John Ho, longtime engineer for Uniondale aerospace company, dies at 91

Voyager 1 — the farthest-reaching human-made object from Earth — can still be tracked almost 50 years after its launch, partially thanks to John Ho.

The engineer, who lived on Long Island for decades after a childhood in China and Taiwan, worked alongside Frequency Electronics founder Martin Bloch to build the mission’s precision-timing device.

“I provided the technical expertise and he provided the ability to translate it into hardware,” Bloch said.

Ho, the longtime head of research and development for Uniondale-based Frequency Electronics, died on July 18 of a heart attack. He was 91.

Ho was born in Nanjing, China during World War II occupation. His family moved around the country before settling in Taiwan after the war.

“My dad's father was part of the nationalist group — Chiang Kai-shek's group — so when Mao Zedong took over, they had to get the hell out of Dodge,” his son, Rodney Ho of Atlanta, said.

Ho was always very interested in mechanics. Back in the '40s, he would take apart radios, tinker with them and leave them in better working order.

“[His family] would see parts left over and wonder what the heck is up with all these extra parts,” Rodney Ho said. “He says he didn't need them.”

Ho and a few of his siblings were able to get into the U.S. with the help of the Catholic Church. He ended up in New York City, studying engineering at Manhattan College during the day and exploring the city at night.

“He was a fun-loving, party-going New Yorker in the '50s,” his son said.

Around this time, Ho met Pearl Chow through mutual friends. The couple married and had two children. The family moved from Queens to Westbury in the early 1960s.

While working for ITT, a manufacturer, Ho met Bloch, who brought him to watch company Bulova before recruiting him as the first employee of Frequency Electronics.

“We were building atomic and quartz clocks for the military and for NASA space exploration and for many, many of the commercial satellites that are now in orbit,” said Bloch, of Oyster Bay.

Bloch remembers Ho as a good friend and a perfectionist.

“He was a very devoted engineer and had the brains and the hands to work many, many clocks,” Bloch said.

Ho soldered many clocks by hand. He also built the timing device for the Voyager 2. He retired from Frequency Electronics in 1997, but stayed on as a consultant until 2019.

Despite being known as a workaholic, Ho made time for 12-hour mah-jongg marathons with friends on Saturdays. Rodney Ho remembers waiting up with the other kids until his father wrapped up around midnight.

“We would just have to play and kill time and fall asleep to the sound of mahjong tiles,” Rodney Ho said.

He also squeezed in Yankees games, even though he usually ended up falling asleep midway through.

“The man could take a nap,” Rodney Ho said.

A fan of table games, Ho was drawn to blackjack.

“My dad always bragged that he had a system to try and beat the house,” Ho said.

After residing in Westbury, Ho lived in Plainview and Oyster Bay before settling in Woodbury for almost three decades. After his wife died in 2020, he moved to Las Vegas to be close to casinos.

“Even when he was sick, we would take him to the casino,” Rodney Ho said. “When he would sit there and play blackjack, he would come alive again.”

Ho wasn’t a man of many words, but he was always reliable. When Rodney Ho had nightmares as a kid, he’d always call for his father instead of his mother.

“He was just there to pat me asleep,” Rodney Ho said. “And that's what he basically did the rest of my life, in a sense.”

Besides his son, Ho is survived by his daughter, Yvonne of Los Angeles, sister, Emily Chang of New Jersey, and granddaughter, Vega Ho of Atlanta. Services were held at Beney Funeral Home in Syosset on Aug. 5.