Prof. Craig W. Fontaine of North Adams, MA, died at home on Jan 7, 2023 after a long illness.
Craig grew up in Largo, Florida where he excelled in the high school sports of Track and Field, and Football, eventually winning a scholarship to play for Auburn University. He later transferred to Florida State University, where he was selected as an OSHA Scholar in the field of his eventual Ph.d., Human Factor Engineering (Applied Experimental Psychology). During this time, he met and married Carole Rader in 1972. After graduation, they moved to New Haven, CT, where Carole attended Yale University, earning a Master’s Degree in Religion. Working the Night Shift in a chemical plant to supplement scholarship money, Craig experienced first hand the way workers were systematically disempowered in dangerous settings.
After graduation, the Fontaines then moved to the Research Triangle in North Carolina, where Craig pursued a Ph.D. In Ergonomics from North Carolina State University, while Carole obtained a Ph.D. In Religion at Duke University.
Moving to Newton, MA, the Fontaines began their varied and deeply fulfilling careers. Craig designed an award winning keyboard for Digital Equipment Corporation. In this first generation of the personal computer, his keyboard gave users the option of using a self-contained numerical keypad off to the right of the alphabet keys. Similarly, he served as consultant to numerous companies, including the state of Connecticut, medical supply companies, and upscale hair salons on Boston’s fashionable Newberry Street, before accepting a position at Combustion Engineering/ABB, and later, EMC. During this period, he overhauled nuclear power control rooms, maximizing safety procedures nationally after the Three Mile Island accident. An Expert Witness with a high Security Clearance for the US Government, he testified before Select Committees in Congress and revamped nuclear power containment procedures, often being choppered into various U.S. sites during emergencies (not reported to the public).
One supervisor at a for-profit power plant commented that the team always requested Craig for such situations since “we know you’re not going to cave to vendors who want to go cheap rather than safe”. At EMC, he was deployed internationally, founding a training program in Irish facilities, where he was noted for his special attention to the needs of employees who were mothers.
During his corporate period with Fortune 500 companies, he began teaching at University of Massachusetts in their first distance learning video class in Industrial Engineering. He was a special favorite with military students as far away as the Persian Gulf, Newfoundland, Greenland and the waters between Alaska and Russia. He continued to love teaching, adding Northeastern University, Worcester Polytechnic, and women’s colleges in Boston, and North Carolina to his slate. At Northeastern, he developed the very popular online MBA program in Organizational Psychology. Craig’s mantra continued to be, in every case, “We can make the work places safe..it’s the management and workers who need the attention to context required to make work safe.”
A lifetime lover of knowledge, Tonkinese cats, and the Florida State Seminoles football team, Craig was an animated professor, and a longtime feminist male role model. He carried all five sets of Carole’s two volume dissertation all over Duke University on a blazingly hot day to meet the final deadlines, did statistical analysis on her grammatical findings, and drove through the night to meet a delayed flight from an archaeological excavation abroad, making the Durham, NC to NYC round trip in less than 24 hours, in order to take advantage of a special rental deal. Even more impressive, Craig often accompanied his wife of 50 years on her human rights work with Muslim women, usually winding up seated with the women and children. Whether handling the digital equipment for a speech in the House of Lords, funding trips to present at the United Nations, ferrying international visitors from the notorious Boston Airport, he was a gentle, genial, steady presence in his support of global women’s rights.
At the end, a hospice nurse asked, while filling out his death certificate - "I just have to know: was he always such a nice man, or did the illness have this effect on him?"
"No, he started out like this," was the reply.
He is much missed by his wife, his cats Taffy, Maisy, and Cooper, his friends, his former colleagues, and students. May peace be upon him.