Ken Iliff, husband of Mary Shafer, died one week ago:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstron...pioneer-passes

There was significant overlap in careers.

I only knew him through his writing. His book 'From Runway to Orbit' was an excellent read, yet a small fraction of his legacy. The title he picked for his epilogue was Stairway To Heaven (https://books.google.com/books?id=8QLGRq793Y4C&pg=PA339)
One might imagine that this is his current activity.

I hope those close to him are handling the loss ok. Ken and Mary met while at grad school in UCLA right around the peak of the Apollo Program.

His book is about his aerospace career, but he also tells the story of how when the first internet message was sent from UCLA, he was sitting two offices away:

"To me, it seemed like a very peculiar thing to do, breaking up what a computer could do very well by itself into little packets, shipping them to other computers, and having other computers reassemble the packets and do the work." "I've always remembered that event as something I probably should have given a little more attention." (from p115,pdf135of424)

~ CT