Dr. George Thompson Lewis

Canandaigua/Rushville – Dr. George Thompson Lewis, age 85,  passed away on Nov. 14, 2022

Calling Hours in Salem, New York, will be held at the McClellan-Gariepy Funeral Home, on Saturday, November 19, 2022, from 2:00 to 4:00 P.M.

The Funeral will be held in Wellsville, New York. Calling Hours will be held at the J.W. Embser Sons Funeral Home on Monday, November 21, 2022, from 2:00 to 4:00.

A Requiem Mass will be held at Immaculate Conception Church in Wellsville, New York, on Tuesday, November 22, at 1:00 in the afternoon.

Dr. George Thompson Lewis was the only child of Carl Arthur Kenyon Lewis and Ruth Noble Gage Lewis. The family of the elder Mr. Lewis were early settlers of the Cazenovia, New York, area. The Gage family were early settlers in the eastern Canandaigua Lake area. George was born on July 28, 1937, in Ithaca, New York, where his father was with Cornell.

During World War II, George and his parents moved to old family property overlooking Canadaigua Lake, where he attended the Middlesex Valley School, graduating in 1955 as Salutatorian. George then entered Alfred University where he earned a Bachelor of Science and continued on to receive his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Solid State Materials Science in 1964. At Alfred University, he was a member of the U.S. Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, graduating as First Lieutenant and later retiring as an U.S. Army Captain.

After graduation, Dr. Lewis was posted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Houston, Texas, At NASA, he was Manager of the MicroelectronicApplications Division where he worked on both the Gemini and the Apollo SpaceMissions within a group charged with the development of the Handheld Video Cameraand the Backpack Communication System used in the First Moon Landing.

In 1965, while with NASA, he married the former Linda Embser of Wellsville, New York, whom he had met in college. Upon completion of his projects with NASA, the couple spent several months traveling in Europe before Dr. Lewis accepted a position as Technical Assistant to the IBM Director of Manufacturing Research. Within a year they were posted to Paris, France, where he was the Manager of Components Technology for IBM Europe. They remained in France for a number of years, traveling

widely.

Returning to the United States, Dr. Lewis became Manager of Future

Manufacturing Systems in the IBM Systems Products Division. Also during this time, they became the parents of four children: Thomas Dunn Lewis, who is married to Jennifer Castro Anderson of Washington, D.C. Tom is an Administrator with Georgetown University and Jen is an Attorney with USAID. They are the parents of Thomas Joseph and Adelaide. Michael-George Lewis, who is married to Ai Muraoka of Hiroshima, Japan, whom he met when they were both college students in Boston. They live in Massachusetts with their three sons, Amane, Seia, and Kensei; son Michael teaches at a school in Rhode Island and at a college in Massachusetts; daughter Caitlain Devereaux Lewis is married to Thomas Joseph Clary from just across the street in Salem, New York. They are the parents of twins, Vera and Louise, and Baby Agnes. Caitlain is an attorney with the Library of Congress and Tom is a CPA; The youngest child, Courtenay Dunn Lewis, is married to Shawn Flanagan whom she met when they were both Ph.D. students in Neurobiology at the University of Connecticut.

In 1978, George became Program Manager of Product Engineering for IBM Europe, Middle East, and Africa. In 1983, as part of the Systems Research Institute, he was granted an IBM Manufacturing Sabbatical Program, pursuing independent research and study with a concentration in Advanced Process Control Applications. The program led to the establishment of a post-graduate field of study in Process Control at the IBM

Manufacturing Technology Institute, where he became a Senior Consultant, designing a program that involved major universities, such as Purdue University, Waterloo University in Canada, LaHulpe in Belgium, Rensselaer Polytechnic in Troy, and others.

In 1984, Dr. Lewis was the recipient of the United States Senate Productivity Award. And, in 1986, he was posted to the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand, to become the Director of the Regional Computer Center, where senior professionals and graduate students from all over Asia came for specialized professional training in Advanced

Technology in Remote Sensing, Biotechnology, Manufacturing, Energy, Networking, Telecommunications, Geographic Information Systems, Disaster Preparedness, and other fields.

While at AIT, he spent an entire day with the beloved King of Thailand, and met weekly with his daughter, the Princess of Thailand. The

position made traveling all over Asia and Europe possible for the entire family. When the position concluded, George and Linda, along with their young family and Linda’s sister, Susan Embser, traveled home overland from Thailand as much as was possible through India, Nepal, Kashmir, Hong Kong, Japan, Siberia, and the former Soviet Union all through the Ural Mountains to the Gulf of Finland, Belarus, Poland, East Germany, and West Germany, arriving back in America just in time for the start of the school year.

Dr. Lewis then became Program Manager of Business Partner Solutions in IBM’s Industrial Sector Division. Two years later, in 1991, he accepted the position of U.S. Senior Technical Advisor to Dr. Bacharuddin Jusuf (BJ) Habibie, the Republic of Indonesia’s State Minister of Research and Technology. Dr. Habibie subsequently became President of Indonesia in 1998, afterwhich George accepted a position as Managing Director of the Hughes International Corporation for Indonesia. That, along with tens of thousands of other positions, jobs, careers, and schooling, ended with the

Asian financial crisis of 1997 and 1998, which swept disastrously through East Asia and Southeast Asia. At the end of 1998, after several tumultuous months in the aftermath of the May 1998 Riots and Revolution, the family returned to the United States to Saratoga Springs, New York, where they had a summer home.

During his career, Dr. Lewis was the author of many papers, occupied several academic appointments, and received a number of awards and recognitions. At retirement, having been conditioned by many years of complicated expat tax returns, Dr. Lewis became a Technology Consultant and International Tax Advisor, working with H&R Block in Saratoga County. When the children were mostly finished with college and graduate school, George and his wife, Linda, retired to Salem, New York, where

they purchased the Historic Audubon House where they have lived ever since.

All of his life George had been interested in Music, Photography, and

Automobiles, and was even a Licensed Commercial Hot Air Balloon Pilot. George made many friends all over the world over the course of his life, all of whom he valued greatly. He was a wonderful husband and a proud, loving, and supportive father to all of his children and children-in-law, and to all of his eight grandchildren. He was an eminently decent man. He was a gentleman.