Henry A Young - May 21, 1931 – April 27, 2025
Henry (Hank) A. Young, 93, of Andover, passed away peacefully on April 27, 2025 in Belmont, MA. The oldest son of the late Henry Young and Alma (Tassinari) Maynard of Boston, Henry was born and raised in Jamaica Plain. He had wonderful stories of his growing up there -- playing endless hours of sandlot baseball and skating on Jamaica Pond with his neighborhood gang of friends. He displayed a youthful spirit throughout his life, and, for example, could be seen throwing snowballs at telephone poles (and hitting them) outside his home in Andover during the winters, into his 80s!
He graduated from Boston English High School and Harvard University, then enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean War, where he served as a meteorologist in Baltimore, MD and Edwards Air Force base in California. In the pay line he stood behind the famous pilot Chuck Yeager, who made history and broke the sound barrier at that base. The meteorology team was an important part of the atomic testing going on at the time as well.
In 1956 he married the former Christine Huegel of Lancaster, PA and together they raised their four children in Cambridge and Newton, MA, Rochester, NY and Andover, MA. Henry was a talented baseball player, mathematician, pianist and a passionate Libertarian. His children remember falling asleep to his playing ragtime music on the piano, and everyone he met must have a memory of his persuasive expositions on the writings of economist Ludwig von Mises and the economic theory (and necessity) of free markets.
He was a mathematician to his core – doodling for him was proving theorems, filling pages of notepads with equations and proofs with his neat handwriting, or skipping to the advanced Sudoku puzzles. He enjoyed books with titles such as “Commutative Normed Rings”, “Theory of the Integral” and “Character Theory of Finite Groups”. He was also a wonderful amateur photographer, leaving behind many beautiful and captivating photos of his family and friends.
He began his working career at Sylvania in Waltham, MA, then went on to earn a doctorate in Economics from the University of Rochester and to establish a private consulting practice in the defense and strategic analysis fields. He taught at the Naval War College in Newport, RI and consulted for the Pentagon during this time. His expertise was in Soviet political and military objectives relative to the West, and how to counter them.
Always wanting to make mathematics less intimidating for the average person, Henry was never too busy or too tired to help his children and grandchild with their math or science homework. In retirement Henry served as a math tutor for the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission.
Ever remembered as a loving, supportive husband and companion, a playful, kind father and grandfather and a unique thinker, Henry will be deeply missed by Christine, his wife of 69 years, daughter Jennifer Young Kass (Virginia) and son-in-law Brett Kass, daughters Ellen Young (Massachusetts), Elizabth Goodman (Connecticut) and granddaughter, Natalie Goodman (New York). He is predeceased by his son, Peter H. Young, also of Andover, who died of cancer in 2024, and his dear brother, Richard H. Young of Los Angeles.
A memorial gathering is planned for June 29. Please email [email protected] to receive details, when those are available.