Peter Pflasterer

Peter Wood Pflasterer
August 3, 1947 - September 22, 2013
Raleigh
Peter Wood Pflasterer, 34-year resident of Raleigh, died at 1:50 a.m. on Sunday, September 22, 2013, four months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was 66.
Peter was known by those close to him as a man who could do anything. He found time to apply his sharp mind and passionate soul to many interests in the backdrop of an impactful career in electronic engineering. Peter was a wizard of circuit design, and through his talent and leadership he became admired in his field as one of the elite engineers of his generation. He is listed as inventor on four U.S. patents, including the first crystalless scanning radio receiver. He started two telecommunications companies, including JPS Communications, Inc., which became a leader in the realm of radio interoperability and continues to thrive in Raleigh as a subsidiary of Raytheon Company.
Peter had a lifelong passion for the visual arts, especially fine art photography, for which he possessed a great talent and left behind an impressive body of work. Music was also central to his life; he was always listening to it and found joy in every genre he discovered. He was an accomplished drummer from early on and later picked up other instruments.
Peter was born August 3, 1947 in Nashville, Tennessee to Edward Brown Pflasterer and Louise Wood Pflasterer. They soon moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee where Peter grew up. His mother Louise was a trained chiropractor who later became a watercolor artist of local renown in eastern Tennessee. His father Edward was working as a physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory when he died in 1955, leaving Louise and an 8-year-old Peter on their own. The eight years Peter spent with his father became a lifetime of influence, as he had already developed interests in photography and science as well as a love for railroads. He spent much of his early years experimenting with chemistry, physics, and electric circuits, absorbing technical textbooks like a prodigy.
At age 16, armed with self-taught technical skills, Peter landed a job at Tennelec, a nuclear test equipment company, working part time during high school and college. After two years at the University of Tennessee, he quit school to work full-time. Peter quickly rose to full Engineer after developing an innovation that impressed Tennelec's founder, Edward Fairstein, who became Peter's most important mentor and a lifelong friend.
Peter met Dasleigh Kalina in Houston, Texas in 1969, and they got engaged just two weeks later. They married on Valentine's Day in 1970; the marriage lasted over 43 years-the rest of Peter's life. In 1976, their first son, Jeremy, was born.
Earlier in 1976, Tennelec had disbanded, so Peter and two partners founded Digital Designs, Inc., a company that produced the first digitally-tuned radio receiver, of Peter's design. A lack of investment capital doomed the company from the start, however, and it folded in 1978.
The following year, Peter moved the family to Raleigh and joined Mackay Communications, then a division of ITT. In 1981, Peter and Dasleigh's second son, Benjamin, was born. Peter's career began to thrive. He served as Mackay's VP of Engineering for most of the '80s, under close friend and mentor Alan Finkel. Peter would later call those years the best of his life.
In 1988, Peter and two other ambitious engineers, Donald K. Scott, Jr. and J. Thomas Jacks, left Mackay to found JPS Communications, with Peter serving as President. The new company grew quickly, offering a variety of products that lured customers ranging from amateur radio operators to the U.S. Department of Defense. Eventually, JPS's mainstay became radio interoperability. In the post-9/11 era, JPS was recognized for making a contribution to the "war on terror" for its aid to governmental first-responders.
Throughout Peter's tenure at JPS, he and his management team were seen by their employees as responsible, caring leaders. In 2002, Peter and the other JPS shareholders sold to Raytheon after ensuring no layoffs and that the company would not be moved. A few years later, Peter began his hard-earned retirement.
Sadly, his retirement was too brief, but it was highlighted by the time he spent with his wife at their peaceful mountain house near Blowing Rock, NC. He stayed active, building tube amps and speakers, photographing, painting, mentoring his children, and playing with his grandchildren.
Peter is survived by his wife Dasleigh, son Jeremy and his wife Shannon; grandson Jeremy Jr., son Benjamin and his wife Sarah, and granddaughters Ruby and Grace, all of Raleigh.
The body was cremated. A memorial service will be held on Sep. 28 at 4 p.m. at Brown-Wynne on Millbrook Road. Burial will take place at Oakwood Cemetery at a later date.
The family encourages memorials in the form of donations to the V Foundation for Cancer Research (jimmyv.org) or Hospice of Wake County (hospiceofwake.org).