An amazing guy, and not much of an attention seeker. That he stayed at IBM all his productive work life (1968-2012) says something, especially as "His last position with IBM was field technical sales specialist."
I had a meeting with him (as a customer) in probably 2007. Super unassuming and humble guy. I had no idea who he was during the meeting until after, when I saw him get in his car with an XMODEM license plate and googled him and found the connection. RIP, Ward.