Owen Reid Cote, 82, a long-time resident of Winchester, MA passed away suddenly at his home on January 3, 2014. He was the beloved husband of Ann Fulton Cote. Born in Buffalo, NY, Mr. Cote was the son of the late Warren P. and Margaret Reid Cote. As a boy, he lived in Lexington, MA, Cambridge, MA and Belmont, MA. He graduated from Belmont High School in the Class of 1949, where he played ice hockey and baseball and was the class president. He then graduated from Dartmouth College in 1953, where he also played ice hockey. After college, Mr. Cote went into the Navy, with the intention of being a Navy Frogman and Demolitions Expert, but one look at his academic background led his detailer to assign him to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, CA where he became a meteorologist. He was then assigned to a series of naval air stations in the Mediterranean, first in Morocco, and then in Crete, where he participated in the UN airlift during the Suez Crisis in 1956. As an air wing weather officer, he was also able to hitch rides on military shuttle flights and spend his leave in such out of the way destinations as Rome and Paris, giving stories of his life in the Navy a tint of glamour as well. Finally, the Navy is where he learned to play and excel at tennis in his spare time, beginning a lifelong attachment to that sport.
Within in a year from his decommissioning from the Navy in 1958 he not only started his Master’s in Mathematics at M.I.T. which was completed in 1960 but also met and married his wife Ann Fulton and started his family. His professional career began at the Geophysics Corporation of America where he did contract research for the Department of Defense, NASA, and the Atomic Energy Commission. In 1968, he joined the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory at Hanscom Field, where he remained until his retirement in 2012. It was at A.F.C.R.L. that Mr. Cote began what would become his life’s work of understanding and modeling the structure and physics of turbulent motion in the atmosphere.
The culmination of his professional career was a more than decade-long research project that was fostered by contacts he made with Scientist throughout the world through his work at the European Office of Aerospace Research and Defense in London, England. Cote designed the project to demonstrate the effects that refractive turbulence in the atmosphere could have on the propagation of electromagnetic waves and on the occurrence of clear air turbulence in the lower atmosphere. The project involved flying a high altitude aircraft of German design equipped with instruments provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the jet stream during times of the year and in regions of the world where the refractive effects of turbulence were greatest. This took him primarily to Australia for the month of August, where in collaboration with the University of Flinders, the data were collected for analysis and publication during the rest of the year. He was a longtime member of the American Meteorological Society, whose journal also published many of his scholarly papers.
In his spare time, in addition to Tennis, he served for five years on the Ecumenical Commission of the Archdiocese of Boston, coached his sons in Little League baseball and Bantam ice hockey, biked on bike trails, went on Thoreau walks in Concord and on Cape Cod with friends, and was a voracious customer of several local public libraries, maintaining a constantly evolving pile of books on science, history, poetry, cooking and philosophy on his kitchen table. He reached out to friends and family during his various travels and was always happy to receive them in his home. He also maintained close ties with his former classmates at Belmont High School and Dartmouth College.
In addition raising four children, his life was immeasurably brightened by the arrival of his three grandchildren, first his son Mark’s daughter Eliza Fulton Cote, and then in what turned out to be the last year of his life, his son Peter’s twin daughters, Sofia Camilla and Livia Agnes Cote, who received “tubby time” baths from their grandfather every Tuesday and Thursday until his passing.
In addition to his wife, he is lovingly survived by his children; Owen R., Jr. of Charlestown, MA, Mark T. and his wife Tina of Blacksburg, VA, Suzanne Cote Curtiss and her husband Robin of West Lebanon, NH and Peter H. Cote and his wife Nina of Wakefield, MA. He was the dear brother of W. Peter Cote Jr. of Natick, MA and Beverly Kincaid of Topsfield, MA.
His funeral will be held from the Costello Funeral Home 177 Washington St., Winchester, MA on Wednesday, January 8, 2014 at 10:00 am followed by a Mass of Christian Burial in St. Eulalia’s Church, 50 Ridge Street, Winchester, MA at 11:00 am. Relatives and friends are respectfully invited to attend.
Visiting hours will be held in the Costello Funeral home, Tuesday, January 7, 2014 from 4:00 pm – 8:00 pm.
Interment in Wildwood Cemetery, Winchester, MA.
If desired, donations in his memory may be made to The Winchester Public Library, 80 Washington Street, Winchester, MA 01890.
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