Horace Lee Zorn

Horace Lee Zorn died in Cleveland on August 24, 2026. He was 85. Born in Cleveland on June 7, 1941, into a German-American household that treated work as a language. He learned early that a day is something you finish, not something you wait for. He spent decades walking catwalks above furnaces that made their own weather. When a line went dark he arrived without drama, tracing fault to fuse. Colleagues still mention a spare fuse drawer labeled in pencil. He married Ruth in 1964. They kept a house that stayed modest when the neighborhood did not. They raised three children through public schools and ordinary weather. After Ruth died in 2019, he kept the routines that still made sense: the walk, the garden, the Sunday call. Neighbors remember a rake leaned against a shared fence after a storm. He liked early mornings before the heat or the noise. He died in Cleveland, among streets he never needed to explain. The radio is still tuned to the station that played while work got done.