DEWEY SOLTOW

1919 - 2021

DEWEY RUDOLPH SOLTOW  6/18/1919 - 10/25/2021  102 years  
Dewey Rudolph Soltow was of "The Greatest Generation'. Dewey's thirst for knowledge started at an early age after taking a correspondence course on radios. During high-school, he was a HAM radio operator and worked at a local radio station as an engineer. Serving in the Navy, 1940-45, as a radio technician he was recognized for his abilities and received additional education which included learning radar. After WWII, Dewey worked for the US Weather Bureau and moved to Washington DC with his wife and two small children. In 1957, using the radar technology that he learned during the war, Dewey designed and implemented the first national radar system in the weather bureau, WSR-57. This was the main weather surveillance for over 35 years, preceding what we now know as Doppler. After retiring from the DOD in 1972 he started a Piper flight school teaching many how to fly. Dewey and the love of his life, Betty Newsome, frequently flew back and forth to Florida as true snowbirds. Dewey continued to fly until he was 90 and driving until 100.If you were to ask Dewey what his biggest accomplishment was, he would tell you that it was marrying the love of his life. He said that they were two young kids who made it on their own.Betty passed in 2012 but there wasn't a day that he wasn't thinking of her. Their love is the kind you only see in the movies perhaps because those men of that generation knew how to love. Greeting Dewey in heaven was his wife Betty along with their two oldest children, Thomas John Soltow, Judy Ann Paris and their great-granddaughter Meghan Johnson. Dewey leaves behind here on Earth his two youngest children, Frances Brown and Donald Soltow along with four granddaughters, eight great-grandchildren, and one great-great-granddaughter.Services will be held at Fairfax Memorial Funeral Home.