John H. Fullerton

EXETER - John Hubbard Fullerton, 92, died of kidney failure at his home at Riverwoods in Exeter on Feb. 4, 2015.John was born in 1922 in Boston, the second of three boys born to the late Albert L. and Marjorie (Durling) Fullerton. He was raised in Roslindale, Mass., and was a scholarship student at the Roxbury Latin private school where he won academic honors and excelled at athletics as captain of the football, basketball and track teams. During those high school years, he was also hired by one of Boston's debutante organizations to teach ballroom dance.He attended Yale from 1941 to 1943, graduating magna cum laude with a degree in civil engineering. He graduated in only three years by attending classes year-round because he volunteered for a new accelerated program established by the U.S. Navy to develop engineers critically needed for the war effort.After graduation, he was commissioned as an officer in the Navy Seabees, put in charge of a division of enlisted men that spent 18 months on the island of Tinian building and maintaining airplane landing strips. From here the U.S. launched the planes that carried the atomic bombs that ended the war. He remained in the Navy reserves for 20 years, retiring as a lieutenant commander.After the war, John took a draftsman job at Jackson and Moreland, an engineering firm in Boston. He worked at that firm for 41 years, including during its mergers with United Engineers & Constructors and later with Raytheon. When he retired in 1987, he was the CEO of the General Engineering Division and his team won the contracts to design and build the prototype of the NASA Lunar Landing Module test facility, the NASA Electronics Research Center, Otis Air Force Base early warning Radar station on Cape Cod, supersonic test facilities for NASA at Langley field in Virginia, the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station in New Hampshire, and power plants at UMass Dartmouth, Babson and the Harvard Medical School.During a brief two-week leave between graduation and reporting for military duty, John married Olive "Pat" Dennen, his childhood sweetheart and a nursing student in Boston. She also enlisted and spent 18 months as an Army nurse in the Philippines. After returning from their military service, they lived in Reading, Mass., and Lynnfield, Mass., where they raised three children.John was chairman of the local chapter and of several national committees for the American Society of Civil Engineers. He wrote the building codes and was chairman of the town planning commissions in Lynnfield and Reading.He was passionate about hiking and the Appalachian Mountain Club, serving on the AMC camp committee and attending work weekends for the AMC Cold River Camp, where he had worked as a hiking guide, camp hand and cook during his high school years.He re-emerged as a nationally competitive rower after retiring. Starting in his 60's, he participated for many years in the Crash-B ergometer rowing races, always placing among the top 10 qualifiers in his age group, and winning that event once in his 80's.In 1995, two years after the passing of his first wife, John married Jeanne Elliott, another resident of Lynnfield, Mass. They moved to Riverwoods in Exeter in 2007.Family members include his wife, Jeanne; his children, Lynn Christensen, Jean Fullerton, David Fullerton, Lauren Moreton and Stephen Elliot; son-in-law Chris Christensen and daughter-in-law Pamela Strike Fullerton; his grandchildren, Kari Anderson and husband Eric, Jeff Christensen, John, Anastasia and George Fullerton, Stephanie Knott and husband David; great-grandchildren Clara and Caden Anderson, Lucy and Henry Knott; sisters-in-law Mary Fullerton and Connie Fullerton; and numerous nieces and nephews.

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SERVICES: A memorial service will be held in the Great Bay Room at Riverwoods, 7 Riverwoods Drive, Exeter, on Saturday, Feb. 7, at 1 p.m.In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Roxbury Latin School, 101 St. Theresa Ave., West Roxbury, MA 02132, or to Riverwoods.Burial will be in the Puritan Memorial Park, Peabody, Mass.