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Alum enjoys successful engineering career Edward Lesny ’58 feels he graduated from MMI and college at the perfect time. “I stepped into a job the day after I graduated from Penn State,” he said. Lesny earned his degree in civil engineering at “exactly the right time because there was a lot of work at the time in that field,” he said, mentioning specifically the interstate highway system and building programs at college campuses throughout the state, including Bloomsburg, Millersville, and Lock Haven. His first job was at F.T. Kitlinski Associates, an engineering firm where he had worked one summer. The company, located in Harrisburg, specializes in geotechnical engineering, which deals with the foundations of buildings, bridges, and highways. Lesny then worked for several other consulting firms for about 20 years. “One of the highlights of that portion of my career was working in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, in 1970. I spent seven or eight months over there training local technicians about soil and concrete testing for bridges for a major highway project that involved the construction of eight very large bridges,” he said. During his career, he also worked on many projects throughout the United States, including locations in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Nevada, Wyoming, and South Carolina. “In almost any town or city I visit in Pennsylvania, I can see a project I worked on,” Lesny said. He also participated in a project in Hazleton to fill a strip mine behind Giant Food Stores with dredge material. “This required investigating the underground mining that occurred, something I’m very interested in and had a good deal of knowledge about,” he said. When Lesny was in his mid-40s, he lost his job as a result of downsizing and started his own consulting business.
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“I had a very successful 10 years on my own and then decided to take on a partner,” he said.
another familiar face – their blue pig. When they were in school at MMI, they often went to a restaurant called Al’s Blue Pines.
His partner, Phil Kitlinski, is the son of Lesny’s first employer. Lesny and Kitlinski worked together at Lesny & Kitlinski Associates in Enola, just outside Harrisburg, for about 12 years until Lesny went into selfdescribed “semi-retirement.”
“One day, we were in Mr. Andy Stofan’s math class and he made a comment about ‘you guys going out there to Al’s Blue Pig’ – and the name stuck,” he said. “One of the guys somewhere along the line purchased a piggy bank and painted it blue. Every year, we put money in it at Homecoming and joke that the last guy standing will get whatever’s in the pig.”
“We agreed that I would retire and Phil would keep working as Philip C. Kitlinski Associates. I talk to Phil just about daily to discuss projects we are working on together or independently or just to socialize. We have a mutual respect for each other’s knowledge regarding the work we do and play devil’s advocate,” Lesny said. Today, Lesny lives in Camp Hill with his wife, Susanne. They have two sons and one daughter and five grandchildren. He attributes a good deal of his success in life to MMI.
On a serious note, Lesny advised MMI students to work hard, saying, “Just because you have a good education doesn’t mean things are going to fall your way very easily. You need to use your education as a tool to be successful while being humble and working to make the best impression on people.” Edward Lesny ’58 works on a site navigation at the PPL Bruner Island Steam Electric Station.
“I went to MMI because my father immigrated to the United States from Poland and wanted me to have a better education than he had. He was a coal miner who saw the value of education and wanted me to have the best that my family could afford,” he said. Lesny and a group of his 1958 classmates return to MMI every year for Homecoming. “We have a very nice core group that comes back every year. We attend the picnic, have a nice dinner together, and get together for breakfast the following morning,” he said. He and his classmates are joined each year by
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