Walt passed away on Saturday the 7th of January.  He suffered a severe heart attack at his home in Manassas VA and died at a local hospital.  He will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery on 24 February.  Walt became a Naval Officer on graduation from Villanova.

 

Walt joined Page in the very early 70's and left in the late 70's or early 80's.  Following Page he was with TCAS  and also worked for a telecom company in Dublin.  He retired from MITRE in the 90's. In retirement he followed one of his many avocations and became a locally well known wine expert holding wine tastings and lectures in the area

 

Walt was an excellent engineer with a gift of explaining some of the most complex of transmission theories to many of us.  I recall his teaching an informal after hours course on troposcatter.  He came to Page from London where he was an independent  broadcast consultant with a talent rarely seen in the US, that of a broadcast array designer.  I think he, Porter Houston and Bob Baluta were the last of that breed.  His skills extended well beyond broadcast arrays however and he used them to great advantage in many areas of communications throughout his career

 

Walt worked in Rio de Janeiro  with me on the Sumare Mountain study and many other projects I cannot now recall.  I remember his being a key contributor to a number of proposals and marketing efforts in the Middle East, principally due to his being able to bring technical material to life in an interesting, informative and technically sound way. As someone at Page once said, Walt was indeed a class act.

 

I know all who knew Walt will be saddened and perhaps others can recall more of his Page efforts than can I at this moment.  I particularly will miss Walt as we shared a birth month and year (Feb 1935- Walt was 70 as am I) and we dined together each February at Da Domenico at Tyson's Corner as we had done many times when we were at Page.  Walt and Joanne were at the house the Saturday before he died where we planned a Da Domenico celebration of our 71st.  I believe Walt would have wanted us to do so even without him.  We shall and will raise our glasses to our dear departed friend.

 

 Tom Minton