Vernon James Irving of Forest Hill, Maryland, a lifelong elevator man, engineer and U.S. Air Force veteran, passed away at age 65 in November with his beloved wife by his side. With a master's degree in electrical engineering, Irving began his vertical-transportation (VT) career at General/Dover/ThyssenKrupp in 1983. After 20 years, he joined the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority as chief engineer of the Elevator and Escalator division. His entrepreneurial drive ultimately inspired him to launch his own business, Admiral Elevator Co., in 2000. Under his leadership, Admiral grew to become one of the largest independent VT firms on the East Coast. Irving also designed and developed the software package for a fire-service elevator programmable logic controller used in foreign equipment, and authored The Next Generation of Elevator Control Systems in 1994 — a work that influenced the evolution of future elevator controller designs.