Obituaries

Jean Z. Pfeiffer Organist

Jean Z. Pfeiffer, 91, an organist at Roberts Memorial United Methodist Church in Alexandria and the assistant organist at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in Springfield during the 1970s and 1980s, died of sepsis Oct. 9 at Carriage Hill of Bethesda nursing home. She was a resident of the Mount Vernon section of Fairfax County.

Mrs. Pfeiffer moved to the Washington region in 1946 and worked as a fashion illustrator at Raleighs department store in the District for several years. During the 1960s, she volunteered for the Virginia Democratic Party and was a vice president and precinct operations chairman in the Mount Vernon district.

Jean Adele Zacharias, a native of Jacksonville, Fla., attended Florida State College for Women, now Florida State University, and the American School of Design in New York, to which she moved in the late 1930s. She was a fashion illustrator for the Wanamaker department store in New York in the early 1940s.

She was a member of the American Guild of Organists.

Her husband of 58 years, Paul N. Pfeiffer, died in 2000.

Survivors include two children, Andrea Pfeiffer of Brooklyn, N.Y., and David Pfeiffer of Fairfax County; and four grandchildren.

-- Lauren Wiseman

Peter T. Sintetos Weather Instrument Maker

Peter T. Sintetos, 87, who designed and built instruments for the National Weather Service, died Oct. 18 of heart disease at his home in Wheaton.

Peter Theodore Sintetos was born in the District and graduated from Roosevelt High School. He worked as an instrument maker at the Washington Navy Yard before World War II and served in the Navy during the war.

After the war, he worked at the Navy Yard for a few years before joining what was then called the Weather Bureau. He designed and made weather vanes and other precision instruments, including devices for measuring rainfall and snowfall. Some of his instruments were used for meteorological research at the North Pole. He retired in 1977.

Mr. Sintetos lived in Silver Spring for many years and was a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church in the District.

Survivors include his wife of 59 years, Gloria Pensiero Sintetos of Wheaton; three sons, Anthony Sintetos of Winslow, Maine, Christopher Sintetos of Bethesda and Theodore Sintetos of Rockville; a sister, Shea Sintetos of Bethesda; and eight grandchildren.

-- Matt Schudel