Leonard B. Johnson ’43 died on October 16, 2010, at his home in Hingham, Massachusetts.
He was born on April 18, 1922, in Willimantic, Conn., and prepared for college at Norwich Free Academy and the Loomis School. He served to technician fourth class in the Army Signal Corps during World War II, and graduated from Bowdoin in 1947 but remained a member of the class of 1943. He was a member of Zeta Psi fraternity. He went on to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He worked as an electrical engineer on the Apollo Project at Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass., leading the team of engineers that developed the radar allowing astronauts in the lunar module to land on the moon and successfully return to the command module. A pipe organ enthusiast, he restored and installed in his home a Wurlitzer theater pipe organ, which he later donated to the Strand Theater in Plattsburg, NY. He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Louise Didlake Johnson; two sons, Stephen W. and Philip H. Johnson; two daughters, Cynthia J. Vatter and Beatrice J. Handy; and seven grandchildren.