Coe William ("Bill") Case

It is with extreme sorrow that we announce the passing of Coe William (“Bill”) Case, husband, brother, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, uncle, great-uncle, and patriot, in the early morning of March 8th, 2021.

Bill was born in Marland, OK, in 1926, to Calvin and Ethleen Case. During Bill’s formative years, he worked for Continental Oil Company, delivered newspapers, picked cotton, and mowed lawns. After graduation from high school, Bill enlisted in the Army Air Corps and served his country proudly as a radar technician in the waning years of World War II. Upon his return to civilian life, Bill obtained a degree in Education from Oklahoma State University, but his experience as a radar technician led him down a more technical path, leading him to a career as an engineer starting with RCA, working on radars and missile defense systems. Bill’s crowning career achievement includes the 35 years he worked for Martin

Marietta and the NASA program, where he was an influential contributor to space exploration, collaborating on high profile projects such as the Gemini program, the Titan rocket program, the Mars lander, weather satellites, and launch control and checkout systems for the Space Shuttle. He was a principal author of one of the first computerized equipment test languages for flight hardware and launch control systems.

Bill met the love of his life, Kathryn, at his brother Calvin’s wedding, and celebrated a storied 72 years of marriage, having lived across the nation in Kansas, New Jersey, Colorado, and settling in Florida. A widely experienced man, it was not uncommon to hear tales of playing hide and seek in the train cars of the 101 Ranch carnival as a child, tales of fun times with Kathryn, stories of his brothers, father and grandfather in the Oklahoma territories, or watching P-38 lightnings coming to land over the beaches while stationed in Guam. Bill became an avid fisherman; a clever conversationalist could elicit a good fishing story from him with little effort. Bill found extreme pleasure in catching and eating crab from his canal and would feed fish from the canal to a great blue heron (lovingly named “Elmer”), which visited him every afternoon and would enter the garage looking for him—where he just might be found tinkering on a new project.

Bill is preceded in death by his parents, Calvin and Ethleen Case, a brother, Calvin, and three half-siblings, Fred Holmes, Lollabell Summers, and Doris Mock. Bill’s legacy carries on through his loving family, by his wife, Mary Kathryn Case; a brother, Robert Case, of Ponca City, OK; two sons, Coe William Case of Huntsville, AL, and David L. Case of Brandon, FL; six grandchildren and thirteen great-grandchildren.

A celebration of life is being planned to occur later this year.