Michael Edwards Goldsby

It is with profound sadness that the family of Michael Edwards Goldsby of Oklahoma City, OK, announces his passing on May 17, 2025, at St. Anthony's Hospital, where he was born on February 26,1939, to Gilmer Edwards Goldsby and Juanita White Goldsby. In the 86 years between, he lived a life devoted to his family and his never-ending quest to explore the far reaches of computer science.

Mike grew up in Oklahoma City. He liked school and, despite constant absences due to respiratory illness, was consistently at the head of his class. He was a gifted pianist whose formal studies began at the age of five with Finley Goldthwaite Williams. He attended Casady School, where he left a lasting impression as the star student who blew up the chemistry lab. He continued his interest in chemistry at the University of Arizona, but he eventually got his degree in mathematics.

After graduating, he headed to what was soon to be known as Silicon Valley. He found a job at IBM in San Jose and was soon learning to program the massive mainframes. This was in the early days of computers, when very few people knew how to program computers. He went on to work for everything from fledgling startups to national laboratories. At NASA, he wrote the master controller for the Space Shuttle simulator which the astronauts used to train for missions. He spent 24 years at Sandia National Labs in Livermore, CA, on a wide variety of R&D projects critical to national security. For one such project, he wrote embedded software for chemical detector units used for a long series of field deployments in public venues such as the Washington, D.C. subway, and the Oakland Athletics Stadium. He and his team traveled to Washington D.C. to install and test the devices in their Metrorail transit system.

Mike is preceded in death by his parents, grandparents Warren Edward White, Maude Moody White, Penelope Goldsby, Lenniel Goldsby, and first wife, Nancy Price Goldsby.

He is survived by his wife, Mary Pustejovsky Goldsby, his children, Evan Augustine Goldsby, Jocelyn Morgan Goldsby, David Geoffrey Goldsby, all of Oklahoma City, and Michael Ambrose Goldsby of San Francisco, California, granddaughter, Melanie Rose Maxwell and great-grandchildren Elo Isaac Maxwell and Ume Victoria Maxwell all of Austin, Texas.

Mike was a modest and unassuming person of exceptional intelligence and talent. Everyone who knew him loved him. We will miss his kindness, his playful sense of humor, and, most of all, his beautiful soul.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, June 28, at 2 p.m. in the chapel of Smith & Kernke Funeral Home at 1401 NW 23rd St., Oklahoma City.