Service Details
In keeping with George’s wishes, a private service took place.
EDEN PRAIRIE, MN – Mr. George A. Das, 70, passed away on October 15, 2024, after a battle with advanced renal cancer.
He was born in Bogra, Bangladesh on April 1, 1954, and grew up in a small Christian community, the son of a police chief and midwife. At an early age he met a missionary who greatly influenced his life and faith.
George graduated with a degree in archeology from a college in India. Afterward, he moved to Fort Wayne, IN under the sponsorship of Rev. Binkley. He attended Fort Wayne Bible College and graduated in 1980 with a bachelor’s degree in biblical studies, where he also made some of his closest lifelong friends, including his future wife, Michelle Jean Hurst. He married Michelle on November 20, 1982. Sadly, Michelle passed away in 2000 and George never remarried.
George worked in IT for Summit Bank in Fort Wayne. Later, he took a job working the IT mainframe for SuperValu, which required moving his family to Kenosha, WI. SuperValu later transferred him to Eden Prairie, MN where he remained until his retirement in 2023 with 36 years of service.
George enjoyed taking walks, listening to the radio, current events and politics, reading history, gardening, and fishing.
He is survived by his sons, Josh Das and Ryan Das.
In addition to his wife, Michelle, George was preceded in death by his parents, his sister, Clara Das, and his brother, Douglas Das.
In keeping with George’s wishes, a private service took place.
John Erdel says
I was a friend who roomed with George in college, and twice elsewhere. He was helpful to me, and I hope I was helpful to him, sometimes. We occasionally argued, and we shared many happy times just being friends. He was a serious person, and a hard worker, but he also had a great laugh and smile. He was often witty and he told me jokes he heard growing up in Bangladesh. He liked to know what was happening in the world and tried keeping up with the news. He was good at learning new things and adapting to new circumstances, I’ve witnessed many people adjust to new cultures, and George was better at it than most.
His mother would have liked that he said his prayers every night before sleeping.
I wish the best for his sons, Josh and Ryan.
Todd Wilson says
George and I worked together for many years and we would go to the Lions Tap for lunch at least monthly. George wasn’t responding to texts or emails so I knew something was not right.
I am so sad it’s hard to believe it’s true. We eat lunch daily at work, not only funny but wise and always had a great story to tell.
I found this finally after trying to find out where he has been.
I am heartbroken 💔
Craig Loftsgaarden says
We were shocked to hear that George had passed away. On any given day over the past few years, I would pick him up at his place in Eden Prairie (he hated driving) where we would then ride together and go to the Lions Tap where we would meet Todd Wilson for burgers (it was called our Tap run). Then all of a sudden, in September, we didn’t hear from him. Its hard to believe that he was so sick. He never mentioned that he was sick to either me or Todd.
George was a wonderful friend and we had many philosophical discussions over the years, both at work and after he left Supervalu. There couldn’t be a more be a kind and gentle person that he.
I will miss him dearly.
Craig Nayrocker says
As a kid George was mischievous. He probably did not tell Josh and Ryan much about that part of his life, because he wanted them to do better. It worked.
His mother’s family was more middle class in the way they thought. His dad’s family was well established, but a bit more laid back. I think his mom’s family was from Calcutta, and his dad’s family lived closer to George’s nuclear family. His grandpa Das was a gunsmith and his grandma Das was a midwife, and I think she may have helped people with herbal remedies. George’s dad was the chief of police for Bogra. That would be an interesting accomplishment for a Christian of Hindu extraction in a Muslim country. Maybe the Muslims in that area were not radicalized. But that is hard to believe since Partition had just happened in 1947.
When George was a little kid, he stayed with his dad’s parents for an extended period of time. His grandpa Das must have been an outdoorsman. One time George’s parents came to visit. George came into the house covered in mud. His mom took one look at him and said he was coming home. Goodbye Grandpa Das.
Around late September 1975, I walked back from the Sears store to FWBC. I ran into George outside of the dorm. He had just walked back from the administration building or the library. It was a wonderful fall day. There was a very slight breeze and the temperature was around 65. He was shivering as he wore a lined windbreaker. He said, “They told me it was going to be cold in America, but I never imagined it would be this cold.”
That interaction reminds me of when Josh was a senior in high school. George was chomping at the bit and did his FAFSA at the beginning of January of Josh’s senior year. George had another one of those, “They told me it was going to be cold in America” moments. I told George that when the EFC came back the family responsibility is always much higher than the family feels they are capable of doing. I then told him when the college’s financial aid award letter comes; the school is unable to get the family’s responsibility down to what the EFC said. And furthermore, the school counts loans as if they are aid.
Another thing about cold, George grew up in Bangladesh where it was very hot and humid. Then he moved to Fort Wayne, then Kenosha, then a suburb of Minneapolis. It seems that every move was to some place colder. After living in Minnesota for a couple of years, George said that it could be 20 below zero for awhile. He said that “if it warmed up to zero, then it snows.”
One time around the 1977 – 1978 school year George was telling us about how he was an outdoorsman. To prove his point he said he shot the two two bore. We spent several minutes trying to understand what he was saying. He kept saying with increasing frustration that he shot the two two bore. Finally one of us got it and said, “You mean you shot a 22 caliber rifle?” He said indignantly, “Yes, the two two bore.”
George was thin when we met him. (Actually, you would be shocked at how thin people were in the middle of the 20th century. A person, who we thought was fat, would be considered thin today.) George would have been much lighter as a kid. I believe he said he shot a shotgun when he was a kid. I cannot remember if he said he landed on his can. From my background a shotgun was a 12 gauge or maybe a 16 gauge. I wonder if the shotgun he shot was a 20, 28, or 410. A 410 would not be too much for a kid. I did not think to ask the clarifying question of what gauge it was. One of the bad things about death is that you cannot ask questions of people who have died.
George had secrets. At some point we realized there was something about his age. Finally at Shayne and Karen Looper’s in Warren, Ohio, he said his age was falsified to make him older than he was, when he was first enrolled in school as a little kid. That fits with the discovery that his birth date went from 1952 to 1955.
At some point in the early 1980s, George had to go back to Bangladesh. His visa would not let him stay in the US any longer. I do not think it had anything to do with his age. In hindsight, I wonder if it had something to do with his finishing school for information technology. I do not remember how long he was out of the country. However, we did not know if he would ever be able to come back. It was concerning, because culturally, George had become an American about as soon as he arrived in 1975. We were greatly relieved when he came back.
Growing up in a Muslim country, George initially was hesitant to eat pork. One college kid who grew up on a farm took George home to see the farm. When he saw the way hogs are raised, he dropped his inhibition. He would often order a ham manhattan, with bread, a slice of ham, mashed potatoes, and gravy. He would tell the waitress (at Halls at Quimby Village) to leave the pig’s head off of his plate.
When your parents were first married, your mom had what was then an intermediate sized Plymouth wagon. It was huge. Your dad said, imagine here he is in America driving a boat.
There was a semester or year that George was not a student at the Bible College. He stayed with the Rolfs (Norman T “Bud” and Louise) known as Mr. Rolf and Mrs. Rolf. He owned Rolf Heating in Fort Wayne. It merged with another heating company. I do not think any of the Rolf’s sons are in the business anymore. They may not be living. The Rolfs lived down the street from Fort Wayne Bible College 1025 W Rudisill. They lived at 1143 W Rudisill, FW.
The year George was out of school he worked at some plant or business on the north side of FW. He walked to a bus stop, waited for a bus, took it to another bus stop, waited for another bus, that he took to the area of his job. He then walked to his job. He would work his shift and then repeat the same thing to get home. Because of the Midwestern winters, this was a remarkable feat of perseverance and endurance for any of us. It was likely even more of a task with George’s life in hot and humid Bangladesh, just a couple of years earlier. A colorful aside, was that there was a lady who worked at that company in some management position, who was always yelling at George. He spoke of his frustration with “Irma.”
Your dad was cleaning offices at either Indiana Bank or Anthony Wayne Bank. His work ethic came to the attention of one of the top executives at the bank, who moved him into the bank’s information technology area. A few years later the two banks merged to become Summit Bank. The IT department from the other bank did not have your dad’s work ethic. He worked hard to bring everything up to speed. A few years after that, Summit Bank merged into NBD Bank. That was a problem because of NBD’s bureaucracy. Eventually, NBD let all of the Summit Bank back office people go, since they had their own centralized back office at their headquarters.
That is how George ended up at SuperValue’s IT department. George worked very hard to keep everything caught up. I do not see a George Das that was retired. What would that be like? I do not think he had it in him to go back to being the mischievous kid who slept in.
Good bye George. Thanks for being a good friend.