In Memoriam - Frederick Albert Wolfe

Frederick Albert Wolfe was born in West Orange NJ in 1930. The third child of Frederick Augustus and Helen Wolfe. He is survived by his wife of 70 years, Dolores Pfeffer (Lorry), two sons Frederick Andrew with wife Lisa and Jeffery Douglas with wife Dori and four grandchildren and eight great-grands.

He was fortunate to grown up in a large extended family of multi-generations that instilled in him a very deep tie to family and tradition. Early on he was aware that he was the oldest son of an oldest son going back four generations to the first Wolfe to arrive in America from Germany in the mid 1800’s.

That tie to his ancestry has been a very significant part of his life.

Fred attended Lehigh University for two years and then transferred to Rochester Institute of Technology where he majored in Printing Management. He married Lorry in 1953, served in the Korean War from ’54 to ’56 and graduated on the GI Bill from RIT in 1958.

His career in the field of printing led from a position with the Burroughs Corporation as a plant manager to employment as assistant to the president of a NYC check printing firm to vice-president of a national business forms company. He then owned and operated his own printing company followed by eight years teaching commercial arts at a vocational high school. During much of this time he participated in a national lecture tour instructing and teaching printing management skills.

During his time in the field of printing he was one of the early innovators in the printing of checks with MICR encoding. The plant he managed supplied many of the NYC banks with personalized encoded checks on a two-day delivery cycle. Later he applied the fast turnaround production procedures to the personalized business forms part of the industry.

After his career in printing Fred led a varied working life raising beef cattle, manufacturing large-scale, ride-on wooden toys, and running a country store in Vermont.

He was always active in his community. A few of the civic duties and activities included Boy Scout leader, town finance committee chairman, planning boards, 911 Co-coordinator, member and president of Rotary Club, Lions Club and Chamber of Commerce and founder of the Family Place in Chester, Vermont. He was instrumental in strengthening the Unitarian Universalist churches in Chester and Strafford, Vermont.

From standing on a street corner every Wednesday for a year and a half to protest the Iraq War to being arrested in Washington, DC protesting the drilling for oil in Alaska, he was willing to actively live out his beliefs and feelings. Climate change brought out his compassion for all living things and his concern for the Earth that is being handed down to his grandkids and great grandkids.

He loved traveling, reminiscing often about the round the world trip by backpack that he and Lorry took after the Korean War. He also loved teaching his family about backyard farming and being the village Santa Claus.