Gerald "Jerry" James Alred

February 24, 1943 - June 1, 2021

Gerald James “Jerry” Alred, age 78 of Johnson City, Tennessee, passed away on Tuesday, June 1, 2021. He was a native of Dayton, Ohio, where he graduated from Patterson Cooperative High School and taught at Sinclair Community College. He completed his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Dayton and Miami University of Ohio. In 2010 he established the Inland Children’s Chorus Collection at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. He developed the website InlandChorus.com to collect and preserve the history and music of the Chorus of which he was a proud member from 1951 to 1959. Gerald was Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he was a full-time faculty member for thirty-five years and a teaching award recipient. He advised many graduate students, directed several doctoral dissertations, and reached the rank of full professor in the Department of English. He is internationally known as author of numerous scholarly articles, several standard bibliographies, and many editions of the leading handbooks on business and technical writing used in colleges throughout the United States and abroad. He was Associate Editor of the Journal of Business Communications and a long-time member of several professional societies. Gerald “Jerry” Alred was a recipient of the Jay R. Gould Award from the Society for Technical Communications for “profound scholarly and textbook contributions to the teaching of business and technical writing.” He was invited three times as guest professor at Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany. He co-founded an institutional partnership between the University of Applied Sciences and Arts at Hannover, Germany and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. As he stated in the prefaces of his books, he owed everything to his beloved wife Janice Alred for “her many hours of help in coordination and for continuing to hold everything together.” He was preceded in death by his mother, Leona (Evans) Alred; father, Edgar James Alred; sister-in-law Carol Moody and nephew Ty Coleman. He is survived by his wife, Janice Alred; daughters Jeanette Alred and Elaine Alred; granddaughters Brianna (Ken) Barrett, Michelle Cecil, and Kimberly (Tyler) Martin; great grandchildren Ayeden Roswell and Serena James Martin; brother Fred (Geneva) Moore; sister-in-law Sue (Phil) Moody Matthews and brother-in-law Richard (Vickie) Moody and nephew Noah. The family will receive friends on Saturday, July 31, 2021 from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. at the Kindred Funeral Home (400 Union Blvd., Englewood). Interment will follow at 10:45 a.m. at Fairview Cemetery in Englewood. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to The InlandChorus.com Trust at the Bank of Tennessee. The Kindred Funeral Home, Englewood is handling arrangements. Online condolences may be made to the family at www.KindredFuneralHome.com