toledoblade.com -- The Blade ~ Toledo Ohio

Burton W. Spear, 77, a retired Owens-Illinois, Inc., engineer, a business co-founder, and a genealogist whose avocation was research into the passengers of a 1630 sailing vessel, died of cancer Sunday in his Point Place home.

Mr. Spear retired at least twice. His first was at 58 from O-I, where he was an engineer and managed the firm's high-temperature materials section.

He was hired at O-I in 1954 and, a decade later, was awarded $3,000 - one of the largest employee prizes at the time - for helping to pioneer a process that led to lighter, more economical television picture tubes.

"He loved research and development. He liked accomplishing things," his wife, Carolyn, said.

He was responsible for other patents as well during his O-I career.

"What made him good was not only conceiving and developing the processes, but turning them commercial,'' said Len Kutzke, who worked for Mr. Spear.

Mr. Spear and a former O-I colleague formed Dura Temp Corp. in 1983 to make and distribute asbestos-free materials used in high-temperature applications at glass plants. He retired again in 1989.

Always interested in history, he in 1975 researched his genealogy and found that several ancestors sailed from England to New England in 1630 aboard the vessel, the Mary & John.

His first book about the ship and its passengers was published in 1985. His work was further refined by researchers whom he and his wife hired and by others who submitted information.

The result has been 29 volumes - each an elaboration of the previous volume - about the ship and its passengers. The couple also founded a clearinghouse for information about the ship, its 140 passengers, and their descendants.

"We calculate that since 1630, descendants have multiplied to more than 50 million persons," Mr. Spear told The Blade in 1996.

To accommodate the enterprise, he had an addition built onto their home that served as library, office, and shipping facility.

Mr. Spear was born in Lakewood, Ohio, and grew up in East Toledo. He was a graduate of Waite High School, where he played trumpet in the band. He was an Army Air Corps veteran of World War II, serving stateside and in England as a radar maintenance equipment technician.

He had his own swing band in the late 1940s, playing events and venues throughout northwest Ohio. He received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Toledo.

"Burton was a very quiet person," his wife said. "He was not given to meaningless chatter. If you had something you wanted to discuss that was important, he would be glad to talk to you. He was a very serious-type person. But he always had time for his kids and his kids' kids."

Surviving are his wife, Carolyn, whom he married June 10, 1950; sons, Gary, Kevin, and Craig; brother, Donald; six grandchildren, and a great-grandson.

There will be no visitation. Memorial services will be at 11 a.m. Monday in Point Place United Church of Christ, of which he was a member and moderator.

Arrangements are by the David R. Jasin Mortuary. The family requests tributes to the Hospice of Northwest Ohio or to the church.

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