Glendon P. Marston, a loving husband and father, an engineer, and a 50-year resident of Manchester-by-the-Sea, passed away November 14, 2021, at NCH North Naples Hospital in Florida. He was 79.
Throughout his life, Glen used his extraordinary abilities as an engineer and mathematician to do good for others through pioneering research that helped bring the power of computers out of laboratories and academia into homes around the globe.
Glen Marston was born April 15, 1942 in Vancouver, British Columbia, the second born by his father, Ernest William Marston and his mother, Winnifred Murray Geddes.
He lost his father at a very young age. His mother, determined to care for the family, worked full-time at a department store in Vancouver in order to make ends meet.
Young Glen developed an early love of science and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering at the University of British Columbia in 1965 and 1967 respectively — an education made possible through full scholarships that spoke to his deep intelligence and work ethic. One memorable summer in 1964, he worked in Ottawa launching rockets with the Canadian space program.
Ever a gentleman, Glen wrote a letter in 1962 asking his lifelong best friend, Dale March, if he would mind if Glen dated Dale’s younger sister, Sandra, while Dale was working in another location. Dale said yes, and when he met his soon-to-be wife, Deanna, shortly thereafter, the four of them double dated. Glen and Sandra, an obstetrical nurse, wed on March 18, 1967.
Glen’s educational and professional horizons expanded, changing the course of his life, with his acceptance to the Ph.D. program in electrical and electronics engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the couple’s subsequent emigration to the United States. His doctoral dissertation focused on optical character recognition, a pioneering technology in 1972 which paved the way for reading machines and capabilities in today’s smartphones.
At first, the couple — who welcomed twins in 1969 — lived in MIT housing in Cambridge. They then built a home on Woodcrest Road in Manchester-by-the-Sea, settling in and welcoming another son in 1973.
After earning his doctorate, Glen rose to vice president of engineering at Computek, Inc. in Burlington, Massachusetts, a manufacturer of computer display terminals. He later served as chief operating officer of ADE Corp. in Newton, Massachusetts. During his tenure, the company made groundbreaking advances in the semiconductor field. In 1980, Glen formed his own high-tech consulting company, Marston Associates, which specialized in high-precision measuring equipment and counted Pfizer, Honeywell, and the United States Navy among its clients.
Glen became a U.S. citizen in the 1980s. In Manchester, he gave back to the community by serving as treasurer for the Boy Scouts Troop 3. For over twenty years, Glen and wife Sandy had split their time between Manchester and Naples, FL, where they developed a large group of friends.
Glen lost his beloved wife to cancer in 2015. As a widower, Glen continued to spend part of the year in Manchester to be close to his children and grandchildren. In Naples, until the end of his life, he continued to use his mathematical and organizational talents to help others, including being re-elected for over ten years as treasurer of the Vanderbilt Towers of Naples Condominium Association.
