Wade Gladstone Holcomb

Wade Gladstone Holcomb died September 19, 2009 in Los Angeles from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 88. A radio man in WWII, he went on to work as an electronics engineer on underwater acoustics for submarine detection at Bell Telephone Labs in NJ, and later on antenna patterns for the Nike Zeus ABM at White Sands, NM. He helped design an instrument to read microscope slides for CYDAC, an early computer. Mr. Holcomb entered the medical electronics field at Yale University in 1966, working on cardiac pacemakers and early MRI engineering. His is the senior name on the patent for tissue stimulation used on the phrenic nerve to trigger the diaphragm. He retired in 1988. He was in the Navy and Naval Reserve for 43 years, retiring as Lt. Commander. He was a ham radio operator (W1GHU) from boyhood. Mr. Holcomb was also an avid bicyclist, an interest acquired in mid-life, and a pioneering computer enthusiast. Born in Chicago on July 20, 1921, he later became a Californian, marrying Mary Louise (Molly) Boynton of Pasadena in 1945. She died in 1999. He leaves four children – Anne Paradise, Julia Holcomb, Derek Holcomb and Tom Dans – and four grandchildren. His father, Wade Archie, survived the sinking of the USS President Lincoln in May, 1918.