Otis, Donald W.

Donald Wayne Otis Sr., born on September 12th, 1930, the son of Walter S. and Mildred J. (Nordling) Otis, in Osage City, KS, had a long career in civil engineering based in Kansas.
While an engineering student at Utah State University, he worked intermittently in grain elevator construction for the engineering and contracting firm of Chalmers and Borton in Hutchinson, KS from 1947-1953.  Upon graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering in 1953, he served for three years as an Engineering Officer in the U.S. Air Force.  In 1955, he returned to Chalmers & Borton as a structural engineer, and became Chief Engineer for the firm (now Borton, Inc.) in 1961.  In 1967, he was brought on as Director of Engineering for the Jarvis Construction Company in Salina, KS.  He founded his own private consulting engineering company, Otis & Associates, in Salina, KS in 1984, specializing in the inspection of grain terminals, elevators, storage, mills, feed operations, processing plants, and bulk handling facilities, as well as the investigations of fires, explosions, failures, and collapses of the same.  He closed his company and retired around 1995.  He died on April 7th, 2005 in Wichita, KS at the age of 74.  He was preceded in death by his wife, Winona on April 29<emph render='super'>th</emph>, 1995, and survived by his children, Donna Jo (Otis) Wilson and Donnie Wayne Otis, Jr.
He was registered as a professional engineer in eleven states (Kansas, Alabama, Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, & Wisconsin), and was a member of a number of professional organizations, incuding the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE, now ASABE), the American Society of Testing Materials (ASTM), the American Society of Non-Destructive Testing (ASNT), the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), the Kansas Engineering Society, the American Concrete Institute (ACI), and the American Society of Metals (ASM).
His professional honors and distinctions included: selection as the Outstanding Young Engineer of 1965 by the Kansas Engineering Society; selection by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE) for the “People to People” Agricultural Alternate Energy Source Delegation to Europe, Africa, and Brazil in 1981; and selection by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for the Materials Handling Delegation to China in 1985.

URL: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/cjonline/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=3394320  Accessed 11 August 2017.
Resume in collection [Insert folder reference].

Creator Source: Local Authority File
Biographical/Historical Note Author: Patrick C. Dittamo