Donald E. Marlowe

He was a cherished husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, brother and friend and will be deeply missed by all who knew him.

Don was born in March, 1941, in Detroit, Michigan and moved to Silver Spring, Maryland as a child. He attended St. Anselm’s Abbey School in Washington, D.C. and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. It was there that he met his lifetime love, the former Mary Lou Fiore of Norwalk, Connecticut. She attests that when she saw him she immediately told her girlfriends, “that one’s mine!” and that led to their happy marriage of sixty-one years.

A fierce advocate for the advancement of engineering in the public interest, Don was a dedicated civil servant for his entire career. He started at the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute for Standards and Technology, “NIST”) as an engineering intern in 1961 and continued until 1977, when he joined the Food and Drug Administration, from which he retired in 2005 as the Director of their Center for Devices and Radiological Health in Rockville, Maryland. His tenure there was marked by several notable achievements, including his election as the Chairman of the Board of ASTM International (formerly the American Society for Testing and Materials), the first U.S. Government employee to hold that post, and receiving the ASTM Award of Merit, the society’s highest honor; his infamous use of a replica skeleton named Yorick to demonstrate the myriad of artificial devices approved in his lab for use in the human body. His motto was “I can train a mechanical engineer to be anything they want to be.”

Don was a nearly scratch golfer and could tell anyone the best way to play any hole on any course in suburban Maryland. His vegetable gardens produced endless baskets of tomatoes and zucchini and his hand-plugged Zoysia lawn was immaculate. He remembered every route he ever drove. He poured a perfect Manhattan. He built model ships, a complete miniature mountain town for N-gauge trains, and friendships with everyone he met.

He was devoted to his family, who treasure memories of annual trips to Rehoboth and Dewey Beaches in Delaware, road trips in the family station wagon and Suburban to visit Mary Lou’s family in Connecticut, gatherings of the extended family on Disney cruises and on the back deck at home, trips to Yellowstone with each of his grandchildren to celebrate their twelfth birthdays, pressed-sugar and chocolate chip cookies for Christmas, and peaceful naps on the couch with his grandbabies. Don was lovingly cared for during his long illness and is survived by his wife Mary Lou; children Kevin, Keith, and Kathleen Baer and their spouses Jill, Tyana, and Scott; brother Chris and his wife Terezia; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that a donation be made in Don’s memory to Casey House in Derwood, Maryland, through Montgomery Hospice at https://montgomeryhospice.org/donate-pg/donate-now/.

Funeral services will be held at St Elizabeth Catholic Church, 917 Montrose Rd, Rockville, MD 20852, at 1:30pm on Thursday, 30 October 2025.