Obituaries

George L. J. DalferesAerospace Executive

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George L. J. Dalferes, 83, an Air Force colonel and vice president of government affairs for Martin Marietta Corp., died of congestive heart failure Sept. 8 at Inova Loudoun Hospital. He lived in Sterling.

Col. Dalferes represented the aerospace corporation in Washington for 17 years until his retirement in 1990.

He then consulted for the industry and NASA and served as legislative counsel for President George H.W. Bush's 1990 Stafford commission, which looked at long-term goals in space.

He was born in Warsaw and lived in Poland, Germany and France through his father's work as vice consul with the U.S. State Department in Warsaw and then Hamburg. He became fluent in four languages.

At the outset of World War II, his family came to the United States aboard a ship that was briefly threatened by a German U-boat. He graduated from Louisiana State University. He was commissioned into the Army and served as an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon leader in the 84th Infantry Division. He participated in the Battle of the Bulge, helped liberate a German concentration camp and, after the war, served in occupied Germany.

Col. Dalferes then returned to LSU, where he received a bachelor of laws degree in 1949 and began to practice law. But he was recalled to the military in 1952 and served in the Air Force as an aide to the commander of the Alaskan Command.

He and his wife, also an Air Force officer, were stationed in Colorado, Alabama, Washington and the Philippines. Col. Dalferes received a master of laws degree from Georgetown University in 1965 and graduated from the War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala., in 1967.

He served in the Judge Advocate General's Corps in Colorado Springs and in the Philippines. His final assignment in Washington was as deputy assistant to the secretary of Defense for legislative affairs.

Upon his Air Force retirement in 1973, he joined Martin Marietta. In 1985, he received the NASA Michoud Award for his work on the space shuttle fuel tank program. He retired in 1990.

Maj. Dalferes was past-president of the local chapter of the Air Force Association and the local chapter of the National Security Industrial Association. In retirement, he was board chairman of DCI Communications Inc.

He became a member of Tantallon Yacht Club in Fort Washington and later joined the Occoquan Yacht Club. His last boat, the Cracker Jack 29, is named for his World War II call sign and is berthed at Solomons Island.

He was a past-president and board member of the Nyumbani USA programs, which care for abandoned and orphaned HIV-positive children in Nairobi.