Photo credit: Cynthia Hyde Kinneaely
Capt. Benjamin Hyde
Taken in Florida, 1944.
Obituary
Benjamin D. Hyde, of Tenants Harbor, Maine, died peacefully on June 19th,
2004, at Cadigan Lodge, The Highlands, Topsham, ME. Born on April 17, 1916
in Boston, MA, he grew up in Dedham and Cohasset. He received his
electrical engineering degree from Harvard College in 1939. This member of
the generation to which the entire world is indebted, served in both
Atlantic and Pacific theaters, ending five years at sea as commanding
officer of the Destroyer Escort USS Bunch. Lieutenant Commander Hyde was
decorated with the legion of merit. Surviving shipmates still stay in
touch.
He married Mildred Hunter Brown of Cambridge, MA in 1947; they moved to Lincoln, MA in 1950, where they raised three children while coping with Mildred's paraplegia from the polio epidemic of 1952. They lived a full and fruitful life and, after retiring from Raytheon Co. as engineering manager in Research and Development, began spending summers in Tenant Harbor in 1968. They moved full time to Maine in 1990, wintering at The Highlands retirement community in Topsham, ME. His wife of 51 years died in 1998.
He was an avid small boat sailor and had cruised the east coasts of the USA and Canada for many summers, his first unsupervised cruise at the age of 15! Nothing pleased him more than poking around an old boat yard or chatting with a Down East old-timer. He was skilled at fine woodworking and made many pieces of Queen Anne and Shaker furniture, the dust of which lead to quite severe asthma in later life.
He is survived by sons Benjamin Dwight Hyde and wife, Pamela Veenstra, of Antrim, NH, Nathaniel Weare Hyde and wife, Nicola Plimpton Hyde, of West Bath, ME, daughter Cynthia Denise Kinnealey and husband, James Kinnealey, of South Hope, ME, sister Denise Wood and Husband, John C. Wood of Kennett Square, PA, and three grandchildren, Brittany, Jaimie, and Jessie Hyde of West Bath, ME. His ashes will be interred beside his wife's in Tenants Harbor with a few sprinkled over the two foot spot at Starboard Rock on Vinalhaven Island.
