Thomas Wilton Owens, a former electrical engineer who restored and operated Howard County's historic Cider Mill Farm where patrons came for years to purchase freshly pressed apple cider and homemade fruit pies, died of pneumonia April 28 at Sanctuary Holy Cross, a Burtonsville nursing home. He was 80.
Mr. Owens was born at home in Glendale Heights and later moved to Clifton Avenue with his family.
He dropped out of Polytechnic Institute in 1946 and enlisted in the Marine Corps. He served in China and also earned his General Educational Development certificate.
After being discharged in 1949, Mr. Owens joined the W.G. Wade Shows, a Springfield, Ohio, traveling carnival.
"He told me stories of dropping out and running away with the carnival, where he ran a stand where people had to watch the 'crazy red bouncing red ball' and 'where it lands,' " said his daughter, Alison Taylor Owens of Towson.
" 'You pick the number ... the ball picks the winner.' I still have his speech memorized to this day," Ms. Owens said.
Mr. Owens rejoined the Marine Corps and served a second tour of duty from 1950 to 1953.
He enrolled at the Johns Hopkins University on the GI Bill of Rights, where he earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. He later did graduate work in the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars.
Mr. Owens began working in 1958 for Bendix Radio in Towson and in 1967 became a staff engineer at Scientific Data Systems in Rockville.
From the mid-1970s until retiring a decade later, he worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.
"Tom was a brilliant man. He was particularly good at math and the physical sciences, and if it hadn't been for him, I never would have passed chemistry at Hopkins," said John E. Cooper, a boyhood friend and college classmate, who is research curator of crustaceans at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences research laboratory in Raleigh.
"As I recall, he was one of the first people to enter the field of computer usage in medicine," he said.
In 1970, Mr. Owens' mother, Elsie Taylor Owens, purchased Landing Road Cider Mill, a 59-acre farm and apple orchard in Elkridge. The business had been founded in 1916 by Frederick "Fritz" Kelly, the son of Dr. Howard A. Kelly, a founder of Johns Hopkins Hospital.
After the 5,000-tree apple orchard he had planted matured, Mr. Kelly began operating a cider mill that attracted a loyal Howard County clientele, who came to the farm and purchased cider until its closing in 1969.
