William Robert Waters Jr.

1940 - 2025

September 23, 1940 - November 16, 2025

William R. (Bill) Waters (85), of Frederick, died on November 16, 2025, at Frederick Health Hospital, Frederick, Maryland.

The only child of William Robert Waters Sr, a skilled bricklayer and stone mason, and Dorothy (Reams) Waters, a registered nurse, he grew up in Glen Echo Heights, MD. There he attended Clara Barton Elementary School and graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, before earning a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland (College Park) in 1963.

Bill was predeceased by two uncles, Robert Borden Reams (the first US Ambassador to Burkina Faso, formerly Upper Volta, Benin formerly Dahomey, Niger, and Cote d' Ivoire, formerly Ivory Coast during the Eisenhower Administration) and Arthur Arnold Reams who was a US Army Captain in the OSS during World War II and then transitioned into the CIA after that.

Bill loved to fish and hike along the Potomac during his youth and was always curious about electronic devices, often taking things apart just to see how they worked and then putting them back together. He worked several summers at a TV repair shop and mowed lawns to earn funds for college. After graduation, he was hired as a physicist at the National Bureau of Standards, (now NIST), located first in Washington DC, and later in Gaithersburg, MD. During the early years of his employment, he was sent to Los Angeles and Hawaii for business. While in Hawaii, he worked on an active volcano.

In 1970, he married his wife, Kathleen (Hedges) Waters, and the couple moved to Frederick. They became the parents of twin daughters, Laura Sharp Waters and Kristi Lynne Waters in 1979.

The family enjoyed vacations in various states in the eastern part of the US, with a focus on the Finger Lakes of New York State and both Niagara Falls NY and Ontario, Canada.

After a career in the Federal Government, Bill retired and turned his favorite hobby into a part time online business. The ability to repair and restore vacuum tube equipment like amplifiers and testers for audiophiles who cherished the rich and mellow sounds of old-style recordings played on a turntable, earned him the nicknames "Hickok Doc" and "Tube man" from his customers.

The family plans a private remembrance in the Spring of 2026, but asks that in lieu of flowers or gifts, contributions to charities like The American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, or the American Macular Degeneration Foundation be made in Bill's name. William Robert Waters, Jr.