Matthew Robert Gould
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution announces with great sorrow the death of employee Matthew Robert Gould on April 30, 2024, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston after a two-year battle with multiple myeloma. He was 67.
Matthew was born in 1956 in Portland, Maine, to his loving and quirky parents Charles and Marilyn Gould. As a true middle child, Matthew flew under the radar, but was no stranger to a prank or two with his beloved siblings Charlie, Barbara, and Jamie.
A born mechanic and master tinkerer, he loved to fix cars and any machine he could get his hands on. When he graduated from high school, Matthew headed straight to Cape Cod to join his big cousin Pup by taking a job at WHOI in 1975. Matt began his WHOI career as a junior oiler. In 1975, he was promoted to a laboratory assistant in the AOP&E Department. Throughout his long tenure at WHOI, he was promoted several times and retired in 2016 as a senior engineering assistant. In 2018, he was rehired on a casual basis in the G&G Department.
At a wedding, when someone asked him what he did for work, a bit tipsy, Matt replied, “I make the scientists’ dreams come true.” None of us could really tell you what our Renaissance man’s exact job title was or precisely what he did because he did a bit of everything. He tended the small boat fleet for many years, worked somewhere called the pressure test facility, and his engineering skills took him all over the world: Kenya, Panama, Hawaii, Singapore and too many places to name. Matt spent many years working on research ships, crossing the equator, and sleeping in bunks that barely held his 6’ 4” frame. He especially enjoyed the little secret candy bars that Davien, his wife of just shy of forty-five years, would sneak into his luggage.
Davien was the absolute love of his life. They met at the Leeside in Woods Hole in 1976 and were married in the Chapel at St. Barnabas on Main Street in 1979 (Matthew and his brothers and father, all proud Scotsmen, wore kilts in their Gould family tartan). He could not have been prouder of his two daughters Louisa and Morgan, and Morgan’s dear partner Michael. It’s hard to describe the incredible father and husband he was. No paragraph could contain his gentleness, kindness, humor, warmth, and absolute acceptance of everyone around him. He was the least judgmental, the most practical, the best brother, friend, uncle, neighbor, mentor, helper, and hugger. And who could forget his distinct hearty laugh? Matt and Davien truly were soulmates and partners in all things. Their life together was a hilarious, tight knit, never-ending musical theater duet that regularly spilled onto the stage at the Falmouth Theatre Guild, the other love of Matt’s life. As a Lifetime Member for over forty years, Matt delighted in everything from serving as Board President, to lights and sound, to building sets, to producing, to cleaning toilets. When it snowed, he’d take his snow blower up there before doing his own driveway. An accomplished actor with a signature booming voice, his favorite roles included Harold Hill in The Music Man, The Baker in The Baker’s Wife, Bernardo in West Side Story, Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, Lazar Wolf in Fiddler on the Roof (twice!), Georges in La Cage Aux Folles, and Frankenstein’s Monster in Young Frankenstein, directed by Davien, who was no stranger to giving him direction onstage and off. Who could ever forget Matt tap dancing in seven-inch platform shoes to “Puttin’ on the Ritz?”
We will miss our gentle giant, oil-stained cargo shorts, Hawaiian shirts and all. Who will we call when we can’t figure out why the car is making a rattling sound, or what to do with a leaky faucet? Who will show up with a belly laugh and a hammer if you need a hand? Falmouth lost an absolute legend. Our family lost our rock, our best friend, and all-around favorite guy. Our only solace is that he knew he was loved, not just by us, but by so very many of you, who have supported us so deeply these past two years.
Visitation will take place on Saturday, May 11, from 1-4 p.m. at Chapman Funerals & Cremations, 584 West Falmouth Highway, West Falmouth, MA.
In lieu of flowers, we know Matt would want every penny to go to The Falmouth Theatre Guild, and if he were here, he would know exactly how they should spend it. Falmouth Theatre Guild, P.O. Box 383 Falmouth, MA 02541 or falmouththeatreguild.org. Please write in the notes that your gift is in honor of Matthew Gould.
Information for this obituary is from the Chapman Funeral Home