Obituary: Tristate Electrical Supply's John Waltersdorf
John Waltersdorf, former owner of Tristate Electric Supply, Hagerstown, Md., passed away on Sept. 2. He is survived by one son, John G. Waltersdorf of Hagerstown; three daughters, Elizabeth Grayson Oldfather of Philadelphia; Margaret Waltersdorf and Roberta Annan Waltersdorf both of Hagerstown; and three grandchildren.
Over the past 60 years, Waltersdorf was one of the electrical wholesaling industry's most respected leaders. He was president of National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) from 1970-1971 and served as the president and chairman of the board of trustees for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW) from 1974-1976. Waltersdorf also received the James H. McGraw Award for Electrical Men for Research Leadership in Distributor Data-Processing in 1975, and the 1997 GEM Award for Electrical Distributors from Electrical Wholesaling.
He was a true renaissance man with a wide variety of interests outside the electrical industry. In addition to serving in dozens of volunteer positions in the electrical and distribution industries and in his local community and receiving degrees from Yale and the University of Chicago, Waltersdorf official photographer with "Operation High Jump," the last expedition led by Admiral Richard E. Byrd to the South Pole, according to his Baltimore Sun obituary. The film shot on this expedition was used in "Secret Land" which won the Academy Award Best Documentary Film of the Year in 1949.
Walterdorf was also a mentor and good industry friend to several generations of editors at Electrical Wholesaling magazine and we will miss him.
About the Author
Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.