Alan Carroll

URBANA - Alan M. Carroll died unexpectedly the morning of Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023, at his home in Urbana. He was 60.

Alan was born Jan. 24, 1963, in Baltimore to Arthur and Majorie Carroll. The family moved to St. Joseph, where Alan and his brothers grew up. Alan married Susan Hinrichs in 1989. They have three children.

Growing up, the Carroll boys were very active, delivering newspapers, making candles in the backyard and being a center of energy for the neighborhood. Alan was involved in many activities in high school, including marching band, Scholastic Bowl and the underground newspaper. 

Alan referred to himself as a "code slinger." He started programming as a teenager for his father's touchscreen company. He was involved in programming and gaming on the PLATO system at the University of Illinois.

After graduating high school, Alan studied computer science at the UI, eventually earning a Ph.D. He loved teaching and was a teaching assistant for the computer-architecture and systems-programming course in the computer-science department for many semesters. Throughout his career, he taught and mentored many people. His Ph.D. research was on collaboration systems. As part of this work, his team developed the first multiple-window Emacs system called Epoch. 

Alan worked on a variety of projects throughout his career, including network-security management at Cisco Systems and internet proxy work at Yahoo and LinkedIn. He was a significant contributor to the Apache Traffic Server project and a member of the Apache Software Foundation. 

Alan was very active in his kids' lives, photographing park district soccer games, helping with Boy Scouts, being Mr. Science for Vacation Bible School, and helping kids create and launch rockets. As his kids moved away, he would have online gaming nights with them. 

Although he spent most of his life in Illinois, Alan was a person of the world both through travel and by collaborating with people all over the world. While growing up, his family spent many Christmas holidays driving down to Mexico and playing on the Mexican Pacific coast. In graduate school, he spent one summer working in Tokyo. He traveled to Europe several times with the family, visiting the north coast of Scotland, London, Ireland and Germany. He traveled to Beijing for a Traffic Server conference.

In addition to his life in Illinois, Alan bought a ranch in the mountains of New Mexico with his brother, Craig. Alan and Susan frequently traveled to the ranch to enjoy the mountains, trees and nature.

Alan is survived by his wife, Susan; his children, Corwin Carroll, Charles Carroll and Alice Carroll; his mother, Marjorie Carroll; his brothers, Bruce Carroll (Holly Tuccio), Dean (Julie) Carroll and Craig (Linda) Carroll; and his nieces and nephews, Ashlyn Carroll, Bryson Carroll, Dawson Carroll, Nick Tuccio, Ronin Carroll and Aya Carroll. 

He was preceded in death by his father, Arthur Carroll. 

A funeral service followed by a celebration of Alan's life is planned for 11 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 13, 2024, at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 2101 S. Prospect Ave., Champaign. 

Alan was very concerned about constitutional rights and avoiding abuse of power. For a memorial, please consider a donation to the Institute for Justice or a similar organization.

Condolences may be offered at morganmemorialhome.com.