lit a candle 5h agoJust read an article about the Old Burial Hill project last week, saved it because I collect old New England cemetery photos. 88 years old and cataloging every stone by hand. That's the kind of quiet, careful work that doesn't get enough credit.
Their story
Standley H. Goodwin, a Marblehead, Massachusetts engineer who spent decades at Draper Laboratory on guidance instruments for NASA's Apollo program, and who later photographed and cataloged nearly every surviving headstone on the town's colonial-era Old Burial Hill, died on 28 September 2026. He was 88. He was born on 22…
Standley H. Goodwin, a Marblehead, Massachusetts engineer who spent decades at Draper Laboratory on guidance instruments for NASA's Apollo program, and who later photographed and cataloged nearly every surviving headstone on the town's colonial-era Old Burial Hill, died on 28 September 2026. He was 88.
He was born on 22 June 1938 in Salem hospital because his mother needed a cesarean section that the old Mary Alley Hospital on Franklin Street did not perform. His father, Emerson Standley Goodwin, fished for lobster out of Little Harbor on a boat named for his daughter, Harriett G. His mother, Gretta Mae (Caswell) Goodwin, looked after the house and later worked at the town's electric light office. Except for two weeks after his birth, he lived almost his entire life in a Norman Street bungalow with Old Burial Hill as his back yard and Redd's Pond, where he raced model yachts for more than six decades, within view of his door.
Goodwin graduated from Marblehead High School in 1956, earned a degree in aeronautical engineering from MIT in 1961 and a master's in 1962, then spent 51 years at Draper Laboratory. He worked on accelerometers for the Apollo guidance system that steered command modules to the moon and home again, and later on missile-guidance systems. Asked whether he celebrated the moon landing, he said he found it interesting. His sister later said he never talked about any of that.
Model yachts were a lifelong passion. He joined the Marblehead Model Yacht Club in 1954 and helped revive racing on Redd's Pond. In 1971 he won both rival national free-sailing and radio-control championships with the same boat, Warrior I. By 2021 boats, sails and plaques filled every corner of his house, including those from eight national championships. He sailed until about two years before his death.
In the late summer of 2014, at 76 and with no previous camera experience, he began photographing Old Burial Hill's headstones with a point-and-shoot camera bought for him by his sister. He worked low to the ground and returned again and again to worn inscriptions. That effort grew into the town's Old Burial Hill Cemetery Archive of roughly 700 images covering 657 headstones. He lectured at the Marblehead Museum, served on the Old Burial Hill Oversight Committee from 2016, and pushed for restoration of fragile slate stones. At the museum he cataloged archives, led Jeremiah Lee Mansion tours, joined the board in 2013, and helped the museum buy Lee's Brick Kitchen and Slave Quarters in 2021. Its second floor holds the Standley Goodwin Research Center.
Goodwin never married and had no children. He is survived by his sister, Harriett Gowell, and her daughter. Pederson said he had been sick for a while and under hospice care; no specific cause of death has been made public. Burial at Waterside Cemetery was to be private, with the museum planning a celebration of life.
Biography adapted from The Marblehead Independent (Will Dowd and colleagues, 29 Sep 2026); Marblehead Museum colleagues; U.S. Vintage Model Yacht Group; Salem News (2015).
In their own words
“The workmanship on the stones is absolutely amazing.”
Speaking about Old Burial Hill tombstones in a 2015 Marblehead Museum lecture
“When I was 12, I knew I wanted to be involved in aerospace.”
Told The Salem News in 2015
“He had a wonderful life, and he did it on his own terms.”
Patty Pederson, Marblehead Museum board president, after his death
Photos
1by People Forever
He worked on Apollo too, engineer before the camera came out. Two lifetimes in one.