A man for all seasons with a lion’s heart of gold

Happy 90th birthday to my father Professor Vaclav Konecny. You have always been an inspiration to me. You’re a man for all seasons, all the time. If Ferris State University had the title Person of the Year, you would have received it every year because you are the dad of a century. Thank you for your kindness and leadership from the heart.

A true Leo, living up to his Zodiac sign, Dad is creative, courteous, funny, and passionate about everything he does, even if he has to fix the toilet. He does it to perfection. He has a heart of gold, as he seeks constantly to solve challenging problems surrounding him. And then he creates his own mathematical solutions.

Dad even figured out when he was going to die before he turned 90 because all of his siblings died in years ending with a nine, but God tricked him and let him live to celebrate 90 trips around the sun on this beautiful summer day in Michigan.

“Dad it’s so good to hear your voice,” I said this morning when I called him.

“I’d be happier if you couldn’t,” he said getting ready to drive to Cadillac to celebrate with Mom and Vas.

Driving has always been one of his hobbies, as he drove 1,500 miles to Florida in 2023 for one last time, always testing his skills.

Regularly, he published solved and unsolved math problems in Crux Mathematicorum and Math Horizons, past his retirement from Ferris State University in 2001.

Problem X-23 (Con(fluent) Ways of Hexpansion). Figure 45 shows two different ways of expanding an acute triangle ABC to a hexagon: either by extending each leg at each vertex by the length of the other leg at that vertex, or extending each leg at each vertex by the length of the opposite side. Show that the areas of the two hexagons so produced are equal.

The American Mathematical Society is publishing the book, tentatively entitled Celebrating Play(ground): 31 Years of Math Horizons Problems and the People Behind Them, edited by Alissa S. Crans and Glen T. Whitney.

At 90, Professor Konecny will be featured in this book in August. Stay tuned for more information.

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