Gary Andre Marple

Gary André Marple passed away on January 22, 2021 at age 83 from Covid-19. He lived in Sarasota, FL and Southport, ME; and was formerly of Boxborough and several other towns in MA. Gary was born in Mt Pleasant, IA & was predeceased by his parents, T. Janice (Cook) & Kenneth L. Marple and his children’s mother, Sandra Calkin King. He is the beloved husband of Meredith Rutter; father of Brian E. (Beth), and Stephen L. (Linda); grandfather of Ann E. (Peter Squires), David C., Timothy E., Lauren A., and Jeremy S. Marple. He also leaves a sister, Ginger Strickler, of E. Fultonham, OH; brothers, Kenneth J. (Phyllis) of Rockledge, FL and John (Ginnie), of Berkeley Springs, WV; former wife Ellen Metcalf and sister-in-law Sylvia Norton McCranels, both of Upper Jay, NY; numerous in-laws, nieces & nephews; and a starter great-grandson, Leo.

Gary served eight years in the US Naval Reserve, 1955-63. He was a Freemason (Adelphic Lodge, Des Moines, IA). He earned his BS in Economics, Philosophy, and Business from Drake University and his MBA and DBA in Economics and Social Psychology from Michigan State University. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the MIT Sloan School of Management, after which he joined the think-tank Arthur D. Little Inc., where over his twenty years there he was founding member of the Consumer Marketing Consulting Group in Management Services and founding member of the Behavioral Science Group in Operations Research. After ADL, Gary founded his own firm, Commonwealth Strategies Inc., and continued offering marketing and management consulting services to companies.

Personally, Gary provided investment seed money in several start-ups over the years and enjoyed helping entrepreneurs. In 2001 he co-founded Lessac Technologies Inc. and was Chief Inventor as the company developed text-to-speech software that more closely resembled the emotional prosody of real speech compared to the robotic voices then in use. When asked, Gary would remember most fondly the profound feeling of nurturing love provided by his maternal grandfather while he lived with his grandparents until the age of three, when his parents could care for him on their own. He never lost touch with his grandfather, who would ask the staff in the nursing home to reread Gary’s latest letter to him every day.

Gary was a creative, vigorous, kind, and giving person with a lust for life to match Van Gogh’s (borrowing Irving Stone’s title biography of that artist). He enjoyed fly fishing, downhill skiing, scuba diving, sailing, tennis, pickleball, and was a multi-engine, instrument-rated private pilot. He got real pleasure from his role as chair of the Minuteman Bearded Collie Club of Lexington, MA, for its 1998 National Specialty. He was an ardent supporter of the arts in education and was both a trustee and member of the Financial Committee of Arts/Learning Inc. Almost as much as his family, friends, work, and play, he loved his bearded collies Thistle and Duncan and his cats Sashimi and Shabu-Shabu. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Arts/Learning Inc. (ArtsLearning.org).