Allen J. “Bing” Bingham

FALMOUTH – Allen Bingham, known as “Bing”, passed away peacefully on Sept. 12, 2025, due to complications of Dementia. He was a resident of Ocean View’s Legacy memory care facility.

Bing was born March 15, 1932, son of Wellington H. and Neva S. Bingham. In 1956, he married Joanne “Jody” Owen of Milo, a former classmate at the University of Maine.

Bing graduated from Deering High School in 1950 having earned varsity letters in track, membership in the National Honor Society, and the Bausch and Lomb Science Award. He graduated in 1954 “With Distinction” from the University of Maine in Orono, where he was a member of Sigma Chi Fraternity and Tau Beta Pi, the National Honorary Engineering Society. His Sigma Chi brothers remained his close friends for over 70 years.

His engineering career with General Electric was interrupted by two years in the U.S. Army in 1955-1957. After Basic Training at Fort Dix, he served in the U.S. Army Ordnance Corp for two years at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Ala., where he worked in the Rocket Development Lab. He returned to General Electric where his career spanned 30 years. Field office assignments took him from Schenectady, N.Y. to Chicago, Ill. and Meriden, Conn., where he was initially an Electric Utility Application Engineer and later Manager of Power Generation Application Engineering. In 1975 he transferred to GE’s International Projects Dept. in New York City, N.Y. as an engineering manager. The projects included turnkey electric power generation plants in countries including Egypt, Indonesia, Argentina, Trinidad, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Zaire, and Algeria. In 1984 he returned to Schenectady to work in Environmental Engineering relating to power generation using unusual fuels such as agricultural waste, and automobile tires. He retired from GE in 1986.

He had brief respite from GE in the mid 1960s and worked for two years as a Senior Engineer for Middle West Service Company in Chicago, Ill. With Middle West, he traveled to Saudi Arabia and many other countries working on water and electric billing programs. Bing was a long-time member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and was a licensed Professional Engineer in Connecticut and Maine.

He and Jody moved to Riverside, Conn. in 1975 and became active sailors in the Greenwich Cove Racing Association, racing their Rhodes-18 sloop every weekend. During the 1970s the whole family cruised the waters of New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts in their 27-foot sloop. Bing and Jody were active members in the U.S. Power Squadron, where Bing took all the available courses, earning a “Full Certificate”, and taught the Advanced Piloting (Navigation) Course. Following retirement from GE, they moved to Waldoboro. He reentered the workforce working for the State Department of Environmental Protection in Augusta, responsible for managing the cleanup of State Designated Hazardous Waste sites (Maine’s equivalent to the National Superfund Program). He retired from the DEP in 1993.

Bing was active in the Newcastle Congregational Church and many committees in the church. Bing was very active member of the Woodfords Congregational Church, where Bing’s family were members in the 1930s through the 1950s. Bing served from 2006 to 2012 as chairman of the Real Property Committee, responsible for the operation and maintenance of the church. He then became building manager continuing and expanding his previous responsibilities.

Bing was an active member of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, the civilian branch of the U.S. Coast Guard in Bristol and South Portland. He had a 32-foot cruising lobster boat constructed, and offered the specially equipped boat to the Coast Guard Auxiliary as an “Operational Facility”. This designation made the boat available for Coast Guard Search and Rescue and other safety patrols.

In 1996, Bing and Jody returned to southern Maine, settling in Scarborough, but near enough to Portland to allow Bing and Jody to become active in their favorite activities. Here, Bing continued in the Coast Guard Auxiliary’s Casco Bay Flotilla, where he served as Flotilla and Division Aids to Navigation Staff Officer, and Flotilla Operations Staff Officer. In the later capacity he sailed his boat under CG Orders to Boston and Marblehead, Mass. to join 200 other Auxiliary, Coast Guard and Navy vessels escorting the USS Constitution on its historic 1997 voyage from Charleston to Marblehead, Mass. He worked closely with the Coast Guard’s Officer in Charge of OPSAIL 2000 in Portland preparing for the Millennium Tall Ships sail to major harbors in the Northeast. Bing taught the Auxiliary’s navigation and seamanship courses at Southern Maine Community College for many years while at the same time earning a Coast Guard Merchant Marine Master’s License. He and Jody traveled the Maine Coast exploring all that it had to offer.

Bing is survived by Jody, his wife of 69 years; two daughters, Jean Bingham of South Portland, Carol McClure and her husband Scott of New Harbor, and Allen Bradstreet of Stamford, Conn.; six grandchildren, Charles, Darryl and Jake Abbott and Nathalie Lukas, Charlotte McGee, and Evelyn McClure; and five great-grandchildren. Sisters Phyllis and Judith predeceased him.

His family knows him best as a smart and capable man, extremely organized and always ready to learn new things. He built a barn in his backyard for backyard chickens, created model train model of the Portland train system, took French lessons, and diving lessons, and learned how to sail, which became a passion of his throughout his life.

A memorial service will be in the Woodfords Congregational Church, in Portland, Nov. 8 at  2 p.m. He will be interred at Dutch Neck Cemetery in Waldoboro.

The family is extremely grateful for the kindness, thoughtfulness, patience and loving the entire staff at Ocean View, Falmouth, Gentiva Hospice and the Maine Medical Center staff on P6 provided to Bing.

In lieu of flowers

or cards, please consider

a donation to the:

Alzheimer’s Association

in memory of Bing