Howard Spooner was employed as a chief engineer and assistant to the plant manager at Engelhard Industries, Plainville, Massachusetts, for 25 years until his retirement in 1971. He has been a resident of Lincoln since 1956; prior to that he had resided in Attleboro.
He was a life member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Boston Chapter. He was a past president, trustee and member of the Hebron Building and Improvement Association. He was a member of the Bristol Lodge AF & AM, Rabboni Chapter RAM of North Attleboro, Palestine Shrine of Providence, past Commander of the Attleboro Power Squadron, past District Commander of the District 14 United States Power Squadron and a member of the Taunton and Newport Yacht Clubs.
He served in the United States Navy.
Virginia R. (Spooner) Jackson of Attleboro, a retired insurance agent, died Wednesday at the Life Care Center of Attleboro after a brief illness.
She was 86.
Mrs. Jackson was born in Attleboro, and was a lifelong resident. She graduated from Attleboro High School in 1943 and the Chamberlain School of Boston in 1945.
Mrs. Jackson worked for Glading’s Store in Providence, and Attleboro Steam and Electric Co. before beginning her career in the insurance industry. She worked for Marie B. Robinson insurance agency, Holman Insurance and Nimiroski Insurance, all in Attleboro.
Mrs. Jackson enjoyed traveling.
Wife of the late Norman J. and the late Calvin M. Washburn, Mrs. Jackson is survived by a son, Keith H. of Attleboro; two daughters, the Rev. Lynn M. McCracken of Providence and Sheryl J. Ercolano of Westbury, N.Y.; a brother, Russell E. Spooner of Rehoboth; nine grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and several extended family members.
A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Dyer-Lake Funeral Home, North Attleboro.
Burial will be private.
Pawtucket, where he was born, and the Pawtucket Times, where he worked for more than half a century, were all-consuming interests in Chet Spooner's public life.
In pursuing both, Chet found an outlet for his wide-ranging talents and knowledge.
Regarded by his associates as a virtual genius with things mechanical, he brought this expertise to problems related to Times printing presses and stereotype equipment, to vehicles and diesel motors in his days as the paper's mechanical superintendent. More recently, as his responsibilities transcended the Times, he became concerned with the sophisticated, modern-day computers, optical character readers and video setters that are the heart of the photocomposition process. But he never lost his interest in people - the people who ran those machines - and he would make it a point, after an absence from the area to renew these relationships, always inquiring about these persons' families.
Typical of his view of life was his reaction to a four-day cruise he took aboard an aircraft carrier in 1964. Surrounded by planes and gadgets that fascinated him, he came away most impressed with what life in the Navy was doing to the nation's young men - opening new vistas, preparing them for rewarding careers and instilling in them qualities of character, initiative, pride and the incentive and motivation toward self-improvement.
Enamored as he was to machines, he always made them second to humans.
---Source: The Pawtucket Times, 1/1/1977.