SIDNEY STARK

STARK, Sidney Forrmerly of Concord, MA, died peacefully and on his own terms on February 8, 2012, in Palo Alto, California. He was 92. An artist as a young man, he pursued instead an engineering degree from the Cooper Union after mistakenly taking the engineering rather than art entrance exam. Offered admittance and a full scholarship to both engineering and art programs, he chose engineering and finished first in his class. During World War II, he worked on airplane design, working each Friday morning with his "consultant," Charles Lindbergh. After the war, he was selected as one of a small group of engineers to review the German documents regarding their missile program, something he did with the aid of a German-English dictionary. Over the course of a highly successful career at Martin Marietta and Raytheon, Stark led the teams that developed and built the Pershing and Sprint missiles. He described the day he learned that Martin had been awarded the Sprint program as the happiest day of his life. In 1973, he received the U.S. Army's Outstanding Civilian Service award for his work on Sprint, the highest award given by the army to a civilian. He was appointed General Manager of the Orlando, Florida division of Martin Marietta in 1974, a post he held until 1976, when he left the company and went to Raytheon as head of the Missile Systems Division in Bedford. Stark, known for his dry wit, once answered a question about whether a colleague talked too much by responding, "No, but your word to thought ratio is very high."Stark was married to Beatrice Lefer for 59½ years, until her death in 2004. He is survived by the couple's three children, Debra Stark of Acton, MA , David Stark of Oakland, CA, and Daniel Stark of Basking Ridge, NJ, to whom he bade "love and that other stuff" in his final directions to them, and by three grandchildren, Adam Stark of Somerville, MA, Henry Stark of Chicago, IL, and Lily Stark, of Basking Ridge, NJ."