S. Roger Stern

S. Roger Stern, 66, died Nov. 13 at his home on Blakely Harbor.

He was born Aug. 16, 1938, in California, but moved to the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle before he was three months old.

He attended both Magnolia Grade School and Catherine Blaine Junior High School, and graduated from Queen Anne High School in 1956.

The beginning of his sophomore year at Queen Anne he met Anne Hamilton, who later became his wife of almost 48 years.

Following graduation, he volunteered for a two-year assignment in the U.S. Navy’s submarine service. He graduated from the Submarine Academy at New London, Conn., and was assigned to the USS Diodon, where he became a sonarman, petty officer third class.

After discharge from the Navy, he earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in general engineering at the University of Washington

He worked for Bell Systems for 30 years. Part of that time covered the beginning of data communication. He was asked to be part of a nationwide team of engineers who met in Cooperstown, N.Y., to study and develop products to serve the computer data communication industry.

One well-known product that emerged from the effort was the “mag strip” card reader, the first telphone terminal that could read a magnetically encoded strip of recording tape attached to a plastic card.

Following retirement from the phone company, he worked in Winslow for the engineering firm DLI, traveling to various naval ships to do vibration and stress analysis. He was employed for a time with NorEastern Trawl Systems, where he assisted with the Ocean Spar anchoring system.

He and wife moved to Bainbridge Island in the late 1960s, seeing it as a good location to raise a family and enjoy boating on Puget Sound.

He built his first seaworthy vessel at age 9, followed by a 26-foot Thunderbird sailboat while in graduate school. There are presently five, 15-foot rowboats on Bainbridge Island built by him and his neighbor.

He is surived by his wife Anne, daughter Michelle (Bill) Bressler; son Sam; four grandchildren; his father, a sister and a brother and their spouses.

At his request there will be no public service, but the family hopes his friends “will hold a happy thought for the day.”