“Professor Juan E. Reyna, 102, former professor of agricultural engineering at Cornell University, died Monday, Oct. 7, 1974, in Lakeside Nursing Home.
Born in Mexico, son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Crescencio Reyna of San Juan Plantation, Morelos, he studied in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Las Vegas, N.M., and Denver, Colo., and entered Cornell University in 1894. While a student here, he married the former Della Larkin of Ithaca. After three years at Cornell, he went to Columbia to study mining engineering, and after the death of his father, he returned to Cornell and received a degree in electrical engineering. After a period of work in new York City he returned to Mexico, where he and his brothers operated the family plantation of 15,000 acres.
In 1910 Mr. Reyna and his wife returned to Ithaca to visit her family, and because of the Mexican Civil War, which broke out while they were in Ithaca, they were unable to return.
In 1912 he joined the faculty of Cornell as instructor in mechanical drawing. He became a naturalized citizen, and in 1919 he moved to the Department of Agricultural Engineering, with the addition of a special course in drawing for students of hotel administration.
He also began a course of design in farm buildings.
He retired from Cornell in 1946, but was called back for an additional year, finally retiring in 1947.
Professor Reyna played squash into his 80th year, and also tennis, a sport he learned in his 40s. After age 80, he switched to an indoor tennis-like game. His other special interests were Aztec archeology and ethnology. During World War II he worked with the U.S. Government in Washington, D.C.
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“J. Reyna, CU Prof, Dies, 102,” Ithaca Journal, October 8, 1974, 4.