Toft Funeral Home and Crematory
2001 Columbus Ave
Sandusky, OH 44870
Phone: 419-625-8816
Website: http://www.toftfh.com
View All Obituaries from Toft Funeral Home and Crematory
Dr. Karl Werner Ohly, 87, Sandusky, died peacefully on Saturday, May 27, 2017 at Stein Hospice in Sandusky after an extended illness.
Dr. Ohly earned his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Frankfurt in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1957, and subsequently finished a post-doctorate at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA in 1960. He published several important papers on peptide synthesis and was part of a team that patented a chemical process to produce an animal anesthetic. He also worked at the University of Pittsburgh, at the Chicago Medical School, and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in Philadelphia. In 1971 he moved to Sandusky to take a management position in the laboratory at then Providence Hospital. He retired from the Cleveland Clinic in 1994 where he served as a specialist in hematology for 17 years.
Karl is known among his friends and family as a Renaissance man. His hobbies included painting oil landscapes, making woodcarvings, building violins and violas, and reading voraciously on a wide range of subjects. He often displayed his creations at art and woodcarving shows.
He enjoyed traveling the world and regaling any audience he could find with his accounts of his time in Japan, India, Indonesia, Alaska, and traveling via ocean liner. He enjoyed hiking in the Shenandoah National Park and took his family on annual vacations to a cabin in the woods near Manton, Michigan.
He is survived by his wife of 45 years, Gisela Ohly, three children and their spouses Elisabeth (Andrew Davis), Karl (Lani), and Johann (Anna), six grandchildren, his sister Eva Maria Rodenhausen, cousins, and many nieces and nephews.
He was preceded in death by his parents Richard and Louise (Wigand) Ohly and sister Marie Agnes Ohly.
A memorial service will be held on Thursday, June 1, 2017, at 11 A.M. in Zion Lutheran Church, 503 Columbus Ave, Sandusky, OH. Rev. Dr. Eric L. Bodenstab will officiate.
Donations in memory of Karl W. Ohly can be made to Stein Hospice Service, 1200 Sycamore Line, Sandusky, OH 44870, or to a charity of your choice.
Toft Funeral Home & Crematory, 2001 Columbus Ave., Sandusky is handling the arrangements.
Condolences and gifts of sympathy may be made to the family by visiting www.toftfh.com.
