Attempting to balance a checkbook or a business ledger could send some screaming from the room, but not Bill Kirchner.
Math came so naturally to the engineer, he didn’t use a calculator when he balanced the books of Now & Again, the Buckhead antique consignment shop he owned with this wife.
He did it all in his head or using pencil and paper said Sarah Midas, one of his twin daughters.
"Very old school, and he always got it right, balanced every time," said his other daughter Joan Kirchner.
William Joseph Kirchner, of Atlanta, called Bill by most who knew him, died Sept. 14 of complications associated with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 84. His body was cremated. A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Friday at Our Lady of the Assumption, 1350 Hearst Dr., Atlanta. SouthCare Cremation Society and Memorial Centers of Alpharetta is in charge of arrangements.
Mr. Kirchner was a native of Detroit and served in the U.S. Navy. He graduated from Georgetown University with an engineering degree and spent time building homes in Detroit and on Hilton Head Island, before moving to Atlanta.
An “extremely patient man,” is how Lynda Bisher, a friend of more than 30 years, described Mr. Kirchner.
“I do stress that he was patient,” she said, with a laugh. “And you’d have to know Mary to really understand.”
Mary Kirchner, his wife of almost 54 years, said her husband was supportive of her business notions, no matter how far fetched.
“I know he thought I was nuts,” she said of wanting to open the consignment shop in Buckhead. “He was not thrilled… and after being married so many years, he’d just look at me and smile.”
At the store, Mr. Kirchner was a behind-the-scenes kind of man, Joan Kirchner said. He made sure things were in order, from payroll to the art on the walls.
“Every picture in the place was as level as the day is long,” Ms. Kirchner said of her father. “He could hang pictures like nobody’s business.”
Ms. Kirchner said he dad grew into loving antiques, but his passions in life remained engineering and math.
“He never went anywhere without a measuring tape in his pocket,” she said. “Everything was about measuring, math, order, logic and organization.”
In a eulogy she wrote, Ms. Kirchner said, engineering gave her father “the logical, orderly, organized life he craved.”
“Every morning at the breakfast table, he used a measuring cup to pour exactly one cup of skim milk on top of exactly one cup of Grape Nuts” she wrote. “We gave up doing the dishes because every time we would load the dishwasher, dad would quietly come behind us and reload it in a configuration that he claimed would get the dishes just a little bit cleaner.”
“In his heart of hearts, my dad was an engineer,” she said.
Mr. Kirchner is also survived by five grandchildren.
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