John ‘Jack’ Ritchie Jr.

SALISBURY — John “Jack” Ritchie Jr., 97, died on Nov. 8, 2018, in Salisbury at Noble Horizons, where he and his wife, Sue, had lived since 2005.

He was the son of Constance (Tyrrell) and John Ritchie. 

Jack grew up in Winnetka, Ill., graduated in 1939 from North Shore Country Day School, then Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., in 1943 with a BA in mathematics. After World War II he returned to Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., on the GI Bill, receiving a BS in electrical engineering. He was elected to the engineering honorary Tau Beta Pi, and later earned an MBA from Pace University in New York.

He joined the Army Air Force right after graduating from Wesleyan, was commissioned a second lieutenant and communications officer in the Army Air Force, then attended the Harvard/MIT Radar course  and, at Eglin Field, Fla., the Radar Countermeasures Program.

Overseas, he was in the Asia-Pacific Theater with the 21st Bomber Command based on the island of Tinian in the Marianas Islands. He was the group countermeasures officer and then, as a captain, the group radar officer assisting in planning and flying missions against Japan and maintaining radar equipment for the group’s 60 B-29’s. 

He was awarded the Air Medal and three Theater ribbons and his group received a distinguished unit citation.

Jack and Susan Jane Scott Fulmer were married July 1, 1950, in the Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, N.Y., a marriage of 68 years.

During his career he worked for three companies, General Electric, Link Aviation and IBM, living in Syracuse, Binghamton, and Pleasantville, N.Y., Atlanta, Ga., and Tokyo, Japan. Programs of which he was a manager or an engineering participant were relative to airborne radar, commercial communications and microwave, the Apollo Mission Simulator, market research and for two years in strategic planning in the IBM Asia/ Pacific Group for the 17 countries in the region where IBM did business. He also taught for a year on the IBM Faculty Loan Program as the IBM Visiting Professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

He and Sue were very active in organizations and nonprofit businesses that benefited people with disabilities. In Binghamton they started a chapter of the New York Association for Brain-Injured Children. For several years Jack taught the “Family to Family” course sponsored by the National Alliance for the Mentally III (NAMI). He was heavily involved in starting and building the Planned Lifetime Assistance Network of Connecticut (PLAN of Connecticut, Inc.), an organization that manages trusts for people with disabilities. Jack was board president for 11 years. 

Also, while living in Westchester County he served on the Board of Cooperative Educational Services for eight years, three as its president.

The family were members of the Congregational Church of Salisbury, which he served as a trustee. He was also active with the Salisbury Democratic Town Committee.

Along with his wife, he is also survived by his two sons, Matthew and Scott; his daughter, Marylyn; his sister, Alice Fitz Charles; and several nieces and nephews.

Memorial services will be held at the Congregational Church in Salisbury on Saturday, Dec. 1, at 11 a.m. 

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be sent to the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, directed to the “PLAN of Connecticut Fund,” 10 Columbus Blvd., 8th Floor, Hartford, CT 06106. 

Interment will be private. The Kenny Funeral Home has care of arrangements.