Lasting Memories

Stephen E. Stuntz
May 8, 1913-Jan. 15, 2011
Menlo Park, California

Stephen E. Stuntz, 97, a longtime resident of Menlo Park and Palo Alto and a retired SRI researcher, died Jan. 15, 2011, at Stanford University Hospital.

He was born in St. Louis, Mo., May 8, 1913. The eldest of three children, he was raised in Findlay, Ohio.

After graduating from Findlay High School in 1931, he attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, for two years. While in San Francisco in 1935, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Because of his experience with amateur radio, he was assigned to duty as a signalman and posted to the Philippines.

After his army service, he re-enrolled in Miami University and completed his degree in speech in 1941. He earned a master's degree in psychology from New York University in 1947.

In 1942, he married Elizabeth Madsen in Kalamazoo, Mich. During World War II he was a research associate for the Psychological Corporation, developing criteria for the selection and training of radiotelegraph operators for the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the U.S. Navy, and visiting military installations to perform psychological testing.

The family moved in 1949 to the vicinity of New London, Conn., where Steve was a research psychologist for the Navy Medical Research Laboratory and the Navy Underwater Sound Laboratory. They later lived in Sudbury, Mass., where he was an employee of the U.S. Air Force Decision Sciences Laboratory.

In 1964, he and his wife moved to California, where he joined the Sensory Sciences Research Institute at Stanford Research Institute. They moved two years later to their long-time home in the Menalto area of Menlo Park. He retired from SRI in 1978.

His secondary interests included live theater and ballet. He was a devoted ham radio operator and was honored with a life membership in the Palo Alto Amateur Radio Association (PAARA). He also had a life-long interest in photography.

After retirement, the couple toured the west and southwest in their camper van, visiting friends and relations. After his wife's death in August 2007, he moved to the Palo Alto Commons retirement facility.

He is survived by daughter Kay Stuntz and son-in-law Larry Carr of Highland, N.Y., and his brother David Stuntz of Brunswick, Maine.