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This story was corrected on July 30, 2009. An explanation of the correction is at the end of the story

Longtime Burtonsville resident and community activist Stuart Rochester died at his home Wednesday after a decade-long battle with skin cancer. He was 63.

Rochester worked tirelessly with the East County Citizens Advisory Board advocating on matters concerning Burtonsville and the surrounding communities of eastern Montgomery County for many years. He was also chairman of the Fairland Master Plan Citizens Advisory Committee, which laid out zoning, transportation and environmental recommendations for Burtonsville over the next 30 years.

Reached at her home in Burtonsville on Thursday morning, his wife, Shelley Rochester, said her husband was modest in his accomplishments and said before his death that he did not want grand recognition for his service to the community.

"For all of his outspokenness and all of the hard work and long, long hours that he put in to the community, he did not want any kind of major formal recognition," she said.

Rochester was diagnosed with melanoma, a malignant form of skin cancer, about a decade ago, she said. Shelley Rochester said the treatment process dragged along slowly until about three years ago when his cancer worsened. After seeing "every hospital, every doctor" and receiving "every treatment," she said they were told on July 4 there was nothing modern medicine could do for him. Rochester was given a month to live.

Friends and colleagues who worked with Rochester on a daily basis on neighborhood committees say he possessed unique skills to organize people with broad viewpoints.

Sammie Young, who worked with Rochester for four years on the recent Fairland Master Plan, said Rochester was one of the most knowledgeable people in Burtonsville about the planning process, a skill that others respected whether they agreed with them or not.

"There are not many issues Stuart didn't get involved with," Young said. "But his basic objective was the betterment of this community."

From fighting a fertilizer plant that tried to set up shop in Burtonsville in the 1980s, to finding middle ground between residents and county officials on the Intercounty Connector highway that is to run through Burtonsville, to supporting the move of Washington Adventist Hospital from Takoma Park to White Oak, Rochester was always in the thick of things, Young said.

Days before his death, Rochester submitted written testimony to the County Council opposing a storage unit site that wants to move to Burtonsville.

"Right to the bitter end he was active," Young said.

When he was not working in Burtonsville, Rochester was a historian for the Department of Defense in Washington, D.C.

In his spare time, Rochester co-wrote a book, "Honor Bound: The History of American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973," with his defense colleague Frederick Kiley in 1999. The Journal of American History called it "the most definitive book to date about the American prisoner-of-war experience in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War era."

His background in history may have contributed to his knowledgeable, even-keeled approach to most community problems, said Stanley Doore, a longtime friend of Rochester who served on the East County Citizens Advisory Board with him.

"He was able to look at both sides," Doore said.

Doore said the last time he saw Rochester was at an advisory board economic development committee meeting several weeks ago. Rochester was as lively as ever and gave no hint he was dying, Doore said.

"Boy, he'll be missed," he said.

Shelley Rochester said her husband would want to be remembered for "his integrity, his principal, his honesty, his forthrightness, his reliability, his sense of responsibility to family and to the community."

The funeral service for Rochester will be held 11 a.m. Friday at Tikvat Israel Congregation, 2200 Baltimore Road in Rockville.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported that Rochester served on the East County Citizens Advisory Board.