Here are more hugs, Lynne, and my memory of  meeting Joel, if only once. But I got to know him through you over the years, and through messages on greeting cards and photos. I'll be thinking of you.. And Joel. Love, Michele

Waaaaay back in the early 90s, Dr. Trussell was my graduate advisor.  So when I came into town this week (June), I wanted to reach out to see if he wanted to meet.  Learning he has gone forth.

Thank you Dr. Trussell for having the most impact on my life and career.  From the Master's Thesis to getting me to my first job; it really put me on a strong path and life of innovation.  

As was the early 90s, l don't have a picture of us together.  Attached is a picture that I took yesterday of me standing outside of Daniel Hall pointing to where our offices used to be. Wanted to surprise you as the "long lost Paul Chen" from California...

Much love, Many Thanks, and Forever Your Student

Lynne's words (1) 

Good morning, everyone.  Thank you for coming today to join in this celebration of Joel’s life.  He was many things to many people.  He loved our families, especially our sons and granddaughters.  He saw Gwen and Maecy as his next generation of students and loved to engage them with puzzles and science experiments.
Joel believed in life-long learning and was curious about almost everything.  He read voraciously, mostly non-fiction, and enjoyed listening to audio books on his daily walks.  
He was a good friend and kept his friends over many years and many miles.  We are still in touch with people in England and Scotland whom he met when on sabbatical in Edinburgh in 1978.  
Joel believed in keeping his body, as well as his mind, in good shape.  He had played football in high school and club tennis in Raleigh for many years, and exercised and walked every Monday through Friday until his last days.  He loved hiking in the mountains and had completed several of the Colorado “14ers” (peaks above 14,000 feet) with my niece’s husband.
He also had an artistic side.  Joel went through an air brushing phase, and gifted many friends with t-shirts and sweatshirts of his own designs.
Joel and I met the old-fashioned way – I answered his personal ad in Raleigh’s “Indy” newspaper.  He described himself as a “Divorced White Male, fit, 50+, professor.  
Enjoys teaching, research, laughing, hiking, 
mountains, movies, NPR/PBS, microbrews, 
travel, conversation.”  
I wondered what microbrews were, but the rest sounded good.

Lynne (2)

On one of our first dates, he introduced me to Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, which tasted nothing like the one beer I had ever had, the obligatory Foster’s poolside on a trip to Australia several years earlier.  
We took a bottle of that Black Chocolate Stout on our honeymoon rafting trip on the Colorado River and shared it on our one-week anniversary at the base of the Grand Canyon.
Joel was generous in many ways.  He was a blood donor, and over the years he donated 80 units of blood, which is about 10 gallons.  He was an organ donor as well.
Joel was a professor at NC State for nearly 40 years.  His Ph.D. students became lifelong friends.  He was still collaborating with one of them, who will speak today as well.  A math textbook that he wrote with one of his colleagues is still being used at NC State in Raleigh and at UNC-Charlotte.
Although he was retired, Joel was not forgotten.  A few days after his death, he received an invitation to be an Invited Speaker at the upcoming Global Conference on Energy, Power, and Electrical Engineering, which is scheduled to take place later this year in Paris.
Joel had started his career in signal processing and eventually moved to image processing.  When he retired, we joined the Chapel Hill Camera Club.  He spent many happy hours in these past few years processing his own images! 
If you are surprised to see me here in blue jeans, that was our “uniform,” worn except for mandatory occasions, such as teaching his classes.  We were married in blue jeans, in Umstead Park.  The invitations read “Denim Attire Preferred.”  Some of you may remember the minister who married us, Julie Denny-Hughes, who wore a denim jumper for the occasion.

Lynne (3)

Our marriage was a happy one.  Joel was very loving and showed his appreciation in many ways.  He once designed a crossword puzzle around clues about me.  We exchanged many notes and cards, sent “just because.”  I found a file in his desk that held what looked like every card I had ever sent to him.  
We both loved to travel.  We had two “family” trips a year, one at Thanksgiving to Atlanta, visiting his family as well as his Grady High School (Class of 63) classmates. The second trip was to the Denver area, to visit my brother and his wife, and my niece and her family.  
In addition, we had many trips to conferences and sabbaticals around the world.  The last few years we started using Road Scholar for our trips, another aspect of “lifelong learning”!  As soon as our itineraries were set, Joel started researching breweries and brewpubs in our destinations!  He always wanted to talk directly to the brewers, to discuss with them their methods and recipes!  One brewer in Ireland clearly thought we were industrial spies because of the many questions Joel asked. 
Finally, in many ways our marriage was one of opposites attracting.  
First, Atlanta versus Boston. Joel used to joke that he had to get special permission to marry a Yankee.  
Electrical Engineering versus English Literature.  
Mountains versus the beach.   
Non-fiction versus fiction.  
Beer versus diet soda. 
“Look before you leap!” versus “Let’s do it now!”  But somehow it worked and we had many happy years together.  
I will love him and miss him forever.

Dear Joel,
We are shocked and deeply saddened by your unexpected passing. Your presence touched so many lives, and we know that your memory will endure in the hearts of all who knew you.
Joel and I began collaborating on color image processing back in 1998 when I was working at HP, and he was visiting us for the summer. Our professional paths often crossed, given that we were both in academia and he was my wife's MS advisor at NCSU. This led to many enriching conversations whenever we had the chance to see each other.
My wife often reminisces about Joel’s commitment to working out at the gym, bright and early, waiting for it to open and always ready to start his day with vigor. He was roaming the peaks of mountains in New Zealand just a few years back. That is why, despite the difference in our ages, I often thought he was healthier and certainly more athletic than me. His sudden passing is a stark reminder of the fragility of life.
Over the years, Joel's interests grew as did mine, and our discussions expanded beyond our field. We talked about education, politics, history, and culture. Joel deeply cared about the state of society and the direction our country was heading. We shared a love for good books and exchanged many titles over the years. His intellectual curiosity and passion for learning were truly inspiring.
Joel was one of the few people who consistently corresponded with us, always checking in, especially when we went through difficult times in our lives. His thoughtfulness and concern were a great comfort during those challenging times. He was a mentor, colleague, and a loyal friend.
Joel and Lynne always made an effort to visit us whenever they were in town. We will miss our traditional breakfasts together during the Thanksgiving holidays. 
His wisdom, intellect, and purposeful approach to life have left an indelible mark on my family’s life and the lives of many others.
Joel, we will miss you deeply.
Rest in peace, our friend.

Very sorry to hear about Joel. After memory flashes of the first time I met him in ’79 and the last time I saw him in ’22, (and he looking not that much different) my thoughts gravitated to the famous poem routinely studied in high school in the US called “To an Athlete Dying Young”. …Partially from comments about Joel’s lifelong athleticism, and partially due to something else in the poem I couldn’t place my finger on. So, after I revisited it, I saw that the overall theme of the poem did fit the part of Joel’s life that I know.  The poem is about someone dying at their peak in life, which for an athlete is of course the younger years. Then the poem contrasts such a person against a once-famous athlete living into their later years and falling into obscurity, so that ‘the name died before the man’ . In addition to staying close to his physical peak into his 70s, Joel kept active in the scientific field he had contributed so much toward, so that his name had stayed alive and continues to do so. In this sense, Joel indeed died young.

When I became Joel’s second Ph.D. student, many of my fellow Taiwanese students warned me that I was looking for trouble as Joel was known for his demands for quality work in course projects. The comments did not deter me at all since I was someone shared the same value. Under Joel's close guidence, I finished my Ph.D. program quickly and published five IEEE Transaction papers from my thesis which was exceptional then and still remains that way now.

A few years after I join the Data Communications Research Department at Bell Laboratories, Joel’s first Ph.D. student, Reha Civanlar, also came to New Jersey and joined the Bell Laboratories to perform research on image processing. One year, Joel attended a conference held in the New York city. Rehar arranged a special event for Joel. We toured the city and went to a specialty beer house where beers from all over the world were served. Beers from Turky and Taiwan were among many we enjoyed. In the end of the gathering, Joel handed me two backpacks filled with outgrown clothes belonged to Robbie and Mike. After I graduated for many years, Joel still cared about me and my family. I was so moved then and still am.

Joel is not only a good teacher to me; he is like a father to me. I will remember his kindness forever.

Lynne and I have been friends for over 50 years, so of course I knew about Joel from the very beginning, and got to meet him early on in their relationship. I was living in England when they got married, but I came back to the states for the wedding ceremony. 
    I loved watching their relationship grow, and I was always impressed with Joel‘s loving and caring treatment of Lynne.  Others on these pages have said I too was in some of Joel‘s intelligence. Not a whole lot of people have PhD, and in such a difficult field. I think the fact that so many of his former students stayed in touch with him over the years, speaks, louder than words to the education he provided them and the relationships he developed with them.
    The world has a good man. Lynne, my deepest sympathies, love, Dawn.

We much enjoyed our times chatting with Joel over a beer at Ridgewood.  He was brilliant and fun to interact with, his conversation always so interesting and engaging.  May he  rest in peace.  With affection and gratitude  for the gift  of having crossed paths, Sophie Kathariou and Roger Thompson

So sorry for your loss.  I was fortunate to be a graduate student in one of his courses.  He was an excellent teacher.  I then had the opportunity to work with him when I semi-retired to teach.  He always had a smile and a good sense of humor.  I will miss him.
Best regards, Greg Bottomley

Dear Lynn,

I am so sorry that I will not be able to come to the celebration of Joel's life next Saturday, as my wife and I will be out of the country celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary.  But I wanted you to know that he was one of my favorite people in the ECE department.  Our research areas were very different, and we only interacted when I served on committees that he chaired.  But I was so thankful for his service as our Director of Graduate Programs and as editor of the prestigious journal Proceedings of the IEEE.  The fact that he took time to offer me encouragement as a young assistant professor was very special.  As another Durham resident, I had always hoped that I would get to relax and share beer with him at a festival.  I join the large group that will miss him.  I pray that the celebration is well-attended and that you and your sons feel that he is honored in the way that he deserves.

Sincerely, 

W. Rhett Davis
Professor of ECE

Joel,

I will miss you!  It has been very enjoyable to get to know you over the last 5 years and I always looked forward to catching up with you either at dinner with Lynne or with just the two of us at our local pubs that we explored together.
I appreciated your friendship and wisdom and will certainly miss our visits!
Ed

Joel is a high school classmate of my wife and myself. We saw Joel at many of the early class reunions and always enjoyed his company and his interesting views on life.
About 30 years ago, Joel began visiting us and having dinner the Friday after Thanksgiving when he came to Atlanta to visit with his sister and other friends.  He began bringing Lynne and the four of us would catch up with the events in our lives and break bread. We always looked forward to the time spent with both of them. They were a good match and their marriage gave them both things they had been missing.
Thanksgiving weekend will seem very empty now since Lynne and Joel won't be here to swap stories. We won't hear Joel's stories of finding the perfect craft beer and the seminars they attended in many distant lands where Joel was often a key speaker. 
You are missed very much my friend.
Rest easy.
Dorothy Fierman Carrillo and Tom Dell, Henry Grady High School, Class of 1963

Joel, Jin-Der's father and Jin-Der in Joel's office

Joel and Jin-Der in front of the NC State Electrical Engineering building after graduation commencement ceremony

When I arrived at NC State, Joel was looking for a second Ph.D. student. Joel had interview questions to identify a student’s potential. One of them was “What are the ingredients for brewing beer?” I was a poor student with a wife and two young kids. The monthly $500 Teaching Assistantship stipend was not enough to support a family, much less cover the tuition.  Beer was a luxury I couldn’t have afforded and had no idea what makes a bottle of good beer. The best answer I could come up with was “Beer is beer.” I’m certain that answer did not impress Joel, but it has been a source of laughter for us since then.
One day he asked me to visit his office and offered me a Research Assistantship and the position as his second Ph.D. student. Joel told me that I had pointed out mistakes he wrote on the black board and that had impressed him. The story goes that Joel would purposely make mistakes and watch to see which of his students would pick up on them. The Research Assistantship stipend was $700 a month and my tuition also covered. Without that financial help, I wouldn’t have been able to continue my Ph.D. Program. Joel’s decision turned my life around.
On the day I passed my Ph.D. examination, Joel told me he had enjoyed working with me because I always came up with ideas and then for the most part, would come back the next day informing him I could prove mathematically I had been wrong. Joel said he appreciated that interaction.
After graduation in 1985, I got an offer from the Data Communication Research Department at Bell Laboratories. In 1993, Joel called me to see if I would consider returning to NC State to teach. But I was eager for the challenge of management opportunities in the business world. So, I refused. However, I have always wondered what ideas could have been sparked by working again closely with Joel, combining Image processing and Data communication experiences.
Joel, I have treasured my journey with you and will keep it in my memory forever.

We met Joel in the 1970s in Los Alamos, New Mexico.  He always had a positive attitude and never said a bad word about anybody.  We hiked some in the Jemez Mountains and hiked some in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  We met Lynne and Joel near Asheville, North Carolina while we were driving across the country to visit some relatives in Tennessee and Virginia.  We had a very pleasant visit.  The most recent visit with Joel, a few years ago, when Joel attended a conference in Austin, Texas.  We picked him up at his hotel and we drove to the "Line Camp" barbeque restaurant.  Our daughter, Terrie and her husband, met us at the restaurant and we had an enjoyable evening.
I am sorry that Joel passed away and we have the deepest sympathies to you and your family.

I met Joel shortly after he and Lynne started dating.  Being an Iowa farm girl, I of course was intimidated by his education and intelligence.  He was so genuine,  showing a real interest in me, immediately I felt at ease.  During his first sabbatical to Cambridge I visited them.  Joel invited me to share dinner at the high table .  What an incredible experience it was.  I felt as though I was dining at Hogwarts.  On the second sabbatical, Phil & I visited.  As Brit born, Phil and he shared lots of stories and love of beer.   We will miss Joel, his brilliant mind, good heart and the twinkle in his eyes when he spoke of Lynne.  Rest in peace dear man.

We have known Joel Trussell for over 40 years.  The first introduction to Joel was via Indian Guides and his younger son, Michael/Mike (age 7).  It did not take long for our two families to become friends.  Over the years, life delivered both ups and downs.  Joel was a constant, a solid friend.  He had the unique ability to home in on your interests and not forget them.  Joel always asked about what you were doing and gifted items relating to your interests.  Joel cared and you knew it.
Many knew Joel through his distinguished career as the consummate electrical engineer professor.  He authored books and countless professional articles. Joel has many appreciative grad students scattered around the globe.  We were fortunate to see a different side of Joel, a personal side.  Joel was sincerely kind and considerate . . . and he gave the best hugs to me (Janet)!
We join others in the honest statement:  Joel will be missed. Rest in peace, our friend; we love you.
					Bill and Janet Jester

I first met Joel a long time ago at a conference at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. These were the early days of pattern recognition. As I recall, Joel had just published a new pattern recognition technique and demonstrated the technique by reading obscured automobile license plates when they could not be read with the naked eye. He had identified a license plate of a law breaker speeding away  from a crime. In addition to this breakthrough, Joel could also recite, from memory, poems written by Robert W Service, especially “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and the “Shooting of Dan McGrew.” We recognized that a man with this kind of talent would make a great professor. We were right. It was a pleasure working with and being with Joel these many years.

It was 1969 when I was a stranger in a strange land that I first met Joel. Hitch hiking my way across a vast and unfamiliar landscape he offered me a ride back to Santa Fe when the rodeo we had separately been attending came to a close. We visited the ancient cave dwellings together and went to see the Pueblo at Taos before I continued on my odyssey.

We swapped addresses and for the next 55 years we wrote, swapped photographs, sent voice cassettes, books, beer mats and visited and generally kept in touch. We followed the highs and lows of each other’s lives through marriages, children, career and house changes, things which seemed to run in parallel. We gave each other a way of seeing the wider world from two different cultures. 

We travelled together from Bob Dylan to Taylor Swift, from the Kennedys to Trump, from Vietnam too Gaza, from floppy discs to micro chips, from SCART cables to wireless connections and he told me all about ‘Discrete Fourier transform evolution using matrices’ along the way and I never knew why.

Joel was always curious about life and the world and we learnt a lot from each other. We always had to go on a pub crawl when he came to the UK. It staggers me to reflect on how much our worlds evolved over those 55 years.

Now my friend is gone and there is no one to ask me why the British behave so oddly, no one to explain what the Super Bowl is all about (and why) and no one to recommend obscure Belgian beers. There is a hole that can’t be filled. I’ll miss you old friend until it’s my time to go. 

God’s speed old buddy, I hope you’ve landed somewhere interesting where there are mountains to climb and trails to wander.

I am Joel’s first Ph.D. student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of NCSU. Our lineage goes all the way back to Euler who was a real genius deeply respected by both of us (see and follow the links at: https://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=85528). Joel was the one who thought me how to conduct research, explore topics deeply, and write useful academic papers. Together we wrote several high impact articles that are still being cited by thousands after more than forty years. We won a best paper award during my Ph.D. After my graduation, I had the opportunity to work with several people leading various areas of technology in Bell Lab,  other research organizations and universities. They all had a God-given sparkle for innovation. Joel is one of those who had that sparkle. He had a brilliant mind and a knack for explaining complexities with ease.

Joel and I have started a close friendship during my grad work which continued since then. He became a friend of my family, he was a Ph.D. committee member for my wife, he and his boys spent time helping to educate my son, his wife Lynne became a good friend of my wife. He was instrumental in making myself and my family U.S. Citizens. 

Joel and I shared an understanding and appreciation of good beer.  He taught me how to home brew when I was a poor graduate student. I love beer to this date because of him. I will really miss getting together with him over a couple of good brews and chat about life and technology.

The last time we got together was when he visited Özyeğin University in İstanbul as a visiting professor where I was a Vice President. While I am still extremely sad about his unexpected passing, it give me some consolation to think that he will be at a place where he will be able to find answers to his infinite number of questions, and have a peaceful afterlife.

Prof. Dr. Mehmet Reha Civanlar

Joel was a wonderful man and a great photographer. He was always emailing  photos from birthday parties and was very proud of them. 

Adelyn said she will miss him and remembers him always giving her a joyful pat on the head when she saw him. 

He will be missed but remembered always.

OBITUARY

Joel Trussell

February 3, 1945 – April 9, 2024

Mitchell Funeral Home at Raleigh Memorial Park

Show your support

Add a Memory

Share Obituary

Get Reminders

Past Services

Celebration of Life