James Huntley

James Huntley died peacefully at home on April 21, 2018, following a long struggle with the aftermaths of a severe stroke several years earlier. His wife was by his side. Jim was an astronomer by avocation and education. When he was a child in Williamsville, New York, he took his telescope onto the roof outside his bedroom window to observe the lights in the sky. After graduating from Canisius High School in Buffalo, New York, and Fordham University, he studied at the University of Virginia, where he received his MS and PhD in astronomy and met Marianne, his wife of more than 42 years. He went on to hold post-doctoral fellowships at the NASA-Ames and Thomas J. Watson IBM Research Centers. His career included positions at Bell Laboratories, where he was a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, and General Dynamics, among others. He also spent a year as a visiting professor at Bucknell University. Upon retirement he and his wife moved from their longtime home in Morristown, New Jersey, where they raised their family, to a home they built in Southport, North Carolina. There, Jim joined the Cape Fear Astronomical Society and was researching new telescopes that were lightweight enough to carry to the beach where the viewing is surprisingly good much of the time. He looked forward to sharing his knowledge of the sky with family and friends, as he occasionally did before he retired. In Southport, he also had the time to enjoy bicycling, swimming in the warm ocean, reading, listening to all types of music, and working on a suite of statistical tools for the Matlab Maker Community. He was a member of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Southport. Jim is survived by his wife Marianne and two sons: Jon Huntley, his wife Alexandra, and their daughter Annalise; Sam Huntley, his wife Emily, and their daughter Annie. He is also survived by his sister Jeanne O’Connor, his brother Tom Huntley, and their families, including brother-in-law John O’Connor, sister-in-law Barbara Huntley, and several nieces and nephews. A service will be held at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey, where Jim was a member and volunteered at the Morristown Community Soup Kitchen. His ashes will be interred in the memorial garden there. Memorial donations may be made to St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Southport for the lunch program or the summer music program.