Abraham Haskell "Hank" Epstein

Hank Epstein was born in The Bronx, New York on January 13, 1934 to Israel (Sol) Epstein and Ida Revela. His mother was born in Russia. His father’s family came to the United States in the early 1900s from a part of Poland that had changed hands from Austria, Poland, and Ukraine and they spoke five languages because one never knew what the national language would be. 

Hank grew up with fond memories of playing street games with his friends. He attended City College of New York (CCNY), graduating in 1955 with a degree in Civil Engineering. His closest friends are still from that time of his life. He initially worked in highway and bridge construction in New York City and Canada. The draft eventually caught up with him and he served a brief period in the U.S Army, Chemical Corps, where he worked on modification of water supply and storm drain systems since he had no training in chemical engineering and his assignment was likely an error (except that in Catch-22 fashion the Army did not “make errors”.)

He then moved to California where he worked for the California Department of Water Resources in Glendale, CA for the Feather River Project. Following that work, he was hired by the Space Technology Laboratories - Aerospace Corporation in Los Angeles where he programmed trajectories and guidance simulation problems for the Atlas, THOR, and Minuteman missiles and early satellites. He then spent seven years as a Senior Engineer and later Manager for Information Systems and Apollo Engineering Divisions. In that capacity he developed new standards to improve communication between the user and programmer, automated the interface between systems and developed new on-line systems to improve production control and inventory. 

In 1970, he moved to northern California and began work for Stanford University on development of time-sharing word processing and other systems. He then began working with the Library of Congress and Stanford on developing an application for managing bibliographic “card catalog” data in computer format using the emerging MARC (machine readable catalog) standard. He quickly found that library applications were more complicated that the Apollo programs he previously worked with. 

During these periods, Hank was married twice, first to Jackie Epstein, and they adopted two children, Lisa and Jeff. His second marriage to Sue Berg brought him three stepchildren, Lisa, Margaret, and Bill. After 25 years in California, Hank moved to Wisconsin and married Sally Drew. Sally was a pilot and Hank quickly got the urge to learn to fly as well. They traveled to many parts of the country in their Cessna 172 and then in a CirrusSR22.

In 1981, the first IBM PC came out followed by later Apple models IIe and Macintosh. Hank reprogrammed the MARC standard applications for the various microcomputers and started his own company called Information Transform, Inc. (ITI) to market the products and provide consulting services. He also enjoyed using microcomputer applications for many non-business purposes such as making movies and processing photographs. 

Altogether, Hank spent nearly 50 years working with computers beginning in 1958 with a desk size LGP30 that had 16 commands. He worked with a Univac 1103A and IBM 360 (room-sized computers) and with FORTRAN and COBOL programming languages. Then in the 1980s, the desk top microcomputers took over many functions. Hank retired at 71 in 2005 but continued “playing with computers” until he had a stroke in 2009. 

Hank lived with Sally at Capitol Lakes retirement beginning in 2011 until his death at 90 on August 24, 2024.