Camille Stewart Marie, 84, engineer, ham radio operator

C. S. Marie;, a retired engineer who helped design the optics for the first video camera to relay images of the moon and the Arctic ice cap, died Nov. 22 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Northwest Hospital Center in Randallstown.

The Pikesville resident, whose passions ranged from ham radio to bee keeping to Civil War history, was 84.

Camille Stewart Marie; was born in 1918 in Babylon, N.Y., and was raised in Baltimore. He had received his first radio operator's license from the Federal Communications Commission by the time he graduated from St. Paul's School for Boys in 1936.

He went on to earn a baccalaureate degree in electrical engineering from the Johns Hopkins University in 1943.

That was also the year Mr. Marie;, known affectionately as "Cam" or "Cammie," joined the Army Corps of Engineers and served in the Middle East as part of the Persian Gulf command. He became a reservist after resigning from active duty in 1946. He then returned to Baltimore to complete graduate school at Hopkins.

In 1947, Mr. Marie; married Mary Dulany Glenn. The couple lived on Biddle Street for a year before moving near Pikesville, where they raised three children. His wife died in 1971. Their son William died four years later on Thanksgiving Day in 1975.

Mr. Marie; spent his professional career in the engineering department at Westinghouse Electric Corp., where he worked on Defense Department projects for more than 30 years.

One of his assignments involved the use of lasers to initiate nuclear fusion. He also helped engineer the cameras that delivered the first images from the moon.

Family members described him as "a quiet man of peace, who didn't wear much on his sleeve."

But he also took "the old British approach" to life, said son Richard Mercer Marie; of Elkins, W.Va. "You had to work to know if you were in his favor," he said.

After retiring in 1982, Mr. Marie; took up genealogy, tended bees, played tennis and maintained his homestead in Pikesville as something of a wildlife refuge.

He also returned to amateur radio. W3EPR, as he was known to fellow enthusiasts around the world, continued using international Morse code and building transmitters and antennas.

He was a distance transmitter and collected thousands of QSL cards, logging the call letters, frequency, date and time of connections he made from a small office, known as the "radio shack," in his home. He restored a 19th-century barn that once housed a rye whiskey distillery and converted it into a "museum" of old radio equipment, his son said.

Mr. Marie; remained active in the Amateur Radio Relay League, the Quarter Century Wireless Association and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

Until he was hospitalized this month, Mr. Marie; spent Monday afternoons with retired Westinghouse engineers and radio buffs at Cactus Willie's in Glen Burnie.

Mr. Marie; is also survived by his longtime companion, Blanche S. Howard; daughter Olivia Dulany Green of Baldwin; and a grandson and a granddaughter.

The family requests that donations be made to the St. Paul's School, 11152 Falls Road, Brooklandville 21022.