Theodore Howes, 69, Was Engineer in Space Program

Theodore C. (Ted) Howes Jr., 69, who worked for many years as an engineer in the U.S. space program at Cape Canaveral, died on Jan. 2 at Harborside Healthcare in Falmouth of complications from a stroke. He was a resident of West Tisbury.

Born in 1936, Ted was the youngest of six children of Theodore (Finny) Howes and Nell (Conklin) Howes. The family lived on Skiff avenue in Vineyard Haven. As a teenager, Ted worked as a carpenter for Tom Waldron and prepared lobsters at the Home Port Restaurant in Chilmark.

A member of the Class of 1955 at Tisbury High School, Ted was graduated from Carson Long Military Institute in Pennsylvania before attending Worcester Junior College. After a hitch in the Army, where he specialized in handling explosives, he went to work for General Electric, eventually earning a degree in aerospace engineering from California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo.

Ted worked as a project engineer for the aerospace division of General Electric (GE), later bought out by Lockheed-Martin, first matching military satellite nosecones manufactured by GE to booster rockets built by other companies, and later on the space shuttle program. He was the author of technical manuals used by space-launch technicians. Ted was proud of his work on secret national defense programs and of his close connection with astronauts and NASA scientists and engineers.

Ted and his wife, Ann, and their children, Ted and Suzanne, lived in King of Prussia, Pa., where GE's space program was headquartered, but satellite and shuttle launches took him for weeks at a time to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

In 2004 Ted and Ann moved back to the Island where Ted was born, rebuilding Ann's family house off Music street, in which they had vacationed during most of the 47 years of their marriage.

Ted was an ardent fisherman from the time he was a small child, when he began fishing in the Lagoon near the little shack at the foot of Skiff avenue. He may be best remembered by the children in his extended family as the man who could always be counted on to take them fishing. Family albums are full of smiling youngsters posing with bluefish or stripers caught on expeditions with Ted. Whenever Ted was on the Island, friends and neighbors could count on his giving them a fillet or two from time to time; ironically he did not himself care for fish on a plate.

One of Ted's fondest memories, a story he loved to tell, was of the striper that almost won the Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby in 1960. Ted caught the fish at Menemsha too late to get to the evening weigh-in, and so he and Ann kept the huge fish wet in a bathtub overnight in hopes that it wouldn't dry out and lose weight. But at the morning weigh-in, it was a couple of ounces lighter than the one that won the derby. Although he was proud of his second-place finish, he was always sure his fish would have won if he had been able to weigh it in right away. His love of fishing continues in his son and granddaughter, who fish every derby.

In addition to his wife, Ted his survived by his son and daughter in law, Ted and Sarah Howes of Aquinnah, and by his daughter and granddaughter, Suzanne Howes and Leah Pachico, of West Tisbury. He is also survived by his brother, Richard, and by his sisters, Martha Doane, Dora Edwards and Mary Bourgault. He was predeceased by his brother, Robert.

Ted will also be missed by the cousins who knew him as Uncle Ted, many of whom he taught to fish: Ray, Dave and Ben Cabot; Sam, CJ and Davey Millett; Eric Boass and Heidi Marquedant; and Karen Marinelli and Lynn Marquedant - as well as by their parents and children.

There will be a celebration of Ted's life at the Howes House in West Tisbury on Jan. 21 from 2 to 4 pm. Ted was a great-nephew of Joe Howes, "the seer of West Tisbury," who lived in the building and for whom it is named.