Kenneth Wayne Kaiser (86) of North Reading, MA passed away on April 12, 2025 at Lahey hospital in Burlington, MA due to complications from a ruptured appendix. His family was with him throughout his final days. Family and friends are cordially invited to visiting hours at the Cota Funeral Home, 335 Park St., North Reading (Corner of Park St. and Rt. 28 at the Reading Line) on Friday, October 17th from 3pm to 6pm. Kenneth was born on March 11, 1939 in Iowa City, IA to Donald and Gertrude Kaiser. His parents moved to CT where his father was employed as an organic chemist to support the WWII effort. He grew up in Old Greenwich, CT and graduated from North Haven High School, CT in 1957. He served in the US Army signal corps as a telephone pole lineman, and completed basic training at Fort Dix, NJ. He completed his BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of CT. In 1968 he earned his Doctor of Science Degree (ScD) in Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, Cambridge MA. His doctoral thesis advisor was "Doc" Draper in the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, and his doctoral thesis work focused on advanced controls methods applicable to inertial guidance system instrumentation accuracy.

Kenneth worked at the Lab for his engineering career, now Charles Stark Draper Laboratories. He proudly completed over 50yrs of engineering service in our nation's interest spanning the resurgence of science during the Apollo years, the Cold War, and post-Cold War era. Among his technical contributions include patents in the area of Active Tremor Control for military and medical applications. He especially enjoyed working with students and supervised MS and PhD theses at MIT and Tufts University on applied control systems in the Aero/Astro, Mechanical, Electrical, and Ocean Engineering Departments. For several years he taught a graduate level Controls course at Tufts University in Medford, MA. Enjoying his technical work, his colleagues at Draper, and his students, he continued employment well past the usual retirement age, Like his own father, Kenneth enjoyed hatching and raising frogs. He especially enjoyed listening to the annual chorus of spring peepers in local wetlands. Kenneth encouraged his children to care for any pet, resulting in a household menagerie comprised of quail, rabbits, horned toads, lizards, frogs, turtles, a duck; guinea pigs, mice, an owl, and fish also made an appearance. Pets were often brought along on weekend family camping trips to Cape Cod and Acadia National Park. This philosophy extended to sharing his home with people who needed a safe place to live for a while. Kenneth was an active outdoorsman, starting at the age of 15 when he and a friend hiked the Appalachian Mountain Trail from Great Barrington, MA to Gorham, NH. This trip made such an impression on his outlook that he insisted his children do something similar during their teenage years. He taught himself to build his own custom bicycle, then for several years he taught an MIT Independent Activities Period (IAP) course, "Build your own Bicycle" for students, starting from scratch resulting in a custom made bicycle designed, built, and assembled by each student. For over 40 years in the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), he lead a variety of flatwater, inter-tidal, and whitewater canoe trips. Favorite trips include: the local Ipswich River, an annual Memorial Day inter-tidal coastal canoe camping trip to the AMC's Beal Island in Georgetown, ME, canoe camping on the Green River thru Canyonlands National Park, UT, and whitewater paddling the beloved Dead River in West Forks, ME. People loved these trips. Part of his trip popularity involved his carefully planned high quality meals, where meal preparation and clean up was solely

delegated to others. Some folks signed up for his trips simply for these meals. After explaining the menu options, which hadn't changed in 40 years, he barked out orders and would tell participants the meals were to be "Prepared by the best cook in the world: You". He enjoyed all aspects of photography, and he built his own darkroom, printed, mounted and framed his own photographic prints. His photography focused on large format landscapes, and he was especially drawn to the Southwestern USA and the Maine coast areas. Kenneth combined his outdoor and photography interests by traveling extensively through the USA National Park system and Canada with his longtime friend and companion, Marietta Marchitelli. Together they were always planning their next trip. Kenneth is preceded in death by his parents, and his younger brother, David. Kenneth is survived by his children Geoffrey, Donna Jean, and Carla, his sister, Donna, his grandchildren, Amy, Matthew, and Shannon, and his beloved friend and companion, Marietta.

The family of Kenneth wishes to thank the outstanding staff at Lahey Clinic in Burlington, MA for their compassionate care in his final days. Kenneth was a generous supporter of many small regional charities he came across in his travels. But his most generous donations were to his alma mater, MIT, and to the MIT community that he was an active participant in for most of his adult life. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to MIT to support the advancement of science/medicine or to a favorite charity for preservation of our natural world.

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