John Torkelson

I met JT in 1984 at Shared a year after he and others started the company. It was a great environment to be there at the start of a successful company. I remember early on that if I got stuck on something just go spend 5 minutes with John and the problem was solved. We would go grab a cup of coffee to which he would add a teaspoon of instant coffee and he would point me in the right direction. It was fun to get to know him better and find out about his great sense of humor and that he...

John was the first technical powerhouse that I met in my career, and I have used him to judge the merits of technical pretenders ever since. It was amazing to watch him think, and to know that he was going places with his mind that I could never reach. For me, this most often happened when I was in his office, and he was seated at his desk, with masses of paper between him and me. I would describe a technical problem; he would think and stare, and then reach deep into the paper pile, pull out...

John was certainly among only a handful of people who I count as having had an impact on my life. His judgement and advice were always helpful and welcome, both during my time at SFS and, in later years, when we worked together on several intitiaves. He will leave a vacuum and I will miss him.

I had the privilege of working with JT at Shared Financial as my first job out of college. Because of his excellent business sense and success in building a company with worldwide reach, I was able to travel the world, make many lifelong friends and start a great career. I owe much of who I am as a professional to John Torkelson, and he will be missed.

John kind of revolutionized the flow of transaction processing... he moved it from the world of Klunk to the world of Wow. He took transaction processing from where it was to where it needed to be.

I met JT in August of 1990 when I joined Shared Financial; he actually happened to be at the office at 07:30 when I walked in and gave me a warm welcome. At 23 years old at the time I never even realized who he was within the company; he was just so nice to me. Years later he told me how he admired the fact that I showed up so early to work on my first day.
I met John again around 2001, when we happened to be attending a conference together and had kept up with him since. The last few...

I had the pleasure of working with John from Australia and enjoyed the experience immensely.

The payments industry has lost one of its great characters and is much poorer because of it and whilst I have had little or no contact with John recently I still feel an enormous loss at his passing.

He will be missed.

It is hard to find the words to express the deep respect I have for John. Working with him at Shared Financial Systems was definitely one of the highlights of my career. He could be a little intimidating because he was so smart, but I found that he had a great dry sense of humor and I enjoyed 'trying' to to joke around with him some, because I always enjoyed talking with him about things that weren't work related. I sometimes think about how much I enjoyed the good old days at Shared...

Chris and family; It was my honor and pleasure to work with John in the very early days of BancTec. I had to sell the software he was designing for our early products. Thank heavens it worked most of the time, and when it didn't I could always count on him and JP to get it fixed quickly. He was always a gentleman in every way. He will be greatly missed.