Frank Collamore

1925 - 2018

Frank Norris Collamore passed away on March 20, 2018 at the age of 92 after a short illness. Born in Pittsfield, ME on June 5, 1925, he was the son of Verne Vivan Collamore and Hazel Webber Collamore and descended from Puritans who arrived in the American colonies in the 1600s and moved to Maine in the early 1800s. Frank graduated second in his class from Maine Central Institute during WWII and was selected for the prestigious V12 program, which allowed him to study at Tufts University in Boston while enrolled in the Navy. He graduated magnum cum laude with a degree in Electrical Engineering and subsequently worked for various engineering firms, moving from Buffalo to Pittsburgh to Cleveland before finally settling in Los Angeles, CA. There, he met Clara Marie Baum, whom he married on February 21, 1958. They built their dream home on a hillside in Duarte (now Bradbury), but circumstances associated with his work led him to Sacramento in 1971, where he remained for the rest of his life. Frank worked for almost 30 years at Aerojet General Corporation as an Electrical Engineer specializing in Controls and Valve Design. While at Aerojet, he participated in the design of Aerojet's rocket engines, including the Titan rockets. The Titan engines were originally designed for intercontinental ballistic missiles, and were later used as space launchers for satellites, the manned space capsules for the Gemini program (1961-66), and for the Apollo program, which culminated in landing astronauts on the moon in 1969. Projects which Frank worked on in the 1970s include a steam-driven automobile, and he was part of the team which designed the rockets that steered the NASA space shuttles while in space. This project was unique in that the steering rockets needed to be reusable so that, not only could they be turned on and off in space as needed, but they also had to be refueled between missions. Up to that point, rockets had been designed to fire once and be depleted. A few years ago, when asked what he thought about the discontinuation of the space shuttle program, he said: "The space shuttle is 1970s technology. I do not drive down the street in 1970s technology." A quiet man, Frank was devoted to his family and enjoyed hiking and biking along the American River, and camping and hiking in the Sierra Nevadas, and he owned his own sailboat for many years. He had a good knowledge of the names of trees and plants, which he learned from his mother, a naturalist. Through working on his uncle's dairy farm as a boy, he developed useful construction and mechanical skills and maintained the house and cars himself. He built the bookcases and decorative gates in the house, and laid the hardwood floors, which incorporate unique designs in contrasting-colored wood. Frank kept traces of his Maine accent all his life, and continued to bicycle up and down the American River until the age of 91. He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Clara Collamore; his three children Linda Milor (Atlanta, GA), Lila Collamore (Arvada, CO), and Jeffrey Collamore (Copenhagen, Denmark); and his grand-daughter Ceylan Milor. He is buried at Mount Vernon Memorial Park at 8201 Greenback Lane, Fair Oaks, California.