Joe & Alyce McPartland, their sons, and several of their St. Bernards, just for good measure.

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Obituary: The Legendary Joe McPartland

Sept. 4, 2020

In remembrance of one of the electrical industry's true innovators

You meet all sorts of interesting people in the electrical industry, but if you ever met Joe McPartland, you never forgot him. Joe was the former editorial director of Electrical Construction & Maintenance (EC&M) and Electrical Wholesaling magazines, and the nation’s leading expert on the National Electrical Code (NEC) for several decades.

Joe passed away on March 23 of this year at the age of 93 after a long and extraordinarily interesting life. Tom Henry, one of Joe McPartland’s National Electrical Code students forwarded Joe’s obituary to us recently. We regret not hearing about his passing sooner.

The books Joe wrote on the NEC and his publishing with career with EC&M at McGraw-Hill and eventually his own magazine, Electrical Design & Installation, are really only part of Joe’s story, which you can read about in full detail in his obituary in the Bergen Record/News Herald.

You don’t meet many people who sang opera, but also released six albums of Irish, Scottish and spiritual songs. And any football fan would be thrilled to meet someone coached by Vince Lombardi, but Joe is the only guy you will ever meet who had Lombardi as a coach in high school, and then again for the Army football team at West Point – after serving in the U.S. Navy and Marines. And as you can see in the photo above (which shows Joe and Alyce McPartland, their sons, and several of their St. Bernards, just for good measure), how many people do you know who raised nine sons — and St. Bernards? Just to keep things interesting, Joe was also a master storyteller, wine expert and blessed with a heavy dose of Irish charisma that charged up any social occasion.

I was lucky enough to have an office next to Joe for a few years on the 36th floor of the McGraw-Hill Building in New York, back when EW and EC&M were owned by McGraw-Hill, and I always treasured the opportunities I had to tap into his vast electrical knowledge, hear a few of his electrical industry stories, chat with one of his sons when they stopped by his office, or hear him sing at one of office holiday parties.

The staffs of EC&M and Electrical Wholesaling offer our belated condolences to the whole McPartland clan.

About the Author

Jim Lucy | Editor-in-Chief, Electrical Wholesaling & Electrical Marketing

Over the past 40-plus years, hundreds of Jim’s articles have been published in Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and Electrical Construction & Maintenance magazine on topics such as electric vehicles, solar and wind development, energy-efficient lighting and local market economics. In addition to his published work, Jim regularly gives presentations on these topics to C-suite executives, industry groups and investment analysts.

He launched a new subscription-based data product for Electrical Marketing that offers electrical sales potential estimates and related market data for more than 300 metropolitan areas. In 1999, he published his first book, “The Electrical Marketer’s Survival Guide” for electrical industry executives looking for an overview of key market trends.

While managing Electrical Wholesaling’s editorial operations, Jim and the publication’s staff won several Jesse H. Neal awards for editorial excellence, the highest honor in the business press, and numerous national and regional awards from the American Society of Business Press Editors. He has a master’s degree in communications and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, N.J. (now Rowan University) and studied electrical design at New York University and graphic design at the School for Visual Arts.