Arden B. Henry

Arden Burdick Henry, 87, died Dec. 20, 2024, after a brief illness in Rio Rancho, N.M. His family was with him at the time.

He and his twin sister, Ardena, were born Nov. 17, 1937, in North Hornell, N.Y., to A. Nelson and Glenna Ruth (Butman) Henry, and they grew up in the tiny village of Canisteo, N.Y., where they were part of the original settler families in what is now Steuben County. They and their younger sister, Norma Jean "Rusty," attended elementary, junior high and high school all in the same three-story, public school building, where some of their teachers had previously taught their father.

After high school, Arden enrolled Clarkson College in far northern New York state - picked, he said, because he could receive an engineering degree in four years, instead of five, thus saving money. While in college, he worked in his Theta Chi fraternity's cafeteria and, during wintertime engineering competitions, built elaborate, moving ice sculptures, including a "Jack in the Beanstalk" one. He graduated with an electrical engineering degree in 1960 and would later do engineering graduate school work at Cornell University, the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles.

After graduating from Clarkson, he moved to California for the first time, working for two years in the autonetics division of North American Aviation in Anaheim, analyzing velocity measuring equipment for intercontinental ballistic missile systems. On weekends, he drove his Corvette along winding roads in the Los Angeles hills and was introduced to sailing by a work colleague, thus launching a life-long passion. In the coming decades, he would own multiple sailboats, compete in racing events, learn celestial navigation, take piloting courses, and spend many weekends sailing to California's Channel Islands. Ultimately, he would led his family on a year-long sailing adventure in the mid-1980s, traveling aboard a 38-foot, Ohlson sloop, from Great Britain, through the Mediterranean, and across the Atlantic Ocean to Florida.

His first residency in California was brief. In 1963, after making a trip to Europe, he returned to New York state, working initially for Moog Servocontrols in Aurora, N.Y., doing design and analysis of vector control systems for ICBMs, and later working for Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo, designing and analyzing automatic control systems for airplanes. During this period, a family friend introduced him to Mary Louise Feltner, an elementary school art teacher. They married in 1966 and had three children.

In 1973, Arden returned to California, this time driving across the country with his wife and their first two children, to take a job with General Motors' Delco Systems division, first in the Los Angeles area and later in coastal Santa Barbara County, where their third child was born. He worked at Delco Systems until his retirement in 1993, leading several multi-million-dollar research programs, including a C-17 airplane computer system testing facility and an Apache helicopter program. In his free time, when he was not sailing or taking his children for hikes in the Santa Barbara canyons, he served as treasurer for the Parent Teacher Organization at his children's elementary school, and later did so for the high school band's fundraising group, helping make it possible for all the band members to attend the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

After obtaining early retirement, he taught courses in mathematics and rocketry. He first briefly taught as a substitute at Santa Barbara High School, and then, after moving to Humboldt County, he taught courses at College of the Redwoods and Humboldt State University. He also built, with occasional hired help, a two-story home on a hilltop overlooking Fortuna, Calif., and served for several years on the Fortuna Planning Commission. In 2011, he and his wife moved back to Santa Barbara and spent a decade there before moving into a senior living community in Rio Rancho, N.M., near his youngest daughter.

He is survived by his wife Mary Lou; son, Theodore (Cassiana Montagner) of Campinas, Brazil; two daughters, Barbara (Gjon Hazard) of Encinitas, Calif., and Katherine (Matthew) Ross of Rio Rancho, N.M.; and six grandchildren.

In recognition of his avid love of reading, memorial donations may be made to the Santa Barbara Public Library (c/o Library Administration, P.O. Box 1019, Santa Barbara, CA 93102), or to the Humboldt County Library Foundation (P.O. Box 440, Eureka, CA 95502, or via the web site at: http://humboldtlibraryfoundation.org).