Heber MacWilliams

Heber MacWilliams III, age 81 of Shaker Heights, OH, passed peacefully at Hospice of the Western Reserve on October 26, 2025. Loving father of Diana C. Danner (Ray) of Cleveland Heights, OH; devoted grandfather of Morgan J. Danner; dear brother of Michael MacWilliams (Gayle) of Columbia, MD.

Heber MacWilliams III was born November 26, 1943, to Heber Jr. and Audrey Mae (Loveless) MacWilliams in Washington, D.C. He was raised in North Beach, MD, a small resort community on the Chesapeake Bay. His brother Michael was born in 1946 and the boys shared a bunk bed in their tiny bedroom in a bungalow on the very north edge of town. Heber spent his time outside of school exploring the nearby swamp and swimming in the Bay.

In 1953, seeking a community with a good Catholic school, the family purchased nine-and-a-half acres fronting Broadwater Creek in Churchton, MD. The property was known as The Willows, due to six willow trees planted along the waterfront by the prior owner. The farm-like property included walnut and pear trees, which provided ammunition to the boys for their nautical war games. A series of hurricanes in 1954 and 1955 destroyed the willow trees, so Heber Jr. took his elder son’s suggestion and renamed their home Nirvana – a place of perfect peace and happiness.

Heber learned a lot of practical skills at Nirvana including crabbing, boating, carpentry, electrical, mechanical, farming, and animal husbandry. He took his 16-foot sailboat out of Broadwater Creek and into Chesapeake Bay, enjoying the intellectual mastery of wind and tide.

The boys raised chickens and sheep and in 1957, Heber won a cow from the Kiwanis Club that he named “Sputnik”. She gave three gallons of milk per day that the boys would strain through cheesecloth and put into the fridge or give to neighbors. When Heber enrolled in Gonzaga High School, 40 miles away in Washington, D.C., he traded Sputnik’s milk for a daily ride into the city.

Heber’s career did not take a prescribed path. His first job was delivering the Washington Post on his bicycle to neighbors in Broadwater when he was 10 years old. When he was 11, his maternal grandfather, Bernard Loveless, Sr., a professional electrician, gave young Heber a multi-function electronics breadboard kit. This new interest led to a passion for ham radio as well as radio and TV repair and a summer job in 1964 working at the Naval Research Laboratory at Chesapeake Beach.

Heber graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD in 1965. He continued his schooling with an MBA in Operations Research from NYU, where he learned computer programming when the field was in its infancy, and then taught graduate courses at NYU while pursuing a Ph.D. with majors in Economics and Statistics.

In 1973, while working on his dissertation, he took a position as Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Business at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH.  Consulting work led to a career change from professor to private business when Heber accepted an offer to become a Principal at the Cleveland accounting firm Walthall & Drake in 1980. He continued to teach part-time in the MBA and Ph.D. programs at CWRU until 2003.

He began as a one-man consulting department at Walthall & Drake’s local Cleveland client base.  A connection at one such client, Olympic Steel, led to a final career transition when Heber joined Olympic as Chief Information Officer in 1994. He worked at Olympic until his retirement in 2007.

Heber’s passions included flying, genealogy, reading, watching “Jeopardy!”, and spending time with his family. While living in New York, he became interested in flying. As always, he put everything into his studies and quickly became a private pilot and then a commercial pilot. He flew all over the country and beyond, including memorable trips around Alaska, the Bahamas, and Prince Edward Island. He made a lifelong friendship with Larry Rohl at T&G Flying Club in Cleveland beginning in 1978 and helped him computerize T&G’s accounting system and buy their first computer.

In the late 1990s, Heber found another passion - genealogy. His pilot’s license was useful as he flew to small airfields across the country and also traveled to Ireland and Sweden pursuing his own family history as well as the genealogy of many friends and relatives.

His last flight was in 2021, just short of his 54th anniversary. He was proud to have made his goal of 3,000 hours in the air (actually 3,027.5 – he was a meticulous record-keeper) and flew with Diana for 477 of those hours. He spent his last years attending his grandson's baseball games and musical performances, as well as socializing with friends in his apartment building.

The family prefers that those who wish may make contributions in his name to Hospice of the Western Reserve, the Bayside History Museum in North Beach, MD, the Euclid Symphony Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire Baroque Orchestra, or Western Reserve Historical Society.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 11am on Saturday, November 8 at Church of the GESU, 2470 Miramar Rd, University Heights, OH 44118. Interment, Cedar Hill Cemetery, Suitland, MD. FRIENDS MAY CALL AT BROWN-FORWARD, 17022 CHAGRIN BLVD., SHAKER HEIGHTS, OH, ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7 FROM 6-8PM.