Albert Ostroy: A Tribute to One of Mazzetti’s “Founding Fathers”

Albert was one of the key people responsible for building the company we are today…

When I started at Mazzetti (28 years ago), we had around 10 people, all of which were electrical staff. Shortly after I started, John Pappas joined to start the Mechanical Department (that story for another day).

As John was building demand for our mechanical services, he contacted Albert, who had worked with the two of us at Flack + Kurtz (now WSP). Albert joined soon thereafter and worked with John to build our mechanical department.

Albert was a character. He may have seemed gruff to some, but he had a heart of pure gold.

The first “really significant” Mazzetti healthcare project was the Kaiser San Francisco Hospital Seismic Upgrade. This was an incredibly complex project. The building was built with 10′-6″ floor to floor heights, without air conditioning. Kaiser decided that they wanted to do a seismic upgrade of the building, while it remained in operation, and to fully upgrade it to modern codes and standards. The complexity of this project is still unmatched in my experience, and most of the burden fell on Albert to coordinate the teeny little ducts through the piping and structure into those ceilings. He persevered and delivered.

Albert had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for many years and passed away last week. His wife, Yana told me that, aside from his family, there was only one thing he remembered, even in the end, and that was Mazzetti. The people here and the company we built, was that special to him that his suffering brain still held onto that.

In a very real way, Albert helped make us what (and who) we are today.

A toast to a great engineer and friend. Your memory will forever live on at Mazzetti.