MARSHALL KEMBALL WOOD

CASTINE – Marshall Kemball Wood, 94, died Jan. 20, 2009, in Blue Hill. He was born Feb. 19, 1914, to Anna Kemball Wood and Herbert Spencer Wood, third generation residents of Washington, D.C. He is survived by his wife, Marjorie; his children, David Wood and his wife, Paula, Carol Sheehan and her husband, Donald, and Van Wood and his wife, Molly; his stepchildren, Daniel Stafford and his wife, Eva, Laurie Tenney and her husband, Bradford, and Molly Stafford. He leaves nine grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. Marshall spent most of his professional life working for the U.S. Government. His career began in 1936 with the U.S. Forest Service in range management and flood control. He left in 1942 to work for the Army Air Force in the offices of program and statistical control. In 1947 in the newly named U.S. Air Force, he was chief of Planning Research and a director of Management Analysis, where he developed and implemented the mathematical models resulting in the first major application of the computer. He also participated in the early development of linear programming and activity analysis. In 1954 he moved to the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense as staff director of Vulnerability Analysis, where he supervised all military mobilization from the logistics viewpoint. He was a member of Pres. Eisenhower’s esteemed Gaither Panel. He left in 1959 to become director of the Economic Programming Center for the National Planning Association, where he developed dynamic economic and demographic models. In 1971 Marshall joined the Office of Research and Statistics for the Social Security Administration, where he designed and initiated an integrated system of computer simulation models for the generation and distribution of personal income. In 1973 he moved to the Social and Rehabilitation Service, where he pioneered in the development of large-scale computer based models for short term and mid term forecasting for assistance payments and Medicaid. He was elected a fellow of the American Statistical Association and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also the first recipient of the Rockefeller Public Service Award. In 1975 he retired to Castine, returning to the state he had first visited in 1928. Marshall enjoyed log carpentry and stone masonry, building a wilderness camp on Lake Sysladobsis in the 1950s on his father’s land. In Castine, he built one of the first active and passive solar houses in the area and served on Castine Planning Board, Utility Board and as a selectman. He had a rare ability to create, implement and put into practical application his many ideas and to share that knowledge and recognition with those he worked with. On the cutting edge of the electronic age, he never wished to master the personal computer, when after asking an instructor how a particular system worked was told, “You just push the button.” There will be a memorial gathering in the summer. Arrangements are under the direction of Mitchell-Tweedie Funeral Home and Cremation Services, 28 Elm St., Bucksport.