Longtime resident, former DEC engineering manager
Steven Gutz, 69, a longtime resident of Harvard, died Friday, May 27 at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was a retired engineering manager from Lexington who was part of the historic growth and expansion of the former Digital Equipment Corporation in the 1980s.
Steven was born in New York City on July 13, 1941. He attended Stuyvesant High School, earned his bachelor’s degree at City College of New York and earned a master’s at New York University. He married the late Arlene (Greenhut) Gutz of New York City in 1963.
Steven taught briefly at NYU and worked at Bell Labs before moving his family to Massachusetts in 1976. During the course of a nearly 20-year career at Digital, Steven became a critical figure in the company’s artificial intelligence group and helped design early versions of DEC operating systems and platforms.
Following his retirement from Digital in the early 1990s, he cofounded the former World Data Corp. in Bolton and worked as a consultant to a number of software and other technology companies.
Steven was an accomplished tobacconist and pipe-smoking aficionado, and for many years maintained one of the region’s most extensive and noteworthy collections of rare and custom pipes, lighters, ash trays, and related items. He was also an avid sports fan, a voracious reader and collector of books, and a skilled woodworker who maintained a complete workshop at his home in Harvard.
He leaves a son, Scott B. Gutz and his wife, Daphne A., of Wellesley; two daughters, Keri L. Macero and her husband, Cosmo, of Cambridge; and Samantha B. Gutz of Arlington; his mother, Lillian (Gutz) Hilowitz and her husband, Frank, of Greenwood, N.Y.; a brother, Alvin Gutz and his wife, Diana, of Greenwood, N.Y.; and five grandsons, Carter, Reid, Lucas, Cosmo and Deacon; as well as a nephew, Adam Gutz. He was also beloved uncle to the late Stacey Gutz Hill.
Funeral services were held June 1 at Brasco and Sons Memorial in Belmont. Private interment will be held at the Westview Cemetery in Lexington. Expressions of sympathy can be made in his memory to the American Diabetes Assoc. at www.diabetes.org.
