More than 150 colleagues, friends and family members alternated between tears and laughter at a memorial service for ISU professor Daniel Zaffarano on Sunday. A dozen speakers told stories of his quirks and accomplishments.

Although each speaker knew a different aspect of Zaffarano — colleague, professor, father and music lover — he was universally described as a patient and hard-working man with a good sense of humor.

Zaffarano, retired chairman of the physics department, dean of the graduate college and vice president for research, died last month of complications from pneumonia at age 86.

“Dan set the framework for the current, very successful physics department,” said Clayton Swenson, distinguished professor emeritus of physics and astronomy.

Zaffarano was appointed chairman of the physics department and director of the Ames Lab in 1961. He greatly expanded the program by hiring many new faculty members and arranging for a new physics building, he said.

Swenson said he recalled the contractor for the new physics building refused to paint the freight elevator doors. Zaffarano responded by holding a mural contest that he called PTDFED, or “paint those damn freight elevator doors.”

Out of 85 contest entries, the winning mural was painted on the doors.

“Dan was a very fervent worker,” said James Bloedel, vice provost for research administration. “He inspired many people, he accomplished many things.”

He said one day, Zaffarano had been sitting at his desk when the ceiling above his desk began to disintegrate. Unfazed, Zaffarano went and found an old hard hat that had been left in the building.

“He put this hard hat on, and sat at his desk for the remainder of the day,” Bloedel said.

Mark Fleming, a friend and former student of Zaffarano, said when he first visited Iowa State as a high school senior, Zaffarano, who he did not know at the time, spent an afternoon giving him a campus tour. He said he stood in Zaffarano’s office later that afternoon and saw memos on a bulletin board with the typos circled.

“This was someone who had a fairly expansive view of what education really meant,” Fleming said.

All six of Zaffarano’s children spoke at the memorial. All recalled his love of gardening and playing the piano. Half of the classical musicians who visited Ames seemed to end up at Zaffarano house, Elisa Zaffarano said.

She said her father spent hours at a time trying to teach her to play the piano, and the family frequently sang while he played.

“He could have been a concert pianist,” she said.

Donald Beitz, distinguished professor of biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology, said Zaffarano created the Zaffarano Award, which is given to graduate students for research.

Zaffarano encouraged researchers to keep in mind the relevance of their research to society, Beitz said.