Howard Leffel Price Jr., Ph.D.

Howard L. Price, Jr. was born on the First Day of Winter, 1932 to Howard L. Price Sr. and Virginia (Painter) Price of Blacksburg, VA. As a boy, he read books about airplanes and rockets and learned to build cat's whisker radios. He collected scrap around town for the war effort and once got in trouble for a high school chemistry experiment that caused the entire school to smell like caramel. Howard earned his Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering from Virginia Tech in 1957 and served in the U.S. Army, fueling the country's early rocketry attempts in the desert southwest. He became a Materials Engineer at NASA Langley and spent over two decades there before moving to the private sector (Bendix, General Electric, private consulting) and academia (Wilkes University, Elizabeth City State University). He never stopped learning, earning his Masters (1970) and Doctorate (1979) in Engineering from Old Dominion University, continuing to publish his research and advancement in the field of polymers and composites.

Howard met the love of his life on a blind date and married Marianna Fox in 1960. Together they raised four sons and countless dachshunds, moving from Williamsburg to Baltimore to Cincinnati to Blacksburg and Pennsylvania before finally returning to Tidewater in 1997.

Howard passed away on the evening of April 20, 2021 in Virginia Beach, VA. He is survived by his wife of sixty years and their sons Leffel (Cheryl), David, and Phillip (Emily Jones), his grandchildren Justin (Ashley) and Kaylyn Jackson (Jeff), and his great-granddaughter Ellianna. He is preceded by his son Jason (Blake Jamison Williams) and his brother Jay (Mary).