bay. During that time, he also studied horticulture, eventually becoming certified as a master gardener.

His wife Grace died in 2003 and they are survived by their four children, Peter, Michael, and Mary Waldvogel and Nancy Connors, as well as three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

He married Muriel Strohmeyer and moved to Madison in 2003. Although Muriel predeceased Joseph in 2020, he remained close to her family and is survived by two stepchildren, Susan Griffin and Linda Gibson, six step-grandchildren, and five step-great-grandchildren.