Alexander Roth

Of Sudbury, on Wednesday, September 20, 2023, at the age of 95. Beloved husband of 71 years to the late Bernice (Gutwill) Roth. Devoted father to David Wells Roth, Bette Roth, Barton Roth, and the late Shari Lynn Roth. Father-in-law to Daniel Willert and Linda Roth. Loving grandfather to Madison Willert, Zachary Willert, Ari Roth, and Ashton Roth. Dear brother to the late Irene Freidman.

After receiving a master’s degree in engineering from City College of New York, he co-founded a company in Florida that designed and built radars. After 10 years, sold off his portion then worked for Raytheon Corporation in Massachusetts, designing radars until his retirement. During those years, on his own, he was a prolific inventor with his name appearing on numerous patents of inventions such as a system to safely guide one’s car into a garage, a metal detector, a computerized teaching machine to help children learn to read and spell, before all such things were otherwise available. Before fax machines or cell phones, he invented a system to help keep taxicab drivers safe by transmitting images of the passenger from the taxicab via radio waves to a given police station as the passenger entered the vehicle. For his wife’s career as a stockbroker, he invented a device to stream up-to-date data from the stock market to her computer, long before anything was available to the general public. The son of Hungarian immigrants, Alex grew up in the Bronx, NYC, where at an early age he bonded with a group of similarly situated boys who ultimately formed a group known as “Reading out Loud” (“ROL”), an early form of a book group. They remained lifelong family friends and the ROL group continues to live through the next generation of families.

A lover of music, at 17, Alex taught himself note by note, measure by measure, without being able to read music, to play on the piano Rapsody in Blue by George Gershwin. Then through the years, he mastered classical pieces by Rachmaninoff, Chopin, and many others, and he also enjoyed listening to and playing jazz.

Bernice, his beloved wife passed away nearly two years to the day before Alex, at the age of 91. He met her also in the Bronx when he was fifteen and she was thirteen. They married seven years later. Bernice majored in psychology at Hunter College and studied painting with noted artist Robert Motherwell. While in Florida, in addition to raising four children, dabbling in deep-sea fishing, and developing skills in oil painting, she worked for Hadassah, fundraising for hospitals and children. Also in Florida, she became interested in the stock market.

When their family moved north to Massachusetts, Bernice began to develop interests in a variety of fields. Through her synagogue she worked with a group to bring in Jewish refugees from Russia. For a time, she taught English as a substitute teacher in high school and worked as a journalist writing feature stories for the Boston Globe and the Fence Viewer in Sudbury. At the same time, she ran a small antique business, she was a buyer and seller of a wide range of antiques from jewelry to paintings. With a Boston theater group, she qualified for the lead role in a play that was commercially shown in Boston.

In the early ’80s Bernice became licensed as a stockbroker in a firm on State Street in Boston, after which she opened her own home office, eventually managing the brokerage accounts of over a thousand clients until her retirement in 2013 and received recognition as a “top producer” stockbroker for many years. She was loved by her clients for her outstanding work and personal attention. Bernice was also a skilled gardener, a fabulous chef, and an avid traveler.

Alex and Bernice lived long and independent lives and were loved.