John Elkhardt Dulfer ’50

John Elkhardt Dulfer ’50 died on December 24, 2006, at his home in Melbourne Beach, Florida.

Born on March 1, 1929, in Boston, Mass., he prepared for college at Crosby High School in Belfast and at Brunswick High School and became a member of Zeta Psi Fraternity at Bowdoin. Following his graduation in 1950, he joined the U.S. Air Force and became a pilot of a F-86 Sabre jet plane and engaged in combat missions in the Korean conflict. He was also an instructor in flying at the Laredo Air Force Base in Texas and remained in the Air Force until his retirement as a lieutenant colonel. In 1962, he received a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and a bachelor of science degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He was a systems engineer with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C., for many years and retired in 1971 as a lieutenant colonel. He was an information systems consultant in Washington, D.C., for six years before moving to Florida and joining the Harris Corporation in Melbourne. In 1978, he started Independent Telecom Consulting, which he continued until 1995, when he retired. Surviving are his wife, Julia Lee Roberts Dulfer, whom he married in 1965; two sons, Stephen Dulfer and James Dulfer; three grandsons; and a sister, Lydia Chater.